Unit 1

Assignment 1.5: The Story of Evil

Unit 1 View all 2 comments

Take the story about how evil comes into the world, from King’s text, and change it to tell it. First, learn the story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. When you are finished, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered. 

I have a great story to tell you. It’s about the story about how Evil came into the world. Well, sort of. You’ll see.

Have you ever heard of General Sherman?  It’s the biggest tree on earth and one of the oldest living things in the world. Well, a long, long, long time ago, way before General Sherman even joined the military, there was another really, really tall tree.

This tree was at the center of a beautiful garden. Everything and everyone in this garden was perfect. No screaming babies. No assignment deadlines. No missed buses. No sickness, no death, no hate, no hunger.

Now if this tis all beginning to sound a little too familiar, I beg you to hang in there with me. Because in this garden, there was also no unbreakable rule. There were no “thou shalt not’s” or “boys only” signs nailed to any treehouse or mysterious gardeners walking around in glowing, white togas.

The only people in this garden were three best friends: Philip, Evelyn, and Goodwin.

And they all lived in a treehouse in this tree at the center of the garden. Now, as you’ve probably imagined already, but this garden was lush and filled with every type of seed-bearing fruit tree: cherries, pears, mangosteens, papaya, you name it, or rather, Phil, Eve, and Good took turns naming them. Anyway since the three best friends were all living  in the tallest tree in the garden, they had a pretty good view of the garden. So, the trio contented themselves with the abundant selection they had below and never bothered to look up.

That is, until one day…

Eve was busy shelling a basket of walnuts in the treehouse, when all of a sudden she heard a noise above her. Some people say it was the hiss of a snake. Others say that it was the coo of a dove. I’m inclined to believe that it was just the wind. Regardless, the fact of the matter was that Eve looked out the window and up.

That’s when something bright and shiny caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. There, fifteen branches up, something red stood out among the leaves. What is this? Eve wondered as she climbed up to take a closer look. Nestled among the branches was a fruit that she had never seen before. Odd. It was hard like a pear, but more spherical, like an orange. The fruit was still mostly green, which probably accounted for why she hadn’t noticed it before, but the face that was turned towards the sun had developed an attractive rosy blush. Hm, maybe Phil or Good would know. But Eve’s mouth started watering as she relieved the branch of this tantalizing new specimen and before she knew it, she had taken a bite. And another. And another. Until all that was left in her palm was the stem and two seeds.

Just at that moment Phil popped his head out the window.
–Hey Eve, are you finished shelling the wal—WOAH. What are you doing up there?
–You’ll never believe what I found, said Eve.
Then she burped. But of course, since Eve had eaten it all, she didn’t have anything left to show Phil. Eve scanned the empty branches around her.
–Well, there’s only one solution, she said, and started climbing.
–Wait up! cried Phil.

Now I forgot to mention this earlier, but this tree in the middle of the garden was many, many General Shermans tall, so high that even if you stood at the edge of the garden and looked up, you still wouldn’t be able to see the canopy. But the fruit was very tasty, and Eve knew she would do anything to share it with her friends. So, Phil and Eve climbed up higher and higher and higher… until pretty soon, they couldn’t see the roof of the treehouse anymore. In fact, they climbed so high that the leaves and the branches started looking like roots.

Eve was just about to comment on this strange phenomenon when—schoompf—she broke the last layer of branches and found herself peering out among some bushes at a whole grove of trees. She made room for Phil.
–Weird. This place looks exactly like our garden. A garden above a garden, can you believe it!?!
–But better, ‘cause look, those are exactly the fruits I was telling you of!

Eve jumped out onto firm ground and rushed to the nearest bough. Phil agreed that this fruit was indeed the premium. The pair became so engrossed in their u-picking adventure that it was sunset before they remembered Good.
–Oh hey, we should probably bring some back.

But no matter how hard they looked among the bushes, Phil and Eve couldn’t find the hole again.
–Rats! We’re stuck here, cried Eve. What good are all these apples—for that was the name Eve and Phil had decided on—if we can’t share them with Good?
–It’s all your fault, said Phil accusingly. If you hadn’t bitten that apple…

Well, Eve and Phil bickered and fought for a solid 146.25 days but there was no going back. Eventually, they settled into this new world, and had a family. But Eve and Phil never felt whole again without their best friend. No matter how many apples they ate, there was a hole in their hearts that just couldn’t be filled. Nothing could satisfy their love hunger for Good.

This is the story of how Eve-Phil came into the World and left Good behind. Throughout the ages, their children have tried to fill this hole with a myriad of things a little more sophisticated than fruit. They’ve done terrible things to one another, yet nothing could satisfy their love hunger. Eventually, one of Eve-Phil’s descendants took it upon himself to write down the story of his great, great, great, great… grandparents. By then, of course, no one could remember all the details, so his version became the version. But even if Eve or Phil did come up with a new and revised edition, it would be too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. So, be careful of the stories you tell, and the stories you listen to.

—————————————————————————————————————–

In this story, I played with inversions. You probably noticed many references to Genesis 1, which is the origin story of evil that I’ve been living with daily since I’m also taking a course on Paradise Lost. Reading through other origin stories however, I realized that the Judeo-Christian tale isn’t the only one involving a Fall. Many creation tales speak of a lost relationship between the “sky people” and “earth people,” and even Charm’s story involves a free-fall from a higher paradise. In my story, however, Eve and Phil climb up instead, and their “Fall” comes about as a result of their ascension–which nevertheless leads to pain because Good gets left behind. When my brother heard the conclusion, he rolled his eyes and labeled my pun “cringeworthy.” And I would agree. But there is method to my madness! Looking beyond this “cringeworthy” play on words, I also wanted to consider the idea that “evil” itself isn’t actually an entity; rather, it’s privatio boni, or the deprivation of good. Maybe people don’t do terrible things because they’re inherently wicked, perhaps they’re suffering from a bit of love hunger.

Thanks for reading!

—————————————————————————————————————–

Works Cited:

“17 of the Most Amazing Treehouses From Around The World.” Bored Panda. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.

King, The Truth About Stories, Chapter One: You’ll Never Believe What Happened Is Always a Great Way to Start.

Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” The Online Literature Library. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.

“The General Sherman Tree.” Sequoia & Kings Canyon. National Park Service. Web. 1 Feb. 2016.

Tooley, Michael. “The Problem of Evil.” Stanford University. Stanford University, 2002. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.

 

Assignment 1.3: Orality

Unit 1 View all 5 comments

Explain why the notion that cultures can be distinguished as either “oral culture” or “written culture” (19) is a mistaken understanding as to how culture works, according to Chamberlin and your reading of Courtney MacNeil’s article “Orality.”

In his influential work, Wealth of Nations, published 1776, Adam Smith introduced the idea of stadial history, which assumes that all civilizations will develop in the same manner: from pre-agricultural (aka “savage”), to early-agricultural (aka “barbaric”), to industrialized (aka “civilized”). According to this line of thought, an explorer such as George Vancouver who “discovered” the Maori in New Zealand would really be meeting a version of his great-great-great-great-great… grandfather. (Remarkably, this mode of thinking—also called, unilinearism—has influenced non-European writers themselves—most notably black abolitionist Equiano, who argued in The Interesting Narrative (1789) that emancipated Africans would be a greater benefit to the British economy, since the entire continent of Africa would inevitably “adopt the British fashion, manner, and customs.”

Stadial, or conjectural, theory has been a key culprit in reinforcing the false dichotomy between oral and written culture. In her article “Orality”, Courtney MacNeil details how oral cultures have traditionally been associated with tribal groups while written cultures are ‘proof’ of more ‘advanced’ civilizations. Both MacNeil and J. Edward Chamberlin cite the Toronto School of Communication as a major advocate of the primacy of the written word and the “primate-cy” of the spoken word.

In his book If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?, however, J. Edward Chamberlin, takes a different stance. He collapses the binary between oral and written traditions:

All so-called oral cultures are rich in forms of writing, albeit non-syllabic and non-alphabetic ones… On the other hand, the central institutions of our supposedly ‘written’ cultures… are in fact arenas of strictly defined and highly formalized oral traditions… (Chamberlin 19)

Chamberlin argues that every culture’s are invested in both oral and written elements, which are inextricably “entangled with each other” in our stories and songs. I can attest to the fact that this certainly holds true in Chinese culture. In our 5000 years of recorded history, we have accumulated a rich literary (poems, ancient texts, calligraphy) and oral (folk songs, operas, chants) repertoire. Oftentimes, these interface and overlap. For example, operas are written down so that they can be performed; books of poems, vice versa, are committed to memory in school.

Today, digital “literature” also upends common assumptions about and blurs the lines between these two types of media. For example, audio-recording sites like Youtube preserve orality by allowing them to be replayed while instant messaging and social media prove that text-based communication no longer holds permanence.  Even the existence of this online classroom—ENGL 470A—is proof that “technological advances in communication have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality” (Paterson). Our “lectures” are have once again come back to the original sense of the word—to read—what Professor Paterson had to “say” about Lesson 1.3. (Her introductory vlog, on the other hand, is oral.)

Instead of distinguishing culture as either oral or written, we might think dialectically of culture as both. Courtney MacNeil is careful to make a distinction between and oral and orality, however. Borrowing from Meschonnic, she writes, “orality is not the opposition of writing, but rather a catalyst of communication more generally, which is part of both writing and speech” (Orality). Orality is a means of communication, a means of accessing collective memory or innate human truth, and oraliture, coined by Edouard Glissant, a repository of both written and verbal arts.

via publicdomainvectors.org

One last point: the principle of superposition within quantum theory posits that something can exist in multiple states at the same time. (For example, are these cubes facing in or out? Both.) The truth about stories is that they can be both oral and written. Like this optical illusion, however, sometimes it’s difficult to recognize its dialectical nature. In the rest of his book, Chamberlin goes on to deconstruct other dichotomies—home and homeless, reality and imagination—and helps us see that these contradictions can coexist symbiotically. It is only when we can come to terms with these states of superposition that we will be able to participate in these “ceremonies of belief” and enter into one another’s stories.

 

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Reimagining Home and Sacred Space. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2004. Print.

Necker Cube Illusion. Digital image. Web. 23 Jan. 2016. <publicdomainvectors.org>

MacNeil Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory.  Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1.3.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2013. Web. 6 Jan. 2014.

Assignment 1.1: Introduction

Unit 1, Leave a comment

Following the instructions in this lesson, set up your blog and write a short introduction (300 – 400 words) that includes at least two hyperlinks and a visual. This introduction should, 1) welcome your readers, 2) include a brief description of the course, and 3) some commentary on your expectations for this course of studies.

Hi there!

My name is Beatrice Lew, but you can call me Bea. I am a third year UBC student pursuing an honours in English and a minor in French. My parents emigrated from Hong Kong in 1995 and settled in Richmond, where I was born and raised. Located just south of Vancouver, Richmond is 50% Chinese, and a little like Chinatown on steroids. I grew up enjoying all the benefits of a first-generation immigrant Chinese upbringing, namely, weekly piano lessons and… Chinese school. This was my parents’ way of making sure that the second C in CBC still stood for Chinese (CBC = Canadian-born-Chinese). While ten years of language classes did little to increase my fluency, it definitely taught me a lot about my ethnic culture’s history and traditions. But what gave me the strongest sense of heritage weren’t 12th century Song dynasty poems, but the stories shared with me by my gong gong over dim sum and the tales spun by my father as we waited in the car while mum bought groceries. Obviously, I liked their stories a little too much, because, rather than choosing law, medicine or business, I ended up devoting my entire university career to reading books.

This blog documents my discoveries and encounters through ENGL 470A—a course that is all about stories. We will examine Native and European traditions of storytelling with particular regard to how they converge (and diverge) at the “crossroads” of Canadian literature. As well, through an exploration of various texts, we will address and dissect key issues such as representation and colonizing narratives. At the end of this course, our independent research projects will dovetail in an online group conference. I hope this blog will be a space for dialogue and I welcome your comments and input!

As a child, I found that the stories shared with me on weekends conveyed values and worldviews often differed vastly what I was taught Monday to Friday. I hope a course that studies the intersections between different traditions of storytelling will help me navigate this tension a little better.

As a literature student, I have been forced to read many, many books by dead white men as part of my degree requirements. Just looking at the reading list, I know that this course will be a breath of fresh air. One of my goals for ENGL 470A is to widen the scope of my exposure to Native texts and orature—while being careful to avoid either the “irreducible distance” or “presumptuous familiarity” that Helen Hoy cautions against in her How Should I Read These? Native Women Writers in Canada (11). Fun fact: Hoy happens to be the partner of Thomas King, whose book, The Truth About Stories is on our reading list!

ENGL 470A promises to be challenging, and at times uncomfortable, but ultimately rewarding. My hope is that by interrogating our own involvement with and ignorance of the dominant discourse, we can learn to listen to alternative voices—and have some great discussions.

Looking forward to learning with you!

Cheers,
Bea

Helen Hoy

Works Cited

Cover of “How should I read these?” Digital image. How Should I Read These? Google Books. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.

Ethnicity Hot Facts. 1st ed. Richmond: City of Richmond, 2014. Web. 14 Jan. 2016.

Hoy, Helen. How Should I Read These?: Native Women Writers in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto, 2001. Web.

Paterson, Erika. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2013. Web. 6 Jan. 2014.