Prompt: First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine.So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories?Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

I think King has created dichotomy in telling the story “Genesis” and “The Earth Diver” to challenge us and remind us that “you have to be careful with the stories you tell and you have to watch out for the stories that you are told.” King is demonstrating an example of how perception can be changed through the way a story is told. When dichotomy is created in stories, the readers tend to choose one story over the other rather than challenging it because it is easier to eliminate one story or make one story sacred and dismiss the other as secular than questioning its co-existence. Can both stories be true? Can only one story exist?

King tells the story of “Genesis” in authoritative voice compared to the story of “The Earth Diver” where it is told in an animated tone like a storyteller. He does this to draw our attention to how the narrative is portrayed is in Western culture. Christian tales are often told in autorotative voices because as humans, it is our instinct to look for an absolute guidance and belief to follow. The “Genesis” story has been the power of this absolute belief and guidance in the Western culture for many years because it leads people to believe that they were God’s chosen people. It creates a hierarchy system of God on top, then the animals, then men, then women. It is contradicting to the equality and sharing that is told in the “The Earth Diver” story. When there is a hierarchy system with God on top, the absolute figure of God makes it easy for people to believe one story as true and other stories as wrong. The commands of Christ are told to the Christian members to follow and believe, and people disregard anything that conflicts this absolute belief because if Christ commands it, then it must be true.

As King points out, there are lots of dichotomies that is in our daily life; black/white, strong/weak, right/wrong, rich/poor, male/female, etc. I think King wants to show us that we have a binary view in many things other than just creation story and when there is a dominant side, we tend to dismiss the alternative. He is challenging us to think about what is accepted, our own agency in the story, and try to find different viewpoints. We need to pause, step back and question why there can only be one truth. It is problematic to categorize and dichotomize things because if we don’t try to carefully analyze and look at both sides, then we will never be open to new ways of thinking and be open to change. True dichotomies are very rare and false dichotomies are dangerous because it limits our thinking to only believe in one side.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Admin. “What Are the Commands of Christ?” Institute in Basic Life Principles, 30 Aug. 2016, https://iblp.org/questions/what-are-commands-christ.

Scott Berkun. “The False Dichotomy of False Dichotomies.” Scott Berkun, 27 Oct. 2012, https://scottberkun.com/2011/the-false-dichotomy-of-false-dichotomies/