Prompt: Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

To me, Coyote is ever-changing.

Therefore, he is almost like the center of the Medicine Wheel, what makes it spin.

In Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King uses the Medicine Wheel as a metaphor and organizing structure that kind of colours the narrative. Each section of the book represents one of four directions of the wheel: North is Blue, East is Red, South is White, and West is Black; with each direction corresponding with four states of the life cycle: birth, youth, parents, and elders; four seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter; four elements: water, air, fire, and Mother Earth; and so forth. The cyclical nature of the Wheel is history repeating itself, stories being retold, life itself starting over (Paterson 3.2).

When something ends, something begins, and there is always transition. There is perpetual change even when some things stay the same.

In-betweenness is correlative of a cycle, and that’s exactly what Coyote is. The transience of his dancing in and out of stories is uncanny.

So even before I understood the symbol of the Medicine Wheel, my understanding of Coyote was that he presents the need for metacognition— the need for understanding or at least considering the abstract. Maybe that is an overly psychological way of viewing things, and it’s admittedly hard to define; but so is Coyote. Although “metacognition is often defined simply as ‘thinking about thinking,’ it actually denotes higher order thinking needed to engage in a task and actively learn while going through the process.

Not so daunting if you think about it – we do that every day.

“Meta” is an abstract concept, meaning “beyond,” and it may seem intimidating attached to just about anything, but it’s really just a four letter word. That’s kind of like Coyote–not really intimidating or anything just… tricky.

Coyote is like an animal that seems to be trying to tell you something, and you don’t really know what it is. So much of King’s storytelling is dialogic in nature, so you are participating as an audience, and may misunderstand–until you start making connections. By creating this intersection between orality and literacy, King forms many dialogues, and the reader needs to pick up the pieces spilling off the margins. Symbols aren’t overt, but appear obvious with certain knowledge. The challenge of understanding Coyote is an opportunity to learn something–but you may get tricked. The knowledge that Coyote is based on a Trickster divinity in Aboriginal storytelling kind of distinguishes it from a pet.

Yet, honestly, that’s what she reminded me of. When Lionel sees “a yellow dog” dancing outside Bursum’s (279), I thought of Jackie:

 

Later, Lionel’s uncle Eli watches as a “scraggly dog dashed back and forth, chasing its tail, spinning in the rain, as if it were trying to dance” (289). This not only alters the perception that she may be an anthropomorphic being, not unlike Robinson’s Coyote, but adds a second piece of detail–scraggly vs yellow–which may change your image of Coyote for the second time in ten pages. Personally, I liked smooth and yellow more, because scraggly reminded me of a terrier that bit me.

Coyote is fluid, like water in the beginning when there was nothing.

Noteworthy is how she’s seen differently by Eli, who is Lionel’s elder–evoking the Medicine Wheel. Also, the four Indians can understand her, while the other’s cannot.

In a way, the four Indians are extensions of the Medicine Wheel, and Coyote is the crux. They are kind of fringe characters that are central to understanding the plot, establishing an inbetweenness, as well as being interconnected. In the beginning, Coyote dreams about a dog that wants to be named Coyote, settles for dog, before getting “everything mixed up… everything backward” and calling himself god (2).

“Looks like trouble to me,”
“Hmmm,” says Coyote. “You could be right.”
“That doesn’t look like a dog.”
“Hmmm,” says Coyote. “You could be right.”

Then, the weird looking dog insists on not being a “little god,” but a “big one!” and turns into GOD.

“Now you’ve done it.”
“Everything’s under control,” says Coyote. “Don’t panic… Sit down. Relax.
Watch some television” (2-3)

Upon reading that retrospectively, you think about the TVs around Bursum’s store, that Western playing on the map. You think about how the four Indians tell creation myths, and Coyote seemingly / dreamingly brings them to life. You also think about how the four Indians elude Dr. Joseph Hovaugh, who is “playing God” with a “garrison mentality,” representing both Jehovah, which his name sounds like phonetically, and Northrop Frye. In The Bush Garden, Frye writes that there is a “garrison mentality” existing within Canada that excludes settlers from being one with Nature, as the Natives are. Hovaugh plots maps of where they may have been, even crossing the Canadian border, and thinks he’s getting closer.

But he cannot see the “pattern”–escape from the closed-system of his cognition (Blanca 52-53).

“Coyote pedagogy requires training in illegal border-crossing,” as Jane Fleck and Margary Fee put it (131).

The four stories as told by the four Indians evoke four Eves–turns of the season of The Medicine Wheel–First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman, and
Old Woman, but strictly show that they are not Christian stories. If you accept Coyote as a female, and include Babo, you got at least six women concerned with getting the story right. But I think everybody is trying to get life right.

I look at Coyote as being the threshold between reality and myth, story and literature. I look at the title of my blog site and think that’s about right.

I think of him or her as being the reality and pleasure principle. The creator saying, “Good comes with bad, but you just have to dance,” and the baby staring right back.

 

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Works Cited

Blanca, Chester. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999): 44-61. Web. 3 July 2015.

Fee, Margary and Flick, Jane. “Coyote Pedagogy: Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999): 131-139. Web. 3 July 2015.

Franey, Evan. “Angel Pic of Jackie.” Facebook. Evan Franey, 8 May 2007. Web. 3 July 2015.

Franey, Evan. “Devil Pic of Jackie.” Facebook. Evan Franey, 8 May 2007. Web. 3 July 2015.

Hug, Linda. “Coyote the Trickster [image]” trickster coyote’s daughter. Pinterest, n.d. Web. 3 July 2015.

Livingston, Jennifer A. “Metacognition: An Overview.” Cognitive Psychology. University at Buffalo, 1997. Web. 3 July 2015.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.2.” ENGL 470A: Canadian Studies. UBC Blogs, May 2015. Web. 3 July 2015.

Petkova, Veneta Georgieva. “How Thomas King Uses Coyote in his Novel Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature. Haskoli Islands, May 2011. Web. 1 July 2015.