Question 6
As I have considered throughout my last few blog posts, the authors we are beginning to examine in depth – Harry Robinson and Thomas King chief amongst them – expertly and critically blend oral and literary forms of narrative. A synthesis – or perhaps a contrast – of voice and text leads us towards a new form of narrative that is neither wholly one or the other, but rather an intertextuality of storytelling by which to confront colonialist subjugation, Indigenous cultures and histories, and postcolonial understandings of nation, race, and identity.
Green Grass, Running Water is a novel obsessed with names. Let’s analyze three examples of names in King’s novel which demand being vocalized so as to understand their full allusory complexities.
The first name is Ahdamn, who lives with First Woman in the garden (King 40). He is, of course, an obvious allusion to the Biblical Adam, on this Biblical webpage called the “father of the human race.” In scripture, the name itself seems to be given little great significance: in the King James Bible, the name appears suddenly and unceremoniously; this is because Adam is quite literally the Hebrew word for “man,” and so Adam represents, at that point in biblical history, all humanity. The Hebrew itself is rife with plays-on-words – scholars have come to various understandings of the name “Adam” as representing all humans, or as representing the earth, or perhaps both. R.J. Berry for Science and Christian Belief examines these complexities, noting the Hebrew word adamah as meaning “from the earth” (23). Consider, for example, the Ha’adamah Blessing, made before the eating of cultivated produce, to understand the significance of adam/adamah as referring to earth as well as humanity’s relationship to the ground itself. Through the name Ahdamn, King is illuminating a Biblical orality – a rarity within the overwhelming significance and dominance placed on literacy in the presentation of Christian narrative and morality. Drawing from a Hebrew Biblical pronunciation guide, one can voice adamah as ah-daw-maw, with some emphasis on the central “daw” – a stark contrast to the common American/Canadian pronunciation of Adam as ædəm, or “AH-dum.” Perhaps it is only through speaking Ahdamn out loud as “ah-DAMN” or “ah-damn,” with emphasis on either the second consonant or neither, that readers can understand the allusion to the Hebrew. Ahdamn also transforms the name into not just a name but also a phrase, and a particularly expressive one at that, demanding aggressive voicing over silence – “ah, damn!” It is also alluding to the damnation faced by Adam and Eve in their fall into sin – a particularly profane allusion, and one that is steeped in orality: “ah, damn” is a spoken phrase, conversational rather than literary, harkening to the oratory of Indigenous storytelling.
The second name is Dr. Joe Hovaugh. Only in voicing the name out loud can readers discern the play-on-words and allusion to the BIblical Jehovah, one of a few potential vocalizings of the Tetragrammaton, that sacred name of the Hebrew God that, as notes liturgical scholar Lynne Courter Boughton, many propose should be left unpronounced. Some say Yahweh. By forcing readers to vocalize “Joe Hovaugh” to understand the allusion to Christian considerations of godhead, King is critiquing Christian doctrine’s reverence of pure literacy and avoidance of orality. King decolonizes Christian myth through a direct rebuke of the sacredness of the unpronounceable name of God.
The third example is the group of names for the individuals who were “all waiting in the shadows of the major studios, working as extras, fighting for bit parts in Westerns, playing Indians again and again and again” (King 182). Two of the names are “Sally Jo Weyha” and “Polly Hantos,” allusions to Sacajawea and Pocahontas, respectively. Colloquial pronunciations for Sacajawea, or Sacagawea, vary: this Ted-Ed video (which, interestingly, purports to be telling her “true story”) uses the most common North American English pronunciation of “Sac-uh-jew-WAY-uh.” History professor Peter Kastor, however, pronounces it as “suh-kaw-guh-WAY-uh,” with the first three syllables spoken in quick succession and a hard “g” rather than a soft “d̠ʒ.” In that interview with St. Louis Public Radio, Kastor explains that William Clark had spelled the name n multiple ways in his original manuscripts, and the editor had chosen the version Sacajawea, thus giving rise to the now-common mispronunciation (2014). By spelling his allusion to the famous American figure as “Sally Jo Weyha,” King is forcing his reader to actually mispronounce the name – and seems to be taking a jab at the appropriation of Native identity and storytelling through colonialist interpretations of Indigeneity. Sacajawea is “sac-uh-jew-WAY-uh” only because of the white authors and editors through whom her life was mythologized. And as King notes, Sally Jo Weyha, amongst others, was stuck “playing Indians again and again and again” (182), always bound to the forever-static role of the colonialist construction of the “American Indian.”
Works Cited
“Adam.” Behind the Name, https://www.behindthename.com/name/adam.
Berry, R. J. “Adam or Adamah?” Science and Christian Belief, vol. 23, 2011, pp. 23-48, https://www.scienceandchristianbelief.org/serve_pdf_free.php?filename=SCB+23-1+Berry.pdf.
The Bible. King James Version, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=KJV.
Broughton, Lynne Courter. “The Name of God in the Scriptures and in Liturgy.” Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy, vol. 90, no. 1, 2009, pp. 23-43, DOI: 10.2143/QL.90.1.2040728.
Fairchild, Mary. “Meet Adam: The First Man and Father of the Human Race.” Learn Religions, 25 June 2019, https://www.learnreligions.com/adam-the-first-man-701197.
“Listen to Why You’re Probably Pronouncing Sacagawea Wrong.” St. Louis Public Radio, https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2014-04-28/listen-to-why-youre-probably-pronouncing-sacagawea-wrong
Mensing, Karen. “The true story of Sacajawea – Karen Mensing.” YouTube, uploaded by TED-Ed, 8 August 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnT0k9wdDZo.
Parsons, John J. “Ha’adamah Blessing.” Hebrew for Christians, https://www.hebrew4christians.com/Blessings/Daily_Blessings/Food_Blessings/Ha_adamah/ha_adamah.html.
“Strong’s H127 – ‘ăḏāmâ.” Blue Better Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?t=kjv&strongs=h127.
Hi Leo, really awesome post. I think my favourite moment is when you point out the ways that King is cleverly forcing us to mispronounce Sacagawea and Pocahontas’s names to make a point about appropriating Indigenous identity. I think there is a certain irony in the fact that Sally Jo Weha is an Anglophone misappropriation of an Indigenous name, but Sally Jo is still expected to play an “Indian” in movies; it seems that even Indians who are pigeonholed as Indians in the movie industry are still expected to conform to English naming conventions – they can’t be, shall we say, “Too Indian”. I thought your analysis of Ahdamn’s name was really astute – I appreciate the way that you bring the more liturgical meanings of the word adamah. I would also add that, in both King’s version of the name and in the regular version of the name, Ahdamn/Adam also sounds like ‘a dam,’ which is another central piece of imagery for the novel. Truly, it is astounding how King has managed to generate so many layers of meaning from one single name!
I wonder, though, why King has chosen to only disguise some of his characters: why is it Louis, Ray, and Al instead of Louis Riel, but Susanna Moodie is just Sue Moodie? Do you think that these LACK of puns are also making a point?
The idea of the pigeonholed Indian is very interesting. It’s an appropriation of Indigenous identity to serve the needs of the colonial nation-state and in doing so erase true Indigeneity in favour of a curated image of the mythic First Person. I’m thinking of your post from a while back about the vanishing Indian and Edward S. Curtis’ photographic curation of this image – editing out the clock from that photo of the two Indigenous men so as to create a sense of primordiality and premodernity.
I think Susanna Moodie remaining as Sue Moodie speaks to the figure’s non-Indigeneity. There is no shifting of her identity in the curation of her image (at least, not in the same way as there is for Indigenous figures). Moodie was able to tell her story herself, not through the edited appropriation of white men, like what happened to Sacagawea in the journals of Lewis and Clark.
Hi Leo,
I like the way you explored names in this post. King certainly has a way of using names to signify deeper meaning, both on the narrative level of names being historically significant; and on the meta-narrative level, asking the reader to explore the interpretation of the name as they read.
I find it interesting how King asks you to orally voice the colloquially accepted name through confusing spelling in the cases of “Ahdamn” and “Joe Hovaugh”, but takes a different a different approach for Sally Jo Weyha, and Polly Hantos, asking you to mispronounce what looks like ordinary names (to a degree). You’re right to point out that neither Adam nor Jehovah are the original pronunciations of those names, but they are certainly alluding to the way that colonial culture has made those names most prominent.
You mention that King is purposefully mispronouncing the indigenous names, seemingly “taking a jab at the appropriation of Native identity and storytelling through colonialist interpretations of Indigeneity.” Do you think this is what he is doing in the case of the biblical names as well? After all, he has chosen the interpretations of the names that are drastically different from how they would have been pronounced at the times that the Torah and Tanakh were first being written. Do you think these two sets of mispronunciations are doing the same thing?
Thanks for the reply! I think King is indeed purposefully shifting around and playing with Biblical pronunciations. He’s playing around with different names for God(s) – the small-capital-letters GOD that comes from Dog Dream, Joe Hovaugh, Ishmael too (the original theophoric name meaning “God is listening.” King is certainly aware of the intricacies of the Tetragrammaton and the reverence held upon its sounding – many consider it too sacred to pronounce – and the debate surrounding exactly how it was pronounced. Jehovah is one candidate – though I believe the consensus today is that Yahweh is the proper form, and was so in biblical times. It’s quite fascinating, this uncertainty of pronunciation – and perhaps reflects the uncertainty and debate surrounding the pronunciation of Sacagawea. Who determines voice?