For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robinson’s writing style in “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” and King’s style in Green Grass, Running Water. What similarities can you find between the two story-telling voices? Coyote and God are present in both texts, how do they compare in character and voice across the stories?
I have not had the fortune of reading much of Thomas King’s creative works outside of those in this class so far, so my familiarity with how King’s style has changed to take on some of Robinson’s qualities will be somewhat limited. I have, however, been taking note of how their creative styles differ and overlap as I have been reading.
Both Robinson and King use typical aspects of oral storytelling in the way that they engage with their audiences. In the case of Robinson, as discussed previously, this is a carefully controlled pace, expertly weaved into the elaborations and repetitions he uses to tell his story. In the case of King’s Green Grass, Running Water, however, his pace regularly bounces back and forth between three different styles: (1) a traditional written story we often see in Canada; (2) a familiar oral format happening within Coyote’s scenes with God and the Narrator; and (3) the dialogical manner that characters parse out information for the reader.
This form of dialogue is not unfamiliar in the stories we have read so far. In Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England, most of the important events happen through a form of dialogue. In his story, Coyote’s trickery is unveiled mostly through the dialogue between his characters. Most other information is relayed to the audience through an implied dialogue of asking questions of the audience that may as well have been asked to a character in the world he has created. “Who? What is it?” Robinson asks as he draws out the trick that Coyote plays on the European explorers. (65) Robinson does this to further engage the audience in his story by giving them what feels like an active role.
However, King uses this dialogue in more ways than just to relay information. He uses dialogue across all three of his styles for use of humour. Throughout the novel, characters are either purposefully, or unintentionally missing the mark in conversations with each other. As Sergeant Cereno interviews Babo, the latter regularly ignores the questions of the former to keep talking about what they want. (50-54) While this shows the attitude that Babo has towards the officer, one that partly disregards his authority, it also creates a very funny comedy of errors, where they regularly misunderstand both questions and answers.
Both King and Robinson use humour throughout their work in a myriad of ways. King suggests, through his reference to Basil Johnston’s essay How do we Learn Language, that “Native peoples have always loved to laugh,” elaborating through Johnston’s work that humour is a common quality among Native stories as it is the means by which understandings about the human experience have been passed on throughout indigenous communities. (23) So this understanding and open use of humour is perhaps not unique to these two authors, so much as it is a favoured means of storytelling among the communities that they both hold dear.
But the way that they present this humour is very different. Robinson’s humour is found in the situations that he sets up in his story, showing the playful nature of Coyote, and of the world through his own eyes. In King of England, Robinson describes how the white people came up the west coast and got misdirected by a trapped Coyote, leading them into the fog across the Pacific Ocean. (64-6) Each time the Europeans try to get closer to Coyote, he goes faster across the water; making them build faster boats to try to catch him, but never able to. The playful way that Coyote evades the European explorers across the Pacific shows the kind of humour that Robinson loves. King, also loving this manner of storytelling, lets us see the strings in this playful way that storytellers engage with their audience as he tells his story of Charm:
“Sometimes when I tell this story to children, I slow it down and have Charm stick her head into that hole by degrees. But most of you are adults and have already figured out that Charm is going to stick her head into that hole so far that she’s either going to get stuck or she’s going to fall through.” (Robinson, 13)
Here, both Robinson and King have shown how you can draw the humour out of people by the way that you tell your story. By drawing out the dilemma, and inching slowly towards an obvious solution, they are both making their audience feel engaged in the creation of the story and with the laughter.
King, on the other hand finds a lot of his humour by playing with his audience’s expectations. He does this in the storyteller format, as in the above story of Charm, where he lingers on the part of the story that he knows the audience has already started to figure out. But King also uses an element of absurdity to make his jokes noticed an appreciated. This ranges from the subtlety of the character Dr. Joe Hovaugh representing the vision of Northrop Frye in Green Grass, Running Water (and the many other hidden puns and references within the characters in his story); to the very existence of God within the narrative.
Both Robinson and King have God playing a similar role within the text, which is to say, largely in the background. Where God is a named character within both stories, he is not represented in the same way.
In King of England, Robinson holds God as the figurehead of creation, dominating Coyote and all of humanity. God has such authority that we only know of his position and interests through the Angel that he sends down to speak with Coyote, much like in the biblical tales. Further, it is through Coyote that his will is done, by sending him to England to make arrangements with the King. Despite the chaotic nature that Coyote has, he appears quite subdued in this story, and is clearly subordinate to God.
However, in King’s story, God is not this grand ruler of all that we see in Robinson’s. In fact the idea of God is played with to the point of ridicule, playing the role of what seems to be a newborn puppy, rather than a dignified authority. Where Coyote answers to God in Robinson’s work, God is created in Green Grass, Running Water by one of Coyote’s particularly silly, and restless dreams. While highlighting King’s playful and imaginative sense of humour, this also clearly shows the relationship between God and Coyote: one where Coyote’s sense of mischief and chaos answers to no one, not even little ol’ GOD.
By presenting God in this way, Robinson is able to portray both characters as ultimately limited. After all, at the end of the day, Coyote is Coyote. He is not the ruler of the universe, he is a trickster that acts impulsively and makes mistakes, escalating to the point within the first 2 pages of the novel, that the narrator has to say to Coyote “Now you’ve done it,” as he accidentally creates God.
This interaction between God and Coyote in either story perhaps draws upon the relationship between the two within the battling spiritualities of Natives and Europeans. Where Robinson portrays God in the manner that we are used to seeing him in this culture — a high, powerful, authority figure — King makes God a comic relief, and ultimately subject to Coyote’s most prominent quality: chaos. Where Robinson is perhaps sympathetic to the idea of a deity, King appears to be able to do without, embracing a world that is not in the control of an authority, but, in some way, responsible for one.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. HarperPerennial Modern Classics. 2007
King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories. House of Anansi Press. 2003.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories. Talonbooks, Feb 2009.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” CanLit. 1999. 140-172. https://canlit.ca/article/reading-notes-for-thomas-kings-green-grass-running-water/
6 replies on “3:2 :: Storytelling is a Gift from Dog”
Hey Zac! I think a lot of us were drawn to that question about orality and literacy in King vs. Robinson, and we all tackled it in different ways, but with analyses that we can compare and synthesize to come to even greater understandings of these works. You examine the dialogue, and in particular King’s employment of dialogue “for use of humour,” with character miscommunications often leading to ridiculous and satirical astute situations. Victoria also analyzed dialogue, noting the conversational nature of both King and Robinson’s work, how King “echoes Robinson’s conversational tone” (Ranea). And, just like Victoria and myself, you point out the differences between Robinson’s God – an elusive, authoritative figure – and King’s God – a figure of comedy relief, chaos and impulsivity. You also bring us to a new consideration of King’s treatment of deities, that he perhaps is able “to do without,” in comparison to Robinson’s treatment of a deific authority through whom Coyote is granted power.
You mention Joe Hovaugh as representing Northrop Frye – and I think that name, “Joe Hovaugh,” is important to further examining King’s treatment of religion and divinity. Is Joe Hovaugh Jehovah? Is he God? Why does King give him this name? I think King is telling us something about Christian hegemony here – and perhaps also finding room to names and identity as well. As you point out indirectly through transcribing King’s God as GOD, King is clearly interested in the specificity of deific titles. The uppercase GOD alludes to the all-capitals spelling of LORD to represent the Tetragrammaton of YHWH, and Jehovah is only one of many potential ways of vocalizing those four consonants – Yahweh is another, and LORD is the literary version. What do you think King is telling us here?
I’d also like to work with you for our conference! I’m an organizer and I don’t procrastinate! I’ve enjoyed reading your posts and I think our writing styles and critical views would work together.
Hey Leo, thank you for your thought provoking response!
I don’t know for sure what King is trying to do with these names. I know that King loves playing with the names in his stories, and Joe and GOD are just a couple of examples. The joke really has to do with the association that we have with these names. While christianity originates in the Middle East, much of what we associate with it nowadays has its origins with the Latin and English associations that we have with it. “Jehovah” is a particularly European way of approaching this historically middle eastern word of YHWH.
Too often there are jokes in literature that can only be read. Jokes that have to do with the phrasing of written words, or the arrangement that we might be used to. I’ve mentioned E.E. Cummings before as an example of someone who played with the arrangement of words to force you to look at it closer, or slower than you normally would as you read. I think that King is doing a similar thing. He is creating a joke that only makes sense if you try to say it out loud, and forget about if you choose not to. ‘Hovaugh,’ too is not an obvious name that we see too often. In fact, a quick google search, for me brings up only this book. So as it is a new word with unusual, (but obnoxiously-english) written conventions, our brains probably need us to go over it a bit slower than most other names, preparing us to sound it out loud.
I think that King uses the formal GOD when describing his own GOD-character, because it is quite funny to see a formalized approach to a god that is behaving in a way that the church might feel is quite ‘unbecoming’ of Him.
Oh, and Facebook would work for me, if it does for you.
I’ve messaged you on Facebook 😉
Hello Zac,
I enjoyed reading your post this week greatly. The point of the similarities between King and Robinson in the aesthetic of their writing, while simultaneously pointing to the different pacing. The point you made in regards to Robinsons ability to connect to the audience by providing them with an active role. Which makes me wonder if you believe this would have been possible, had the story not been formulated to rely on the oral and dialogue based narrative structure? and if the humour that both King and Robinson depict in their works would have been received in a similar manner if the texts were formulated in the literary structure we often find with European writers? (sorry for the strangeness of these questions)
Thank you for your post and for highlighting the two writers abilities to implement similar tools and concepts in such individual and identifiable manners. I really enjoyed your take on Robinson and King.
Mia
Hi Mia, thank you for your comment!
No, I don’t believe that it would be as effective, which makes King’s work even that much more impressive!
King relies really heavily on little tricks of storytellers to keep the audience engaged, and actively involved at his pace. Some of these tricks are disorientating, like jumping back and forth between two different timeframes, or pace controlling, like repetition or multi-tracked-connversations. I think these methods make it so that in order to make the most out of reading this book, you must first think of it as a book to be spoken or read out loud, even if thats just in your head.
Thanks again for your kind words!