Assignment

For our latest assignment, we were asked to retell Thomas King’s story about how evil came into the world. As a bit of a disclaimer, I told this story several times. As you guys know, a story changes each time it’s told, and I’m not a very eloquent person in real life so the first time was pretty rough.

First of all, I apologize for not being as creative about it as I could’ve been. I think I misunderstood the assignment a bit and I didn’t realize it until I was looking at other people’s awesome stories. In a way, I think this story is like an expanded version of King’s retelling. I hope the little details make up for it!

The Story

A long time ago, before the lands were divided up, there was a magical race. They had no name, but I guess their closest modern cousins are our fairytale witches. They wielded powerful magic and brewed amazing potions. They lived in total peace and harmony with the animals across the land. With their magic, they built their homes among the treetops, in the caves, where-ever they liked, and they flew across all corners of the globe to visit their friends and family, fast enough to be in time for dinner. There were no rules yet everyone knew their place. Everyone was happy because everyone was content. And that’s all they knew. 

One day, an ancient bear floundered about the woods, clutching its mouth in pain. Perhaps it was too much honey, or perhaps it ate something sharp by accident. Whatever it was, the toothache was too much for the bear. Fortunately, it saw a witch strolling through the forest, and just as he kneeled down to pick some berries, the bear pounced on him and opened its mouth wide. The witch found himself, back to the ground, eyes wide at the site of the bear’s long fangs, mere centimeters from his face. With a puff of air magic, he threw the bear off him and ran, and sprint, and flew until he got home. 

At home, his wife looked at his sweaty face and red cheeks. Before she could speak, he hugged his wife and said, “That was amazing!” And, with what little words they had to aid his explanation, he tried to explain the way his blood pulsed and his heart beat. This new feeling was so exhilarating that he wanted everyone to experience it too. 

He called this new emotion “fear.”

The next day, he got his friends together and proposed a contest to see who was clever enough to reproduce this strange feeling. Naturally, his friends were very confused. They made potions and did little tricks with their magic. Some even conjured up a bear with a toothache, but nobody was moved. 

Finally, an old witch was walking by and she saw this group of witches doing strange things, so she asked what was happening. They all tried to explain this newly discovered emotion and she nodded. “Let me tell you a story,” she said, “about the future of this young man’s curiosity.”

And her story spoke about witches who became obsessed with fear and emotions like it. They learned to use and manipulate it, until they discovered power. They began to use their magic to stand above all other beings on earth, until they no longer remembered the true purpose of magic, which was their heart and soul. They forgot who they were and the magic disappeared. Then, without magic, the witches grew desperate. 

And the story teller went on to make up words like violence, war, starvation, suffering, and she called them evils. 

When the story teller came to an end, all the other witches looked at her in horror. The witch who encountered the bear shook her hand, and congratulated her on winning his silly contest. But this story stuck with the witches for a very long time. They didn’t know how to feel about it. They flew around the earth and told their friends and families, and it passed on and on throughout the generations.

Commentary

I originally had this story written out on my phone. I thought it would be easier since I’m not a very good speaker. I tend to mumble a bit sometimes and when people ask me to repeat things, I often end up changing my thoughts entirely. In that sense, I guess the real first time was me telling my story to myself. I thought it was great!

Unfortunately, there is great difficulty in getting people to just sit down and listen to me for ten minutes or so. There is something very sad in our fast-paced society where people are reluctant to let go of their phones for ten minutes to just sit and listen. I tried this with my sister first. She was on Tumblr as I told it, so that frustrated me a lot and I ended up not saying everything I wanted to say.

Still, I asked for her commentary at the end of it and she said, “So what’s the big metaphor behind all this? I feel like there has to be some really deep shit here.” And I said there wasn’t. Just take it on the surface. Sometimes you can learn a lot when you don’t overthink it. She compared it to Genesis, but I didn’t really like that.

I attempted to try telling this story with one of my students, but I felt like there was no good time to segue a creation story into a lesson about sentences. I also attempted to share this with my parents, but I couldn’t translate it properly. They speak a rather minimal amount of English, and even though I’m relatively fluent in Cantonese, I struggled to capture their attention, especially when I found myself switching back to English more often than I wanted to. So I gave up.

Finally, I tried to tell this story to a group of friends over Facebook. I asked them to make real-time comments as much as possible to simulate a conversation as best we can. I suspect none of them stood by and waited for me to type. There were only a few comments so, despite my efforts, it really wasn’t the same. However, I must say that this telling of the story is where I included most of the fine details that made the story much more logical in its progression.