Robinson Vs. King – Assignment 3:2

5]  In her article, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel,” Blanca Chester observes that “the conversation that King sets up between oral creation story, biblical story, literary story, and historical story resembles the dialogues that Robinson sets up in his storytelling performances (47). She writes:

Robinson’s literary influence on King was, as King himself says, “inspirational.” When one reads King’s earlier novel, Medicine River, and compares it with Green Grass, Running Water, Robinson’s impact is obvious. Changes in the style of the dialogue, including the way King’s narrator seems to address readers and characters directly (using the first person), in the way traditional characters and stories from Native cultures (particularly Coyote) are adapted, and especially in the way that each of the distinct narrative strands in the novel contains and interconnects with every other, reflect Robinson’s storied impact. (46)

For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robson’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?

 

When reading the oral syntax of Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, one is immediately reminded of the similar structure and syntax in Harry Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England”.  While King emulates Robinson’s sentence structure, style of dialogue, and cyclical story line, King’s novel pushes further than Robinson’s work through the novel’s depth and King’s use of satire. 

Blanca Chester explains that “Robinson’s impact is obvious”(46), and when comparing the writing structure of each text that is definatly true.  It is clear that parts of King’s novel plays homage to Robinson’s work by tying in themes of oral story telling traditions.  Both authors use short, broken sentences to resemble the ways in which one would tell an oral story in order to grasp a listener’s attention.  Additionally, each author tends to write in a more colloquial manner.  They each use words such as “so”, “gonna” and “you know”, which are very casual and not often found in published pieces of writing. 

Secondly, both texts feature a large amount of back and fourth dialogue — in GGRW most is found in the parts about creation stories.  This dialogue is not limited to being between the characters in the novel, as it also expands to the reader/audience.  In both King’s and Robinson’s texts, the narrator asks multiple questions to the reader, and engages in a one-sided dialogue with them. Robinson writes: “Do you know what the Angel was? Do you know?” (66). Excessive dialogues, specifically those which address the reader is another tool King uses to echo the way one might be telling the story aloud. 

Furthermore, each author strays away from the classic linear storyline.  Whereas most novels, or written piece contain a beginning middle and end, (a notion which is heavily stressed when learning about stories at a young age. The BC curriculum stresses story structure in this linear and post-colonial way) both of these works follow a more cyclical story.  It is quite complicated trying to understand time, or simply reality in GGRW as the story jumps from a modern day context, to creation stories, all while the characters in each moment are interacting with one another, along with their story tellers.  This strongly challenges the notion of begging, middle, and end, as there isn’t a clear one.  

While the writing styles are quite similar, the texts tend to differ in regards to the depth and content (most likely largely due to the different lengths of the pieces). Both Robinson and King’s works challenge the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ideologies, however the satire and back stories that King writes for his characters helps to further challenge themes of christianity throughout the novel as opposed to Robinson whom simply challenges the ideologies based on presenting both the Coyote and the King of England as political powers. 

First, through reading Jane Flick’s “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water” one is able to grasp the depth of the novel due to  every character in GGRW having a very specific historic connotation  attributed to each of them.   King  references these histories throughout the novel, not only through the character’s name but also in their actions.  An example of this includes  the back story to one of the Indian Elders, Robinson Crusoe.  Crusoe’s  name refers to the “narrative of a shipwrecked mariner, based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk”. (Flick 142)  Flick further explains that King also referenced the influencer’s actions as, Crusoe had a passion for making lists, which King mocks In GGRW by questioning if Crusoe “write[s] novels?”  And the Island responding “No…He writes lists.” (King 705)  King’s reason for using historical  references throughout the novel  is to provide  the opportunity to draw further connections between his work and a previous one.  Flick explains Cursoe’s back story by explaining that “Crusoe survives through ingenuity and finds spiritual strength through adversity…aided by his Man Friday, the “savage” he rescues from cannibals, and then Christianizes.” (Flick 142)  By noting the relationship of Crusoe to the savage that he later christianizes, one is able to further compare the relations between the Crusoe as an Indian, in comparison to any implication of Christianity throughout the novel.

Continuing with this theme, While Robinson’s character of God is seemingly simple,  God commands and then proceeds to provide Coyote the power to complete said task.  God is shown as an all powerful, all knowing, entity who’s actions show little regard for the people on earth.  King’s perception of God, provides a play on words from the word dog — which is a “lesser” form of coyote, and that god is simply a backwards kind of dog (or God). (Flick 143)  This God/dog appears in Coyote’s dream before it takes the shape of the Judea – Christian god which proceeds to simply cause trouble and act as childish and irresponsible.  King writes: “So that GOD jumps into that garden and…runs around yelling” (King 157) presenting that God as childish, and running wild.  The reasoning, and ways in which King presents the Judea-Christian God as an intolerable character is more though out in King’s novel, in comparison to Robinson whom writes the ‘character’ in a cliché and simple manner.

 

Works Cited

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.