Prompt:
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?
I thought this would be a good thing to discuss because of my main interests laying in writers and how they create the effects they desire in their work. I’ve also been writing quite a bit for this course on King’s works and my last post was discussing Robinson’s techniques, it seemed like an obvious choice.
From just a simple glance, you can notice graphological similarities in both works. Neither of them looks like a conventional novel, as it takes on the appearance similar to a script. As I’ve talked about it in my last post, Robinson places a line break at the end of each sentence, and although they look similar, King’s work doesn’t abide by such rules. In King’s work, these line breaks occur conventionally at the end of usual paragraphs, however, the reason it still looks similar is due to the amount of dialogue there is within this book. In fact, the majority of the book is a dialogue between two or more characters, usually exchanging short sentences. The effect of this is a bit similar in both stories, as it keeps the story full of voices, rather than prose.
The narrator is a character in both stories, although neither narrators take part within the story itself. Of course, in King’s novel, the narrator does interact with Dog God and Coyote, he still mostly serves as the observer of what’s happening. Both the characters will often share opinions with the readers and at times, address them directly. This creates the effect of the readers feeling like they have a more personal stake to the story, rather than just a passer-by that happened to look upon the story.
Green Grass, Running Water is especially interesting because it utilizes different styles depending on which character we are focusing on. When we are with Coyote, the narrative style consists of a lot of repetitions, and conversational language, to no surprise, like Robinson’s story about Coyote. When focusing on the tribal elders telling their origin story, the style is also different with unusually short lines, and barebones prose. Then, while telling the stories of other characters, the story feels more akin to a normal novel with a bit more prose accompanying the dialogues. These changes display different storytelling styles, exemplifying the theme of differences in stories that are all equally true. Another effect this has is to ease the readers into the perspective switches, as King tend to jump around quite abruptly.
Coyote and God are presented in both stories in a similar way. For both of them, God attempts to order around Coyote, which Coyote ends up trying to satisfy with some reluctance. They don’t have a very close relationship, and if given the choice, Coyote would like to be left alone, but their companionship is inevitably tied together. Both stories present Coyote as a lover of sleep and a trickster, while God being a forceful character who desires things to be completed as soon as possible. These characters are therefore forced to find a compromise between the two people, but rather than working together, they work to deceive the other party and neither are happy for it. These themes in both stories at the end bleed into the real world, as we see Robinson’s story ending with the narrator sharing his thoughts on the land disputes, and in King’s story the dam being forcefully built in the reserves end up coming down due to an earthquake.
I found it interesting that both of these authors chose the coyote to represent Native Americans in these stories, as there are many other choices for characters within their history. Although he is amongst the most popular characters, I don’t think this was the main reason for their choice. Coyote, the character, was often used as a moral to teach about those who are willing to deceive to get what they want. They are also shown to be quite human, creative, giving into vices, unpredictable, and possible of both good and evil. I think partly, this is why both authors decided to utilize the coyote, as it is a creator of sorts that offer itself as an interesting foil to the Judeo-Christian God who is serious, blunt, “perfect”, and overall inhumane.
Why do you think both authors chose the Coyote? Or do you have any other thoughts about these stories? Let me know!
Citations
CrashCourse. “Coyote and Raven, American Tricksters: Crash Course World Mythology #22.” Youtube, 12 Aug. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAKHGe6x8n8.
Hauser, Elyse. “Greek Mythology and the Judeo-Christian God.” Sensible Reason, 22 Nov. 2014, sensiblereason.com/greek-mythology-judeo-christian-god/.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
Hello,
I really enjoyed reading your reflections on these texts. I was really intrigued by your discussion of why the authors may have chosen Coyote out of other potential figures, and the way you connected this to distinctions in the tone and voice used particularly by King. I was struck by the contrast in the representation of God as unyielding, demanding, and inflexible when compared to Coyote’s flawed humanity and humorous tone; while Coyote is perhaps presented as a moral warning against those who act in their own self-interest, at times it is the Judeo-Christian God who comes across as the least palatable of the two; unrelatable, unsympathetic. Coyote is easier to connect to in that he is flawed like most humans are themselves.
I really enjoyed the ways you broke down the structure and word choice in your comparison. I would love to hear a few of your thoughts on the narrative effect of the writing and dialogue style for some of the other characters – why do you think King used unusually short writing to voice the elders’ origin story, for example?
Hey Charlotte,
Another thought I had while thinking about these two religious figures is how fear plays so strongly into certain religions. Christianity, in particular, is a religion ruled by fear of God, and unfortunately one of the greatest reasons for its popularity. Placing a role to the reader to believe the stories its religious texts tell, and threatening the non-believers as sinners makes it hard for people to just simply put the ideas down and move on. In that case, having such a God that is unfeeling and judgemental makes a whole lot of sense when it comes to the religious strategies utilized by Christianity. King talks about this as well, about how these types of thinking propagated the hyper-competitive judgemental atmosphere held by Western civilization. To push this unfortunate situation further, it is much easier for missionaries to poke holes into the “flaws” of other religions like the ones practiced by Indigenous tribes, dismissing them as childish and their God as lesser.
Anyways, thank you for your kind words. I think King decided to utilize a distinctively different style for the elders to show that they exist in a world of their own, of a past, and of their own storytelling style. I find it very interesting that you know which characters are going to be involved in the next scene just by looking at how the words are laid out on the page.
Hi!
Thank you for your post. I was intrigued to read about your comparisons of Coyote and God, as I had similar thoughts. Indigenous and Western notions of religion have been a reoccurring concept throughout this course, often butting heads. While reading the text, I found that Coyote had more depth in the sense that he possessed a sense of duality – the ability to sway either good or bad. Like Charlotte mentioned above, this quality is heavily humanistic, as opposed to an almighty right-doing Godhead figure. You also mentioned the heavy stylistic use of dialogue within both King and Robinson’s work. In your opinion, would the nuances of these two texts have changed if they did not include as much dialogue?
Hi Katrina, of course!
I think the best thing about King and Robinson’s works is that they feel distinctively Indigenous writing. I mean, if you think about the “normal” styles used in “normal” books, we are thinking about other books written in English, in the way that Western writers had popularized. For example, if you were to look at books written in Korean, the style and conventions are incredibly different from English books, and that’s why a translator’s job is so much more than just changing the language, it’s their job also to make the writing easily digestible towards the culture. I think it is already unfortunate that Indigenous writers have to write in English, but that’s the world we live in, and for them to turn a profit from their work and for their work to affect culture in a broader scale, you can’t expect them to be writing in one of the rarely-used Indigenous languages. I think what these writers are doing is a fantastic compromise, they are using English, while creating a culture and style distinct to their own, of not only of the Indigenous people but of the post-colonial realities faced by these people.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for this insightful post. One of the things that I found the most comical in beginning to delve into GGRW was how King’s depiction of ‘God/Dog’ – as you’ve amusingly branded the character – is depicted as almost a cartoonish, ‘comic relief’ figure in its obstinate rigidity (as Charlotte has noted here). Like King’s contrasting Indigenous and Judaeo-Christian creation stories in The Truth About Stories, I got a similar impression of God/Dog playing as a fussy, almost petulant child figure, constantly depicted as stomping around saying some variant of “ME ME ME,” especially next to the more laconic figures of the two Coyotes, and the Narrator. It certainly helps, of course, that we can’t help but laugh at the ‘God/Dog’ disjunction considering the framing device of the ‘Dead Dog Cafe,’ which is a layered in-joke, both by comparing Christian God to a consumable tourist trap and fast food substance, but also in that the ‘Dog’ in the eponymous cafe is a complete hoax.
It strikes me that it would be easy for a different author to lean on Coyote as a comedic relief figure – especially being branded a ‘trickster,’ but King seems to skew towards ‘God/Dog’ being the comedic relief, if any.
Why do you think King plays ‘God/Dog’ more as an anachronistic, almost comedic figure, as opposed to Coyote? Do you think it’s it as simple as King poking fun at the cultural dominance of Judeo-Christian spiritual narratives and empowering Indigenous alternatives? Or is there more to it than that? Thanks again for a great read!
Hey Kevin,
Thank you for the awesome comment, you got me thinking about the book in new ways. I do think you are right, that it is King poking fun at Judeo-Christian religions and empowering Indigenous stories. Much of the Christian God’s rules are to obey it no matter what and to disregard all other “false idols”, which fits in very much with Dog’s self-centred identity. Continuing to draw comparisons, they aren’t willing to wait things out and find a compromise, instead they want things done fast, and their way, which is very much similar to how Western civilizations treated the Natives. From the Indigenous perspective, I think it is only fair that they view the Dog as immature and selfish, and considering how much the colonizers disregarded and erased Indigenous stories, I think it is King’s jabs are more than justified. It is interesting to think that Western competitiveness might have even played a role in the empowerment of Indigenous narratives in the book, as it is done partially by comparison, by making Christianity look inferior in many ways. You can’t argue its effectiveness though.