Prompt no. 3:

 

I was exposed to a variety of creation stories when I was younger. I think I absorbed the Genesis creation story through cultural osmosis, and I have vague memories of encountering several others, including the creation myth for a local Indigenous community. I was raised in an atheist household, so my creation story is probably the Big Bang (or perhaps the theory of evolution); I’m not sure if it was ever narrated to me in the form of a story, per se, with a coherent beginning, end, and narrative ethos, but I’m certain it was told to me in some way, and that hearing it impacted the way I see the world. There are similarities and differences between the Big Bang as a creation story and the one told by King in The Truth About Stories.

 

I think a major difference between these stories is the presence of characters. King’s story relies on the interaction and cooperation of characters in order to model the world. My story features an absence of characters, and relies upon the interaction and coincidental cooperation of physical properties; particles crashing into each other to create more complex molecules, and matter condensing into stars, planets, and galaxies. A similarity is that both begin through accident, rather than a grand, divine plan: one day, Charm falls from the sky; one day, there is nothing, and the next, the Big Bang happens. In the beginning, there is chaos: forces act upon the world to order it, while others undo that work–true to both stories. I have never really considered what the ethos of the Big Bang is before this assignment, or how it shapes my worldview as a story, rather than a scientific theory I believe in. Because of this, I can’t say what the primary ethos is for this story, only my nascent interpretation: I see it as a story of randomness, of how small and coincidental humans are, for better or for worse. Perhaps the Big Bang is antithetical to the ethos of King’s story: it might privilege rationality and provability, rather than imagination and uncertainty. I think it would depend how you told it.

Works Cited

Howell, Elizabeth. “What is the Big Bang Theory?” Space, www.space.com/25126-big-bang-theory.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2021.

“The Beginning of Everything — The Big Bang.” YouTube, uploaded by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, 3 Mar. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNDGgL73ihY.