3:1 A discussion of King and Robinson

Question #5

Robinson’s Influence on King

King uses a variety of narrative structures. He weaves between a style similar to Robinson, as in the scenes with Coyote. Dog/ God and the narrator and a more generic style, when discussing, Norma, Lionel and the other characters. The scenes involving Hawkeye, The Lone Ranger, Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe fall somewhere in between. They are real people, but they are also able to interact with Cayote. The narrative structure for these four characters seems to flit between realistic and unrealistic. The contrasting narrative styles; native versus more generically Caucasian, seem, to me, to reinforce the struggle between native and white people in Canada that is apparent throughout King’s story. As Professor Paterson stated in lesson 3:2, ” In many ways, Green Grass Running Water is a novel about different story-telling traditions, which in turn reflect different, and sometimes conflicting worldviews.”

The beginning of King’s novel is extremely similar to Robinson in style. In fact, given that both are discussing Coyote, I often forgot, when I first started the novel, that I was reading King and not Robinson. What I found to be the most similar at the beginning of King’s novel was his attempt to give his story the same ritualistic feel as Robinson’s by applying many of the same techniques that Robinson uses to encourage an oral understanding of the material.

For example, King, like Robinson, writes sentences that are, technically, grammatically incomplete. “So, that Coyote is dreaming and pretty soon, one of those dreams gets loose and runs around. Makes a lot of noise” (King 1). “Makes a lot of noise” requires the pronoun “it” at the beginning of the sentence in order for the sentence to be complete. Similarly, in Robinson, “And they wanted to get closer. They wanted to know what that was. Looks like a person” (Robinson 64). Again, “it” is required in order to complete the sentence “looks like a person.” The fragmented sentences make the stories less formal, and also allow for the easy movement between the past and present tenses. When the narrators, of either story, say “makes a lot of noise” or “looks like a person,” I envision the narrator saying these things from the centre of the action of the story. It is as if the narrator is now observing the scene and commenting that [it] “looks like a person.” The fact that these two fragments are not complete sentences does not matter because they are meant to be envisioned orally. We often speak in fragmented, incomplete sentences.

Once Green Grass and Running Water moves past the preface, King distinguishes himself from Robinson. I found King’s narrative voice for Lionel, Alberta Frank and the other characters to be more recognizable because it coincided with most of the literature I have been exposed to. For example, the scene between Lionel and Norma. “”Norma began pulling pieces of carpet out of her purse and placing them on her lap. She stuck the larger pieces on the dashboard. ‘I like the green, too’” (King 7). I personally found this to be a lot less confusing, perhaps because I am used to, and therefore more comfortable with, reading novels that follow this mold.

This does not mean that I do not like Robinson’s style, and the moments when King employs it. On the contrary, I found Robinson, and the sections of King’s novel that are similar to it, in varying degrees, to be a refreshing challenge. However, there were often moments that I had absolutely no idea of what was happening, and as a literature student hoping to achieve a mastery of the material, this made me uncomfortable.

Coyote and God: Some Similarities and Differences Between Robinson and King

God
In Robinson, God’s angel commands Coyote to make a deal with the King of England, and Coyote agrees. God has authority, he is not a laughable figure.
God gave Coyote the power to make the King believe there were lots of Indians with him, ready to attack England if the king did not agree to Coyote’s terms. “That’s the power that God give him to come to see the king. If there’s anything that happens like that, they can use his power because God want ‘em to, whatever Coyote says, it can be that way” (Robinson 72).

In King, God is immediately made fun of. Coyote jokes that God has everything backwards, and therefore is “Dog”. Flick points out that, God/ Dog is “a contrary, and a play on words and names. A dog (Canis familiaris) is, of course, a “lesser” form of coyote (Canislatranis)—and a god is a backward kind of dog. Or as Robin Ridington suggests, God is a contrary from a dog’s point of view” (Flick 143). In King’s story, God “turns out to be the loud-voiced God of the Old Testament” (Flick 143). The God in King is far less likeable and respectable than the God in Robinson.

Coyote
Coyote, in Robinson, is the hero of the story. In King, Coyote functions largely as a spectator to the action, rather than a partaker in it, although he does interact with the four native American elders. Coyote is not on speaking terms with any of the other characters in the novel, apart from the narrator, although Lionel does see him, a strange looking dancing dog.

For me, one result of these many differences in the representation of Coyote and God was that is that in King, I questioned, and scrutinized God/ Dog far more than I did in Robinson. In Robinson, God still seems to be an authority above Coyote, but in King, God/ Dog is below Coyote, for Coyote himself created him as a dream.

WORKS CITED

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.”Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. April 4th 2013.

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

Paterson, Erika. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2013. Web. 4th April. 2014.

Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.