3:2 Charm Vs. Eve

Question #3
What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?

I do not come from a religious background, and therefore, I do not have a creation story that I am extremely familiar with. However, I was raised by western parents and my mother’s family was Catholic, so I am familiar with the general story of Genesis.

I have never been a fan of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, as a women, I found the story to be quite offensive. Eve is the one who is ‘tempted’ by the servant. It is Eve who ‘tempts’ Adam. Although both Adam and Eve are punished, the story seems to place a far greater amount of blame on Eve than on Adam. Eve’s punishment, is, to me, the most offensive aspect of the story. She is punished by always having to experience pain in childbirth, and that is why, according to Genesis, all women must go through pain in labour. I am not trying to gloss over how painful childbirth is for all women, but I have a problem with thinking about it as a punishment for some sin that the first women committed. I think there are more positive ways to view childbirth.

Secondly, the story makes me uneasy because it condemns curiosity and disobedience. While sometimes curiosity can “kill the cat,” I object to the story because its message is that Adam and Eve should have been simple, obedient subjects to god and followed all of his rules. In my opinion, it is not necessarily a bad thing for people to question authority. If none of us did this, we could end up in a nightmarish world; such as in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Comparing The Earth Diver to Genesis

I really enjoyed King’s story of Charm in “The Earth Diver.” I am going to compare some similarities between this story and Genesis below:

• While Charm, like Eve, is curious, even nosey, the consequences of Charms curiosity are not nearly as dire as those of Eve. King does say that too much curiosity may not be a good thing, but Charm’s curiosity results in the creation of our beautiful world.

• Charm, like Eve, has a craving for a certain kind of food. Eve wants the apple, Charm wants the “red fern foot,” because she is pregnant. However, while Eve’s reaching for the apple causes the damnation of all humanity for all eternity, Charm’s digging for the red fern foot merely causes her to fall out of the other side of her world and land on Earth. Her craving essentially allows for the discovery of the our world, rather than for the appearance of all evil, as in genesis.

• King’s story does not seem to have a sexist element to it. The two twins that Charm gives birth to may, at first, seem to associate all that is good in the world to the right handed male Twin and all that is dark or complicated to the left handed female Twin. “The right handed Twin created roses. The left handed Twin put thorns on the stems” (King 20). However, King then tells us that “the right handed twin created women, the left handed twin created men” (King 20). Men, therefore, fall under the same category as darkness and thorns. However, it was the male twin that created light and roses. Essentially, King’s narrative does not attribute more good qualities to men or to women, things are balanced out. In addition, the left handed Twin does not come across as evil, she merely thinks that the world is “much more exciting” (King 19) when she messes it up a little bit.

• The main difference between the two stories, as King points out, is that in Genesis there is a “particular universe governed by a series of hierarchies—God, man, animals, plants—that celebrate law, order, and good government, while in the Native story, the universe is governed by a series of co-operations—Charm, the Twins, animals, humans—that celebrate equality and balance” (King 23).

King states that, “contained within creation stories are relationships that help to define the nature of the universe and how cultures understand the world in which they exist” ( King 10). I found it very interesting to study the Native creation story, because I enjoyed it so much more than that of Genesis. Even though I come from a western back ground, I sympathize and respect the Native ideals that “celebrate equality and balance” far more than the hierarchical and patriarchal law driven world view that pervades in Genesis. I enjoyed “The Earth Diver” so much that I am going to adopt it as my new favourite creation story.

WORKS CITED

“Adam and Eve.” Wikipedia. N.p, n.d. 5th April 2014.

GreatBritishTrailers. “Nineteen Eighty-Four Official Trailer.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 29th April 2012. Web. 4th April 2014.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough: Anansi Press. 2003. Print.