Wow, all that catching up went so well! So timely and efficient! I was truly on a roll, it was such a sight to behold. My grandchildren will hear about how productive I was.

Lies. So many lies.

Today, we’re going to talk about the Four Old Indians. Everything about Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water is still fresh in my mind, which may not be how we were meant to examine it, but when you fail at doing work as much as I do there’s not much time for rereads and sober reflection. To start, though, my initial reaction to the characters was… uhm… well, I feel like I just decided to roll with what the novel decided to reveal about them. I was thinking, upon first encountering the Four Old Indians, like someone well versed in the structure of a novel and character (or trying to) and asking questions like, why are these men (and I did make the assumption that they were male right off the bat) trapped in a hospital? What is their story? Though I did like how pleasant they seemed, how they seemed to be rolling through life enjoying it as much as possible. “We’re going to fix the world,” they say, cheerily and matter-of-factly. Whatever the symbolism in giving Lionel, who wanted to be John Wayne as a child, a cowboy-esque jacket for his birthday, they did it so good-naturedly it was almost cute.

Now that I’ve finished the book, I have the feeling that these particular characters spent the better part of the narrative actively telling their story, as strange as the stories coming from them might seem if you don’t just accept that they might not follow the laws of human logic as characters. It’s fiction, they’re allowed to be a little strange. In any case, the first thing these characters are shown to do is calmly struggle to find a way to begin the novel, allowing for four attempts if necessary. I may be wrong, but I interpreted the “I” in the narration interacting with Coyote to change depending on the section of the novel; each of the Four Indians have a chance to tell stories, and I assumed the “I” changed depending on who was telling the story in a given section. I may have lost track of a major player here, but that was my understanding. And it helps me in seeing the characters as, above all, connected to stories. From the storytelling circle they form with Coyote, to their infiltrating of Western films and rearranging their narratives, the Four Old Indians create and belong to stories. Dr. Hovaugh speculates on the Indians’ involvement in history, the way their disappearances coincide with major historical disasters; this coupled with the way they proudly boast that they’re out to fix the world marks them as agents not only in the context of the stories they tell, but in history as it exists in the novel itself.

As for their identities, I feel it is all but outright stated in bright, bold letters that the Four Indians are, if not goddesses as Chester says, some sort of supernatural, higher beings taking corporal form. I would actually put my money on them being First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman and Old Woman; each of their stories have an autobiographical tinge, and each of the woman take on the names used by the Four Old Indians which suggests a link. Their age is often put into question, with Dr. Hovaugh stating that they were already old when they arrived (King 96). There is also the question of their gender; their files suggest that they are men, and somehow, as I mentioned before, I immediately assumed they were men, yet Babo says they were women (53). In other parts of the novel, their sex is not defined, so it’s not impossible to believe her. If, however, I go with the theory that they are the goddesses in their respective stories, women who took on white, male names their occupying this kind of ambiguous gender space is fitting. They are tough to pin down, as much as people like Dr. Hovaugh agonize over trying. They are imprisoned, but apparently come and go as they choose. They’re not so much people as a force of nature, being associated with large earthquakes, and likely having a hand in the destruction of the dam and the flood associated with it at the end of the novel.

In short, my understanding of the Four Old Indians’ place in the novel is… they more or less direct the course, as well as provide a mystery in regards to their identity.

Works Cited

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