Questions 1)
So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?
As a reader and a listener we have two choices, first we have the choice to read compliantly by believing in what the author or the speaker is telling us. Secondly, we as a reader and a listener have the right to refute what is being told to us and disagree with it’s content entirely. Luckily, we have a choice as to what we will and want to believe from a storyteller or an author. We can agree with King’s narrative story ‘The Earth Diver”, about how the world came to be through the process of narration. This version, I believe would target very open minded people who are willing to listen to a story in it’s entirely and perhaps have certain questions answered or have the willingness to accept a story that doesn’t essentially follow a hierarchical pattern. On the other hand, we can believe in King’s version of creation through the “Genesis”, which tells us how the world was created and does not leave room for question. King’s two versions of how the world came to be were created to target two different types of people, the followers, who like some sort of higher power and follow hierarchies. The second type, are those who follow based on creative stories. These types of people have a historical tie to some sort of idea of a religious regime, but also have the ability to take in “out of the ordinary ideas” and give them a chance. I may be going out on a large limb here by stating that these two stories only target two types of people, however I promise I will explain.
King is trying to show us that we can either think two ways as a human being within the world. One, we can think in the box, being told how things work and why they work because that makes the most sense to us. Or, we can get creative and step outside of the standard norms that society has created and think openly for ourselves.
The “Genesis” story follows biblical examples. King states that he “tried to maintain a sense of rhetorical distance and decorum while organizing the story for a knowledgeable gathering”(King 22). I believe he told this story to cater to religious backgrounds because like mentioned, many of world creation stories follow the Adam and Eve phenomenon and incorporate “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”(21). This story is told so that the knowledge is out there that many do believe in a hierarchy of God and his followers. The story can’t be ignored, it’s out there and many of us have heard it. I would be confident betting that more people have heard the “Genesis” story compared to “The Earth Digger” because it is standard, to the point and considered normal within many religions.
By telling readers and listeners “The Earth Digger” story, we are able to gain a different perspective in an engaging way by taking out any sense of leadership. Instead of a hierarchy, the native story deals with the issue of “balance”(24) between all, not just one man in charge of the world. This story is completely amazing. It’s creative and told in a really well thought out way. I believe that King’s message here was not to contradict how the world came to be, based on “Genesis”, but to get readers and listeners to second guess themselves and the way they want to see the world. Just because we as children, or adults, were told that the world was created one certain way does not mean that we need to adapt our way of thinking to believe the story we were once told. We are allowed to have our own opinions and make our own assumptions about the world based on the way we want to see it.
By allowing us to hear two different stories of creation, King gives us options. He doesn’t hide the version of “Genesis” but he does not promote it. He tells it to the point, short and brief and in the tone of an authoritarian. However, “The Earth Digger” is told in an engaging way. This may be because King already knows that most of the readers and listeners understand the “Genesis” story already and he wants to give the native story equal opportunity.
I was raised Christian growing up and although I do not practice as much as I once did, I am proud of what I believe in and what I was taught. However, I also have an open mind and I do not necessarily believe in one way of how the world was created, which I know contradicts my beliefs as well as King’s statement “if we believe one story to be sacred, we must see the other as secular”(25). To me, the outcomes of “The Earth Digger” story are way more powerful because of the way King told it. If is goal was to get me to see a different perspective, he accomplished his goal. The meaning behind Charm is equality and that is something that I am proud to believe in and want to retell.
Did anyone else feel the same reading the two stories from an already somewhat religious background? Did anyone one else have a hard time believing in just one of the versions?
-Jessica
Works Cited
Kelman, Herbert C. “The Processes of Opinion Change”. Public Opinion Quarterly. 1961. Web. 4 Feb 2015. http://scholar.harvard.edu/hckelman/files/ProcessesofOpinion.pdf
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.
“Stories From The Bible: The Creation”. Youtube. Web. 4 Feb 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLoO3kI_SMg
Hi Jess,
I never thought of King’s stories as being ones that aren’t meant to contradict the other. But now that you come to point it out, I can see how this could be true. Despite the fact that he speaks in a certain, authoritarian tone and voice when speaking of the Genesis story, does not mean that it is more powerful or truer than the Earth Diver story. This urges me to point to the fact that stories in general should not always be assumed to be true, just because of the way in which they are told. As a child, if my parents told me a story, I might believe it more so than I would if my sister told me the same story. This is significant to King’s dichotomies because I think he is trying to shed light to the fact that one story is not more meaningful than the other, regardless of who is telling it. Furthermore, I like to think of these dichotomies as a challenge that, like you said, urges us to create our own opinions and assumptions. I think that, depending on each of our experiences and up bringing, we may believe in one of these stories more so than the other. That is where our opinions and assumptions might surface. Despite the fact that I may see the Genesis story as more true, and you might see the Earth Diver as more true, does not have any significance. With that being said however, I agree with what you say about how these stories can provide us with the opportunity to step outside the box. Because of the way in which King tells the story, he gives us the chance to change our way of thinking. By using his voice in this way, our perspectives can open to different realms within minutes. In summation, I agree with you when you say that these stories aren’t meant to contradict one another but rather, show us different ways of looking at and thinking of stories.
In response to your question, I did not have a hard time believing in only one of the versions. In fact, like I say in my own blog in regards to this question, I believe in both. This is because the ways in which the stories themselves don’t matter to me, but instead the point of the stories do. The creation of the world is the point of each of these stories. Because nobody really knows the truth about how the world came to be, I respect and somewhat believe in each of these stories. Who am I to discern whether one is truer than the other? Instead I choose to respect and believe that these are equally plausible!
Hi Jess
Thanks for the response! I like that you found both stories believable as well. That’s something that I am still thinking about and find myself constantly comparing the two stories often to see if I believe one more than the other. I guess for myself I just find it contradictory because of the way I was raised and my constant attendance of religion classes growing up. I guess I am trying to look at the stories with my perspective as well as an outside perspective!
Thanks for the insight!
Jessica
Hi Jessica,
I think because I am a Christian, it really does contradict my belief to consider the Earth Diver story as true because I would take the story from the Bible as true. However, I don’t think I value the Earth Diver story less than the one from Genesis. Through King’s writing and all the things we have been learning from this course, I find myself seeing both stories as explaining the same thing (like what Jess said). The story from the Bible has truth for me, but I can also understand how the Earth Diver story has truth for someone else. It is quite difficult for me to express my thoughts into words… I guess my point is that it’s much more engaging and interesting to consider all these stories as believable than to quickly judge one to be more true than the other. Thanks for your post!
Jasmine
Hi Jasmine,
Thanks for your response. I guess since I am taking another perspective, I do not see the Earth Digger story as contradictory. If I was reading it with the perspective that I had been taught, in the religious setting, then yes I definitely could see your point. I know the feeling of not being able to express your thoughts into words. I had a lot of thoughts about this but I wasn’t able to put them into my own words. I agree with you that it is much more engaging to consider all stories as possible truths and like Jess said, who are we to tell someone their story is not as true as ours.
When religion comes into play, everyone will have different opinions. I am glad you were able to read my thoughts and just thoughts and not any form of discredit to any religious story.
Jessica
Hi Jessica, it was a pleasure reading your blog and your take on the week’s readings!
In particular, I wanted to comment on your blog in regards to your comment on my own blog about the worldwide web and how this affects ownership. I think your blog itself speaks volumes to this issue.
The way you emphasize how we as readers and listeners have an active participation in the action of ‘choice’ in what we believe, refute or agree, is exactly where I think the worldwide web is most powerful. With such an expansive World and network of knowledge out there in the platform of the internet, it allows anyone to make this choice more easily. Especially coming from a Chinese ethnic background, my grandparents would comment on their literature in education as being a ‘be all end all’ kind of literature: believe it, or there really isn’t anything else out there to believe. Now, with the internet, not only can we choose from an endless source of stories, and evidently knowledge, but we can also decide for ourselves what we want to decline as belief. This can be as powerful positively as well as negatively? More so than ever, I will go so much as to say we have the ability and right to believe anything we want. Dangerous territory?
In terms of your comment about my blog in relation to ownership, I believe this is becoming an ongoing issue, or even problem, with the worldwide web. How can we come to ‘own’ something now, in our open network of sharing by way of the internet? All logistics of the law and copyright aside, I think with the internet, we are given the luxury of thinking and acting in the two ways you define as King’s intentions in his stories: thinking inside and outside of the box. Ever get the sense when you think of something brilliant, and idea, a story, you google it, and it’s been thought of already? This is when I think ownership becomes a muddled grey area asking for trouble in terms of the internet. How do we ‘own’ ideas, and what’s to say ‘your’ story isn’t ‘mine’ either? I guess that was the point I was trying to get across in my own blog, but your observation of thinking in and out of the box got me thinking: How do we even come to define what is ‘inside’ the box and ‘outside’ of it, now that the worldwide web shares the infinite knowledge that it has? In what way has the worldwide web turned ‘yours and mine’ into essentially a World of arguably… ‘ours’?
Thanks for your awesome comment in my blog, and here’s hoping my comment on yours did some justice to your own blog and ideas!
Cheers,
– Jeffrey
Hey Jeff,
I completely agree with you about the WWW being dangerous territory! I think because of our lack of ownership, it is indeed a problem like you had mentioned. Today we can post anything, read anything, and get access to almost anything without paying or asking for the authors permission. Even new movies that are out in the theatres can be viewed from our home computers without the need to pay for them or search to hard to find them.
I believe the WWW is also a dangerous fear within certain minds. For example, when I read the syllabus for this class and found out it was all blog posts online, I was terrified. It was something that was unfamiliar to me and I was frightened because I had never used the internet for that purpose before. It probably doesn’t help that I suffer from severe anxiety as well, however it made me really nervous. I guess what I am trying to zone in on here is that the unfamiliar is dangerous to us. We self invoke fear and panic if we are unaware of how something works. Now a days our generation, older and younger ones, may know how to use the WWW. But what about the generations that don’t? Are they falling behind and losing some sense of knowledge or are they avoiding the many problems that come with using the WWW?
Just a thought!
Thanks for your post!
Jessica
Hi Jessica,
Great post! You made a comment in your post that I found especially interesting, You said, “just because we as children, or adults, were told that the world was created one certain way does not mean that we need to adapt our way of thinking to believe the story we were once told.” I found this incredibly interesting because as you mentioned both children and adults hear these stories, however I would like to propose that the majority of people who believe strongly one way or another were told their version of the story as a child. Although I have known the Adam and Eve story since I was a child my parents also shared other creation stories as well, my favourites were the greek myths. The Adam and Eve story always seemed boring compared to the heroic acts of Zeus and Prometheus.
Therefore to answer you final question, no, I did not have trouble believing one story over the other, I simply enjoyed one more.
-Jennifer Heinz
Hey Jennifer!
I liked the way you put that! “I simply enjoyed one more”. That was perfectly said! I think the variety as a child is important. I feel like from the start we need to be informed. I wish that was more apparent when I was younger and more enforced. However, with all the progress life has made up until now, I think we are definitely on the right track to being informed of all out options at a young age. Thanks for the post!
Jessica R