3. What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?
Each story can be told differently. When comparing between the ethos of the creation story and King’s story in in The Truth About Stories, there are some major aspects I would like to address. Beginning with most creation stories, it often highlights a higher being such as God and other aspects such as animals. We often see or hear narratives discuss about certain elements such as these and how this higher being known as God created the world. A place where they distinguish night and day and land and water and so forth. When comparing both stories, King’s version shares a slightly different yet unique way of retelling the tale. Do you think people are more prone in listening to a story that is told similarly like the original format or do you rather listen to different story? It is interesting because the content can remain the same such as the elements but the way in which it is told such as tone, style, focus can really alter a story. However, I think it really depends wether or not a person is religious because the more knowledge you have about something or something you are unfamiliar with can really affect the way you perceive things. By having these two various stories, what exactly do you think King is really to convey here? I personally because that he urges us to look and examine various stories and perhaps by looking into stories that are told different we can grasp a new insight or idea. What are your thoughts?
Work Cited
King, Thomas. “Green Grass, Running Water.”
King, Thomas, “The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative.
Hi Karen,
It’s interesting how you identify the presence and the absence of the higher, or the divine being respectively in the creation story and King’s story as the major difference. Do you think that maybe Coyote serves a similar role in King’s story? As a trickster figure, Coyote may not create the world from nothingness as God does in the Christian creation story, but Coyote seems to change and shape the world; do you think this quality could be interpreted as God-like? I like how you emphasize the importance of the role of listeners in hearing and interpreting any kind of story. I think it is consistent with our reading of GGRW, and how we can understand it more fully with better recognition and understanding of allusions in the novel. King, however, notes that there is value to willing to not understand the story fully; do you think this applies to our understanding of creations stories as well? Thanks for sharing!
Best,
Clara