The Dichotomy of Stories
- First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. 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?
“If we believe one story to be sacred, we must see the other as secular” (King 43)
David Mulder, Flickr
In his novel, The Truth about Stories King shares two first stories of how earth came to be, one, the common Christian understanding of creation: Adam and Eve; the other, a Native understanding of creation: Charm and how she, with the help of animals and her twins, creates the world out of mud. I believe King pairs up these two stories and presents them with different voices, in order to show us, the readers, how likely we are to only take one story to be true, and to emphasize how as readers, we struggle to move beyond a binary understanding of fact and fiction. Since this is the beginning of King’s novel, I believe he uses this first chapter, and these dichotomous stories, to help the reader come to the realization of their own inability to believe two stories, to set them up to be challenged in their thinking later on in the book. After sharing both stories, King provides us his own analysis of the dichotomous nature of the stories to help lead us to discover why we want to believe only one of the two stories.
Confirmation Bias
King acknowledges that he expects most of his readers will have “heard of Adam and Eve, but few, [he] imagine[s], have ever met Charm.” (King 40). This gives us the first reason for his dichotomy – to emphasize that as readers, we are much more likely to believe (or at least have an easier time) believing the story which we have heard before. The creation story of Adam and Eve is the story that fits with the dominant Western (settler) view. As readers, we’re therefore more likely to wrap our heads around this story faster, leading to us believing this story. Really, this is an excellent demonstration of confirmation bias and how it can lead to misunderstandings of the truth of stories.
The Voice of a Story
King, through his use of an authoritative voice for the Adam and Eve story and a storytelling voice for Charm’s story, illustrates how readers can make the mistake of believing a story based on how it is told, rather than its content. “In the Native story, the conversational voice tends to highlight the exuberance of the story but diminishes its authority, while the sober voice in the Christian story makes for a formal recitation but creates a sense of veracity.” (King 40). King’s choice of voice for the stories helps give legitimacy to the Christian story and fictionalize the Native story, leading to the reader believing the Christian story. In doing this, he is demonstrating our tendency to believe stories based on how they are written, rather than what they are about.
Logic and Reason
In the way the stories are told, as well as the details of the story, the Christian first story tends to follow a more logical pattern: there is an order of things – God, man, animals, and plants. This makes the story simpler and faster to understand for a Western audience as it is rooted in a European mythology and is a “rational European story”, according to Lutz (6). In Charm’s story, there are many events, and characters, who all must work together in order to create the world. Charm’s story, while perhaps more interesting to read, is more complex and complicated, and is rooted in Indigenous “myth world” (Lutz 6), leading the reader to be less likely to accept it as fact. This distinction, though, I believe King hopes, will lead us to question why we are so much more comfortable believing the logical story and whether this belief has any true merit.
The Power of Dichotomy
Perhaps the biggest reason King has presented us with these stories in this way is to illustrate the power of a dichotomy. He explains that if we believe Adam and Eve’s story, we must not believe Charm’s story because this is a dichotomy, and Western society likes dichotomy. He explains that dichotomy is “the elemental structure of Western society.” (King 43) “We trust easy oppositions. We are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigmas.” (King 44). By presenting these stories in this dichotomy, he allows the reader to trust only one of the stories.
King, in this first chapter, presents both creation stories in opposition to one another as a way of helping the non-Native reader understand both stories, while also illustrating to the reader how they are more inclined to read the Christian story as fact and the Native story as fiction. This theme of presenting stories and issues as dichotomies continues throughout the book, and he uses a dichotomy again on page 161 to help the non-Native reader better understand a Native perspective since dichotomies are so key to Western society.
The assumption that only one story can be true (secular vs. sacred) is an easy but dangerous assumption to make (it does not help build trust, a key part of reconciliation), and one which I think King tries to illustrate the danger of at the end of his first chapter:
“But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story.” (King 49).
At the end of the chapter, he emphasizes that now that you have heard Charm’s story, you cannot forget it, and while you can continue to make assumptions if you’d like, perhaps you should take a step back and consider how, now that you know more information, your assumptions may be wrong.
In Lutz’ introduction to his book First Contact, Over and Over Again, he explains that first contacts, much like first stories, are complex, and that these first contacts would be better categorized as contact zones, and that it is possible that multiple stories can be true in one contact zone. Perhaps we need to consider whether multiple first stories can be true, as, like the contact zone, the time and space over which first stories occur, is vast and complex.
Works Cited
Bricker, Dave. “Confirmation Bias: Storytelling at Your Front Door.” Story Sailing, 23 Apr. 2019. Web. 3 Feb. 2020. https://storysailing.com/confirmation-bias/
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2010. CBC Massey Lectures. Web. 3 Feb. 2020.
Lutz, John. “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1 – 15. Web. 3 Feb. 2020.
Mulder, David. “A post-truth world, full of alternative facts?” Flickr. January 2017. Web. 3 Feb. 2020. https://www.flickr.com/photos/113026679@N03/31734949153
Ward, Robyn. “Building Trust Before Truth: How Non-Indigenous Canadians Become Allies.” Indigenous Innovation. February 2019. Web. 4 Feb. 2020. https://www.animikii.com/news/building-trust-before-truth-how-non-indigenous-canadians-become-allies
Nicole Diaz
February 12, 2020 — 9:40 pm
Hey Katarina! 🙂
I found your comment on the confirmation bias quite interesting. I recently read an article that looked at gender bias in Canadian literature, and it surprised me to see just how differently literary works are treated in their reviews based on the who the author is. I like that you brought up how King is most definitely using his voice as an author to illustrate the differences in between the stories, I feel as though he is almost nursing the reader along to try and bring them to see his point of view. He also makes several assumptions, as you pointed out, which helps the reader become self aware of what they might already be thinking, which then challenges us to figure out why — and how — we came to think the way we do. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on how Kings awareness of his audience influences his style of writing, do you think that his stories would be significantly different if he were to be telling them orally instead of in a book that anyone could pick up?
I had a lot of trouble trying to hyperlink in the comment, but here is the link to the gender bias Article, it’s a good read if you have spare moment!
https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2015/11/a-question-of-bias/
Katarina Smith
February 13, 2020 — 5:39 pm
Hi Nicole,
Thanks for your comment and question. I think there’s two parts of King’s awareness of his audience I’d like to comment on:
1) His awareness that the majority of his audience will be non-Indigenous. He writes from this perspective and assumes we believe “Adam and Eve” by default. I think the chapter (and book as a whole) would read very differently if he was writing for an Indigenous audience.
2) I think he writes in a very speech-like tone, which does mean I think his tone would not be that different if he was sharing orally. However, the concepts we’ve discussed around how stories are shaped and changed when performed believe me to think that his story would be more likely to be received with the trust of it being true if he were able to speak directly to the person. It is easier, I believe, as a reader, to quickly discount something than it as a listener. I think you’re more likely to be impacted emotionally by an oral story and therefore more likely to remember it than a written story.
Thanks for the article, I look forward to reading it.
Katarina