Assignment 2:6 | Oral Syntax in Storytelling
In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story.Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to the story.
Retrieved from https://www.echostories.com/the-power-of-storytelling/power-of-storytelling/
As university students, we are used to consuming and producing content made for fellow academics. In such writing, there is a certain diction and decorum that must be followed. If you ask virtually anyone, this type of writing is not one that is colloquially shared over the dinner table. When I read Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England,” it was clear that we had diverted from the rules that follow the conventional academic format. While I was reading the story in my head, I noticed that there were several key indicators that the story was meant to be read aloud, and so I read it aloud and realized that the dynamic of the story changed dramatically. When reading it in my head, I was still able to visually imagine the story, but it wasn’t until I read it aloud that it was clear about what Robinson intended to do with the story.
Words like “gotta” are found in the story, and Robinson even omits some words – “they do some, just a little, and he leave it alone” (85). The tone is overall very colloquial, and follows an almost dialect-esque way of speaking. The narrator even brings the reader(s) into the story by ways of addressing them directly, prompting questions such as “But when they can’t see him, what they gonna do?” (66). I had my sister read the story aloud to me as well, and when she did, I was reminded of my childhood. When I was young, my 3rd grade teacher had made the class take turns being the “reader of the week,” and during our week, we had to bring in a short story/book and read it aloud to the class. Listening to my sister read Robinson’s story made me envision a bunch of people gathered around the storyteller, desperately following the story and trying to figure out the protagonist’s next moves. I found it interesting how after all these years, I had managed to find myself back in a classroom setting that encouraged storytelling. This prompted me to do some Googling as to why this particular way of storytelling was effective, and found this – it’s worth the read.
In a way, all stories are mysteries in the sense that we are always trying to decode the story and see what comes next. Robinson’s story definitely encourages this idea, asking questions like, “Do you know what the angel was?” (66). Such questions lead me as a reader to, in turn, ask myself questions – do I know what the angel is? When such questions are read aloud from one person to another, or a larger audience, it turns the mystery into a conversation and social activity. I found this article by Wired about why we feel inclined to tell stories in the first place, which put a lot of things into perspective.
The lines “do you know what the angel was? Do you know? The Angel, God’s angel, you know” (66) also pushes forth Robinson’s colloquial storytelling agenda, using “you know” to play with the audience, and also imbue the story with a sense of orality. Even though the story is written on paper, there is a high sense of oral storytelling within it. I’ve read some stories that omit dialogue altogether, as part of the story’s artistic direction. However, Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” strategically uses dialogue to make the reader a part of the story, which is best visualized when read aloud.
Works Cited:
Day, Elizabeth. “Storytelling: How Reading Aloud Is Back in Fashion.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Jan. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/06/storytelling-back-in-fashion.
Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.
Rose, Frank. “The Art of Immersion: Why Do We Tell Stories?” Wired, Conde Nast, 3 June 2017, www.wired.com/2011/03/why-do-we-tell-stories/.
Hi Katrina,
Thank you for this interesting and thoughtful post. I really enjoyed reading the subtleties and detail you picked up on within the piece and found the discussion of the actual structure and form really interesting, particularly through the use of rhetorical questions and answers. I was struck by the way the author seems to alternate between asking the reader/listener to contemplate their own thoughts on the work as it continues (“do you know what the angel was?”) before answering his own question, and also seemingly instructing the reader/listener on how they should be answering (“You know”). This oscillation between asking the audience to reflect and telling them what the answer is seemed really intentional, and I would love to hear your thoughts on how this technique interplays with the purpose of the article and the cue to oral storytelling it engages with.
I thought your point about how colloquial dialogue is often separate from academic dialogue was really thought-provoking. Do you think we are moving away from this distinction? Is this distinction designed to be exclusionary to certain groups? As a side note, an another course I’m currently reading works by Thomas Hardy and DH Lawrence, who both use switches between very descriptive, elevated tones and allusions to classical works and mythology with very blunt, dialectal dialogue to indicate class differences and tonal shifts, so your discussion has really made me consider these works in a new light.