In order to tell us the story of a stereo salesman, Lionel Red Deer (whose past mistakes continue to live on in his present), a [college] teacher, Alberta Frank (who wants to have a child free of the hassle of wedlock—or even, apparently, the hassle of heterosex!), and a retired professor, Eli Stands Alone (who wants to stop a dam from flooding his homeland), King must go back to the beginning of creation.
Why do you think this is so?
When Eli is driving with Lionel in Green Grass Running Water, Lionel asks Eli why he came home to the reserve when doing so didn’t change his life. Eli’s answer is as follows:
Can’t just tell you that straight out. Wouldn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t be much of a story. (361)
Why can’t Eli just tell it straight out? Why wouldn’t it make any sense? Why does he have to tell a story?
When Lionel asks Eli why he came home, he is not trying to understand Eli–he is trying to understand himself. He wants to use Eli’s answer to examine an answer that he will have to eventually give, be that the answer to whether he will pursue Alberta, the answer to whether he will return to university, or the answer to some other question. Eli understands that, and that is why he can’t just say his answer by itself, but has to also communicate his own questions and circumstances. He needs to tell Lionel his entire story so that Lionel can compare that to his entire story.
Many if not all listeners and readers and viewers of stories share Lionel’s motivation. They want to experience stories that are not their stories and that can therefore be compared on an equal scale to their stories. They want to try other answers on their own questions.
What question does King answer in Green Grass Running Water? Who is asking it? I don’t know, but my hopefully educated guess is that it’s non-Native Christian Canadians who are asking the question. Their question: Who are Indians?
Their real question: Who are we?
A question this broad requires an answer that is just as broad. King addresses the question of who Indians are by giving the stories of several Natives–of Lionel, of Alberta, of Eli, of Latisha, of Charlie. Considering the novel’s length and its other stories, however, it may seem that none of these stories are complete as there are just not enough pages. I have two thoughts about this. My first thought is that they don’t have to be complete because the communication is between cultures rather than individuals, and the shape of a culture’s entire story is very different and a lot more complicated than that of an individual. My second thought is that they are complete. After all, they all have a beginning.
What is it about the beginning that makes it so important? Well, it is (or should be) common knowledge to story creators that the beginning is everything. For writers, the beginning starts and often ends at the first sentence. The story’s beginning is what introduces readers to the story and what urges them to stay. It is equivalent to the advertisement, the storefront window, the free trial. A story gains or loses its audience at the beginning, and it is only in dire circumstances that someone drops out afterwards.
Simply put, beginnings have to do a lot of things at once.
The beginning sets a contract stating that this is how it is and that this is how it’s pretty much going to be. It is thematically comparative to the entire story and is in that sense an entire story itself. That which follows the beginning always connects back to the beginning; the beginning is the schematic of everything that follows it.
The schematic of Green Grass Running Water is a creation story. The creation story, the most influential kind of story, is the story that all believers examine in search of answers to their own questions. Rather than a separate story, however, believers think of the creation story as a part of their own stories. This beginning is certainly important to them. It illuminates everything that follows.
This illumination goes both ways.
The prompt asks why, in telling the stories of several Natives, King must go back to the Native creation story. What if that question is reversed? What if King, in telling the Native creation story, must go forward to the stories of several Natives? Why would he have to do that?
King answers the question of who Indians are by giving a Native creation story; his answer is that Natives, like everyone else, are their creation story. King answers the question of what the Native creation story is by giving the stories of several Natives; his answer is that the Native creation story, like all other creation stories, is its believers.
Works Cited
Appel, Jacob M. “10 Ways to Start your Story Better.” Writer’s Digest. F+W, 2015. Web. 3 July 2015.
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. 1993. P. S. Toronto: HarperPerennial-HarperCollins, 2007. Print.
Hi Kevin, elegantly written. I think you’re right to identify the creation story as the key to self-understanding. I think that the interesting thing about creation stories is that they tend to exist outside of time, in the same way that Hades or Utopia are outside of space.
You asked, “What if King, in telling the Native creation story, must go forward to the stories of several Natives?” I thought that was a lovely observation. To me it shows the reflexive nature of the past, that we shape our memories, and our stories, as our memories and stories shape us.
Succinctly put Mattias. Dialogue between the present and the past has and always will be dialogue between the present and the present’s representation of the past. The representation can and is often changed, but that change corresponds to a change in our present mindset, a different angle and approach to how we view our world. In the end, all of this dialogue is directed towards one purpose: obtaining the answers for the future.
Creation stories do seem to possess the timeless quality that sustains their value throughout history. This timeless quality, however, also exists in other types of stories, be they stories of fiction or non-fiction. Is it the quality of sacredness that differentiates creation stories from other timeless stories?
Perhaps sacredness is not just believing the story, but believing that one is living that story. Perhaps all believers are still living their creation stories.
Hey Kevin,
I liked your discussion around trying to define and dig into the questions that are being asked/answered. Your analysis of the Non-Native Christian Canadians asking “who are Indians” meaning “who are we” is very insightful and allows readers to not only appreciate the intersectionality in King’s writing and his fluid style, but flesh out the greater lessons of place and identity that can be derived from the stories. The ongoing dialogue between the various creators (and the Lone Ranger hehe) negotiating the creation of the work illustrates how relations between nations/people work today. Identities are symbiotic and it seems almost impossible for people/groups to identify in any way other than in relation to other people/groups. The fleshing out of the creation story, and stepping past cultural binaries speaks to the interlocking of histories. I think we often speak about North America as pre and post-contact (that being European colonial contact), but the emersion of creation stories speaks to the ongoing intersectionality of identities that transcends cut and dry negotiations between distinct groups. Everyone is always influencing everyone else. Lionel has this need to tell the /whole/ story (same with Boba in her conversations with the police officers)–one, because the Indigenous perspective is rarely highlighted/heard, but also because history is ongoing and context is vital to identity.
Cheers!
Thank you for the comment Jocelyn.