When I first shared Leslie Silko’s story about the power of stories and the beginnings of evil in the world (King 9), my listener asked me a simple question: what is evil? We sometimes characterize evil as some sort of active, polarizing force in the world, but my listener disagreed. She claimed that evil does not exist in this way, just as Chamberlin reminds us how we always try to classify things into black and white, the two neat categories of “Them and Us” (49), when such dichotomies only serve to limit our understanding. Similarly, this story suggests we can clearly separate evil from not evil. It also hands the responsibility for knowledge and access to the force of evil to one person. As I began to modify the story, I realized I wanted a cooperative effort to bring evil into the story, just as the various shades of evil and not evil in today’s world are mostly defined by how others perceive them, rather than by measurement against some external rubric. And the idea of evil itself in my story here is very different than that of Silko’s witches and may not even qualify as evil at all to you.
In the process of telling this story, I went through many iterations of adding and subtracting certain details but finally had to pin some of them down for the final telling below. I have already told it again differently than shown below, though, so this recording is hardly a final version of the story I hold inside of me. I now feel much more empathy for storytellers like King who have pinned down their stories to a recorded form! It is certainly a frustrating experience to transition from a highly customizable, personal, private, even mood-dependent way of expressing oneself to a much more impersonal, finalized, and uncontrollable recorded form (uncontrollable once released, anyhow).
Here is my story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9AwxpEWhA&feature=youtu.be
Works Cited
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: Anansi, 2003. Print.
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Knopf, 2003. Print.
Hi Keely,
Wow!
After watching your video, I just had to let you know that I really felt your emotion pouring through. I don’t think I would have felt as moved if you had just chosen to post an audio clip. I could tell that you knew the story inside out and that you had formed a connection with it. And as the “author”, you gave me a medium to form a connection with it. And as a result, if I may be so bold as to suggest, you poignantly illustrated that evil is in the eye of the beholder.
I think your friend made a very valid point about the nature of evil. As human beings, we are almost prone to categorization in a very Darwinian fashion. But sometimes, it’s not that simple, as your story suggests. Evil comes with themes of innocence, responsibility, naivety, passion, creativity, wonder, creation, destruction, blame and so on. So has evil become an umbrella term to represent all these things interacting? I would love to hear what you think!
Thank you!
Zara 🙂
P.S. What made you decide to post a video over audio or text?
Hello Zara!
Thank you for your enthusiastic commentary! I enjoyed your thoughtful, detailed, and engaging storytelling as well 🙂
I think I decided to post a video because I felt it was the most personal way I could share it with the whole class. Although the blog format of this class makes it incredibly interactive, possibly in a more deep way than any other class I’ve taken, I do miss seeing people’s faces and emotions when they share their opinions and stories. So at least this way I can recreate some of the emotional and visual experience of my storytelling by sharing a video. Also, it was the easiest way to pin down one version of my story while still allowing to grow and change— I could tell it to a viewer again but change some details, and they would be still be satisfied that it was the same story. I’m not sure how flexible written words would be that way, though.
As for my ideas on evil, I really would rather avoid using it to describe certain behaviours and attitudes. Using it to classify actions into a special category connotes (to me, anyhow) a detachment from responsibility for such actions, since an external “force of evil” can take some of the blame. I would rather examine the motivations behind evil actions than categorize them as being evil. I noticed many of our classmates have evil actions or the appearance of evil being motivated by ignorance or selfishness in their stories. Have you noticed any other common themes throughout our interpretations of the story of evil?
Cheers,
Keely 😀
Hi Keely, thank you for your story – I appreciated the walk and the telling – I kept waiting for crow to fly over! I have begun to notice a theme about evil and deception as I read through the stories. I’ll blog about that, when I get finished. I am having a great week reading all the stories; fascinating. :0