This blog post is focused around the book If this is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? by J. Edward Chamberlin. More specifically, an answer to the question of how riddles and charms work. I will attempt to explain the idea of a ‘world of words’ and discuss how words are able to “make us feel closer to the world we live in” (1) but can also create confusion and distance.
The author Chamberlin claims that stories, and the desire to tell and listen, are at the center of human existence. They are our common ground as human beings. However, obstacles such as a lack of knowledge, the refusal to pay attention, and competition between ‘official’ titles become major problems where stories are concerned (Grace,114). Stories are responsible for ‘taking us into the world of words’ . This world of words that we live in today includes written texts, news broadcasts, conversations, story telling, text messages etc. Words are in everything and are involved in most communication used daily. Words can often bring us revelation; force us to rely on our imagination, tip everything we thought we knew up-side-down, and generate emotions of fear, love, passion, excitement etc. Words can be very powerful and control our opinions and actions (as seen here). They can also offer an imaginary escape, an excuse to let your mind run free, but they can also help us feel closer to our surroundings by forcing us to make connections to our own lives.
There is an importance in learning to listen more carefully and with greater acceptance of contradictions within phrases and words. As Chamberlin says in the beginning of If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories, “by the meaningless sign linked to the meaningless sound we have built the shape and meaning of the world” (8). Using words and language we are then building shape and meaning with stories and songs, which themselves are built on the “arbitrariness of words and images” (8). In this world of words, at what point do we feel them bring us closer to the physical world that we live in and when can they make us feel as though we are ‘falling down the rabbit hole’, lost in the words themselves.
Riddles are essentially contradictions wrapped up in a bow and are common across many cultures. Riddles give us the experience of how to deal with believing and not believing what we hear/read. Reading riddles involves “recognizing that a word is not what it is, and yet it is” (160), and we are required to make sense of nonsense. This requirement forces our brains into overdrive as we analyse every word in the riddle and then attempt to connect them to our real world hoping to make sense of them. I think that words in general have this affect on us daily, whether we are reading an advertisement in a newspaper or listening to a talk show host on the radio, we interpret words and their meanings by connecting them with our own lives. For example, this was a riddle my grandma once told me: how can a pants pocket be empty and still have something in it? It can have a hole in it. At first you do not believe this is possible, but after thinking about the riddle some more I automatically imagine my own pants and their pockets, then imagin what I usually have in them and if they were completely empty. With no tangible ‘objects’ left inside them the logical and correct answer is that they ‘have’ a hole in them (although this may take some time to conclude). In this way, words can force us to connect on a more deeper level with our world around us by engaging our minds and imaginations .
Chamberlin also discusses charms, which ” collapse the distinction between imagination and reality” (175) and are everywhere (creeds, constitutions, family stories). Chamberlin spends time re-telling a “true” story his grandfather had told him when he was a little boy and then discusses the question of credit. It is a question of filters, we are taught from an early age not to believe everything we hear, but does this then make it more confusing to filter out the truths and lies? and do we honestly care about this in some situations (like our mother telling us a bed-time story)? As Chamberlin says, “it is only through the pressure of our imagination that we can resist the pressure of reality” (192). So is this a way of connecting us to our physical world, or do charms actually disconnect us from reality?
I will leave you with a beautiful poem by William Wentworth, an Australian poet who eloquently describes the beauty and power of words. Please feel free to leave a comment with your interpretation of this poem!
Works Cited
Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA.
Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.
Gardner, Andrea. (2010). “The power of Words” Web, 15 January 2015.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU>.
Grace, S. (2005). ‘If this is your land, where are your stories’? Finding common ground”. Canadian
Literature, 184, 114-116. Web.
“William Charles Wentworth-Words.” Voices Compassion Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.
<http://voiceseducation.org/content/william-charles-wentworth-words>.
Hi Leana, I’m Heather, another student from your class! As per our assignment, I’m responding to your blog.
You credit Chamberlin with the quote, “by the meaningless sign linked to the meaningless sound we have built the shape and meaning of the world” (8), but this was actually said by media theorist Marshall McLuhan (quoted by Chamberlin) and is the premise of McLuhan’s book, The Gutenberg Galaxy.
I like your mention of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland both as Wonderland is a world built upon riddles and the (il)logic of language and as I was reminded of Alice’s fall through the rabbit hole when reading about Charm’s fall in The Truth About Stories this morning.
I also like your point that words in general act in the way Chamberlain says riddles do. I often hear words used in new ways that force me to reconsider my knowledge of language!
In response to your final question, I think Chamberlain’s “charms” both connect and disconnect us from reality: it’s all in your definition of “reality”. I don’t know if you’ve done this week’s reading yet, but King says that “the truth about stories is that’s all we are” (The Truth About Stories 2). (Perhaps a better quote, from Green Grass, Running Water, is “‘there are no truths, Coyote,’ I says, ‘only stories’” [391].) Our world is built upon a foundation of stories: they tell us who we are and give us our “truths”; they connect us with those around us and disconnect us from those with different stories. To quote N. Scott Momaday:
“‘Who are you?’ someone asks.
“‘I am the story of myself,’ comes the answer” (vii).
So many of the stories we build our lives upon are false or, at best, imperfectly remembered. Chamberlin’s story about his grandfather cutting ties with home and heading west at 14 is a fine example of that, but we’ve all got our own such examples, whether we know it or not. These stories may not have happened in the way they’re told, but they become the foundation upon which our lives are built. I don’t believe it matters whether or not something actually happened: anything that is believed to be true is. As Tom Stoppard puts it, “For all anyone knows, nothing is [true]. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It’s the currency of the living. There may be nothing behind it, but that doesn’t make any difference so long as it’s honoured. ” (67). Of course, much like Chamberlin’s barber (167), believing what Stoppard says puts me in an “impossible predicament” (Chamberlin 67): in believing Stoppard’s notion of truth to be true, I prove my take on it to be false. That said, I do believe that our entire world is built upon stories and that “charms” thus connect us to reality; however, should you believe reality to be tangible and measurable, then stories would certainly disconnect us from it.
I leave you with a thought of mine from a few years ago: “What is reality? That which we can touch with our hands or that which touches our hearts?” If you believe reality to be “that which we can touch with our hands”, then charms disconnect us from it; however, if you – like me – believe reality to be “that which we can touch with our hearts”, then charms connect us to it, more than anything we could hold in our hands ever could.
Works Cited:
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000. Print.
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1993. Print.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003. Print.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962. Print.
Momaday, N. Scott. “Forward.” The Native Stories from Keepers of the Earth. Eds. Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac. Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1991. vii-viii. Print
“N. Scott Momaday.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Print.
“The Gutenberg Galaxy.” Google Books. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
“Tom Stoppard.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
Testing – that’s all 🙂
This post is from Heather Josephine Pue: https://blogs.ubc.ca/heatherjosephinepue/
Hi Leana, I’m Heather, another student from your class! As per our assignment, I’m responding to your blog.
You credit Chamberlin with the quote, “by the meaningless sign linked to the meaningless sound we have built the shape and meaning of the world” (8), but this was actually said by media theorist Marshall McLuhan (quoted by Chamberlin) and is the premise of McLuhan’s book, The Gutenberg Galaxy.
I like your mention of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland both as Wonderland is a world built upon riddles and the (il)logic of language and as I was reminded of Alice’s fall through the rabbit hole when reading about Charm’s fall in The Truth About Stories this morning.
I also like your point that words in general act in the way Chamberlain says riddles do. I often hear words used in new ways that force me to reconsider my knowledge of language!
In response to your final question, I think Chamberlain’s “charms” both connect and disconnect us from reality: it’s all in your definition of “reality”. I don’t know if you’ve done this week’s reading yet, but King says that “the truth about stories is that’s all we are” (The Truth About Stories 2). (Perhaps a better quote, from Green Grass, Running Water, is “‘there are no truths, Coyote,’ I says, ‘only stories’” [391].) Our world is built upon a foundation of stories: they tell us who we are and give us our “truths”; they connect us with those around us and disconnect us from those with different stories. To quote N. Scott Momaday:
“‘Who are you?’ someone asks.
“‘I am the story of myself,’ comes the answer” (vii).
So many of the stories we build our lives upon are false or, at best, imperfectly remembered. Chamberlin’s story about his grandfather cutting ties with home and heading west at 14 is a fine example of that, but we’ve all got our own such examples, whether we know it or not. These stories may not have happened in the way they’re told, but they become the foundation upon which our lives are built. I don’t believe it matters whether or not something actually happened: anything that is believed to be true is. As Tom Stoppard puts it, “For all anyone knows, nothing is [true]. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It’s the currency of the living. There may be nothing behind it, but that doesn’t make any difference so long as it’s honoured. ” (67). Of course, much like Chamberlin’s barber (167), believing what Stoppard says puts me in an “impossible predicament” (Chamberlin 67): in believing Stoppard’s notion of truth to be true, I prove my take on it to be false. That said, I do believe that our entire world is built upon stories and that “charms” thus connect us to reality; however, should you believe reality to be tangible and measurable, then stories would certainly disconnect us from it.
I leave you with a thought of mine from a few years ago: “What is reality? That which we can touch with our hands or that which touches our hearts?” If you believe reality to be “that which we can touch with our hands”, then charms disconnect us from it; however, if you – like me – believe reality to be “that which we can touch with our hearts”, then charms connect us to it, more than anything we could hold in our hands ever could.
Works Cited:
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000. Print.
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1993. Print.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003. Print.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962. Print.
Momaday, N. Scott. “Forward.” The Native Stories from Keepers of the Earth. Eds. Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac. Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1991. vii-viii. Print
“N. Scott Momaday.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Print.
“The Gutenberg Galaxy.” Google Books. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
“Tom Stoppard.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
Hi Leana, thank you for this answer to my question; you chose a challenge question to answer, and I will be interested to see some responses here. Thank you and just a few notes for you which I hope are helpful.
1. I messaged you earlier today to check your settings because Heather posted on your page but her comments did not appear, so she notified me. You need to get your settings so that your peer’s comments do not need to be approved – thanks.
2. Your links are failing to open – please see if you can fix that – or find a pdf file online to link – or, change the link. If you have technical questions, please do not hesitate to post on our Facebook page.
3. I am a little confused by your reference to Grace:
Grace, S. (2005). ‘If this is your land, where are your stories’? Finding common ground”. Canadian
Literature, 184, 114-116. Web.
Please use MLA Style, and use the name of the article in Canadian Lit – not the title of Chamberlain’s book. I am assuming you are citing a review of the book by Grace S?
Here is a good link to MLA style guide for you: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Thanks again 🙂
Hi Leana,
You mention right at the beginning how bombarded we are with words in our lives. When something can be so powerful and yet occur so frequently, do you think there is an aspect of danger in words? For example. Henke and co. did an experiment on the effects of subliminal words and images (faces), and, as it turns out, people who were exposed to these subliminal objects remembered them! So when we deal with such a huge volume of words every day, do you think we can be subconsciously affected or manipulated in some way?
On the riddles, I feel like sifting through what is real and true in what we hear/read is in itself a riddle! There’s a lot of misinformation that goes around (especially on social media websites) and we’re constantly trying forced to believe yet disbelieve.
While I do think that words are beautiful, should we be cautious as well? And do you think it’s a good thing that our world is so immersed in words?
Henke, Katharina. “Subliminal Perception of Words and Faces.” International Journal of Neuroscience 75.3-4 (1994): 181-7.
Words are what make up our civilization; we use them everyday to express thoughts, beliefs and culture. Chamberlin does express the importance of words, as in your blog, through riddles and charms. I really like the riddle you had in your post, it really adds to the fact that words are something that are not. (I still am trying to understand this concept!). Words are just the tools we use to express meaning or give an item a name. We even speak words everyday, so I suppose the word “word” is a term that we gave to our speech to define the articles we pronounce. In our society we are surrounded by words, but as expressed in the previous comment, can this not also be misinterpreted? We are constantly expressing words, which in turn can be taken the wrong way depending on the situation. In the use of charms, where I always think of Harry Potter, they becomes our cultural traditions which help to explain our past. Chamberlin uses riddles and charms to depict words as a means to portray thoughts, beliefs and cultural traditions which has stood the test of history.