This assignment had us re-tell a story about ‘how evil came into the world’ written by Leslie Silko, and retold by Thomas King in his text, The Truth About Stories. The original story has many magical elements to it and involves spiritual entities (witches). I re-told the story a couple times but I was having trouble with its characters and the lack of depth that was needed to prove the moral of the story. The first edition of the re-telling is very close to the original (I may have forgotten a couple elements but it is basically the same). In my second edition, I decided to completely warp the story and change many elements, the moral and theme of the story have stayed the same but the characters and events are different. I hope you enjoy it!
First re-telling of Leslie Silko’s “How Evil entered the World”:
The root of all evil was brought into this world not by a certain race or religion, but by the Witches of the world. It happened many years ago, so many that it is almost impossible to count. From across the lands and seas, Witches had gathered in a cave for an annual meeting. The meeting was supposed to be a contest of a sort, a contest over who could perform the most impressive yet scariest trick. Some of the witches turned themselves into bats and ravens, others brewed up potions and turned unwilling humans into frogs, even some witches cast spells to turn fire into ice and rocks into gold. Once the witches had performed they began to argue over which trick had been the scariest, but there was one witch left who had not preformed anything yet. This particular witch was no man or woman, and no one knew where the witch came from. The witch stood in the middle of the gathering and began to tell a story, her one and only trick. But this was a nasty story, a story of hate and mischief, of disease and death, a story that no one wanted to hear. But once the witch was done the other witches promptly agreed that she had won the scariest trick title. However, witches hated that they had heard such a terrible and gruesome story and begged the winning witch to take it all back. But this, my friends, was not possible. For once a story has left the lips of the storyteller, it will linger on earth for all eternity. So you must be very careful of the stories you tell.
Second Adaptation:
Before cities, before cars and planes, before religion and war, and before evil, the world was calm. The animals lived without fear of humans and the humans lived without fear of the animals, everything and everyone was harmonious. But one day, a little girl was born. She was a ferociously curious baby, always testing her boundaries, drawn to exploration by the temptations of everything in her life. The girl grew up listening to the village Elders stories of the world, everything seemed so magical and foreign to her and she believed every word. Her mother named the girl Tempt, short for Temptation, and she was constantly telling Tempt to be cautious and wary of the Elder’s stories of temptations around her.
Sometimes Tempt was rewarded for her curious nature. One afternoon, when she was old enough to explore on her own, Tempt came across a deer under a sycamore tree. The deer and Tempt began to talk and the deer told Tempt about a beautiful pond deep in the woods, “only a couple animals know of its location” said the deer, “the water sparkles like the sun, the trees at the edge of the pond dance and sing with happiness and the fish leap up 10 feet into the air”. Tempt’s imagination began to run wild and she was overcome with a need to see this dreamlike place, “oh please deer, take me to this place you speak of!” she begged. But the deer refused, saying it was a place only for the animals not humans and she walked off into the woods. What do you think happened next? Yes of course, Tempt followed the deer into the woods, making sure to stay out of slight by hiding behind trees and bushes. She walked for what seemed like days until finally she stumbled out into a clearing, the trees were dancing and singing just as the deer had described them and the pond was glittering and beckoning her to jump in. The day spent at the pond was one of Tempts happiest memories.
However one day, Tempt’s curiosity became the better of her. The sun was beginning to fall from the sky and (as usual) Tempt had completely lost track of time. She hurried along the customary path home but as the sun sank lower and lower, she began to realise that she wouldn’t make it back until after the last star had appeared in the sky. Tempt came to a fork in the road and stopped. The right path would lead her to be home well after dark, but the left path (she had been told) was a short cut. Not wanting to waste more time, Tempt chose the left path and began hurriedly walking along the narrow and rocky trail. Shortly after, Tempt realized that someone or something was following her and she called for the entity to come forth. An animal, the color of fire with beady black eyes and a long bushy tail slinked out of the trees beside her. “How do you do?” the animal said, “I am Fox”. Tempt was in awe at Fox’s exquisiteness as she had never seen such an animal before. “I am Tempt” she said “I am following this path home but I fear the darkness will catch up with me first”. The fox smiled and his pointy white teeth glistened by the light of the dying sun. “Follow me then, for I know of a way that humans do not, it will lead you home in no time” said the smiling fox.
Tempt agreed and followed the fox into the dark forest. “To pass the time, we should tell each other stories” said the fox. “I love stories” said Tempt, “my Elders have told me many!” The fox smiled again, this time in a different way than before, a more menacing smile. But Tempt did not recognize this and she began to tell the fox a story about the moon and the stars. “What a beautiful story you have told me” said the fox, “I have a story for you, although I do not know if I should even tell you because it is not a peaceful or happy story”. “I have never heard a story like that” said Tempt, she was curious and begged the fox to tell her. Finally, the fox agreed, “but you must never tell this story to anyone else” he warned.
The fox told Tempt a story filled with disease, blood, lies, murder, and death. These were all things that Tempt had never heard or seen before and she became silent with fear. The evil story wrapped itself around her and held its hands over her mouth so that she could barley breath. Suddenly, the narrow path that they had been walking on opened up into a meadow and Tempt could see her village. The fox turned around and walked away without as much as a good bye.
Tempt walked into her village. Her eyes were glazed over and her limbs shook as if she was a tree in the wind. The Elders lay her down on a mat, giving her water and food, but she did not speak or tell them what had happened in the forest.
Months passed and Tempt still did not speak, she lay on her mat and became weaker and weaker, the evil stories energy draining her of happiness and the will to live. One day, Tempt realized that she was dying and knew she must warn her village of the fox and the evil story. She called out and everyone came running to her side. “Tempt has spoken!” they rejoiced, “She has come back to us!” But Tempt shook her head sadly and was barely able to speak but she recalled her encounter with the fox and his story. Then suddenly, Tempt closed her eyes forever. The village people stood around looking at each other in disbelief. Disease, famine, hate, lies, death. What were these things? Then as quickly as evil had wrapped itself around Tempt, it began to infect each villager one by one until evil had entered every man women and child.
To this day, evil lives inside every one of us. It was carried by the fox’s story and feeds on the naivety and caution-less curiosity of human beings. We must be careful about the stories we tell and hear, once they escape our lips they can never be taken back.
Works Cited
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print
Leslie Marmon Silko Final. (2013). Youtube, May 17 2013. <http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=leslie+silko+youtube&qpvt=leslie+silko+youtube&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=8433E3456089404E97C68433E3456089404E97C6>
Hi Leana,
I really enjoyed your story! I read a number of our classmates’ stories, but yours is the only one to have given me goose pimples. What a chilling tale and so well told! I especially loved your personification of “the evil story wrapp[ing] itself around her and [holding] its hands over her mouth so that she could barely breathe.” Stories can do just this, but we don’t often talk about them in such vivid ways!
Your story read like a traditional myth or fairy tale with exaggerated characters designed to fill particular roles. I love Tempt’s name, which seems to foreshadow her sad ending right from the beginning. I also love the irony in Tempt’s attempt to save the village by telling them about the Fox’s story. These days we seem to share everything from what we eat for lunch to our thoughts on complex political issues which we only half understand. Do you think we ought to be more careful about the stories we tell? Perhaps we share too much, without realizing the effects our words have (then again, trying to shelter children from rape and murder seems quite risky to me). What are your thoughts?
Your second version of the story is certainly more interesting than the first one. King only gave us the shell of a story and I think our assignment was to fill it in. Your second story does a fabulous job of that, but the first one won’t hold the attention of someone who’s already read King’s retelling.
Thanks for sharing your fabulous second story! You’re a talented writer!
Heather
Hey Heather!
Thank you for the complements 🙂 My second story was intended to be far stretched from the original Silko one and I’m glad that you enjoyed it! Your correct in saying my story reads like a Myth/fairy-tale and I actually got some of my inspiration from fairy tales that I was told as a child. I do think that in this day and age, society is sharing far to much with each other, enabled by our advances in technology. Part of my does not want to log onto facebook or instagram and see a post by someone about what they ate for lunch….but the curious side of my does. That’s why I used Tempt as a character, a way of saying that we all have this curious side to us, some are more curious then others and that’s completely fine. We just need to make sure that the information we consume or put out into the world is not harmful or yield many negative effects .
Thanks for the response, Leana! That’s a great explanation as to why you chose Tempt as your protagonist. I suppose all (or most of) us are too easily tempted to share online. I went off Facebook for over 3 months this fall and really enjoyed the break from it, although I’ve been back for nearly a month now as I rely on it to get in touch with friends (and even for this course). Posting these blogs so publicly on the internet really makes me nervous. For some reason, I feel a lot safer posting on Facebook with its privacy settings than I do here. While I’m enjoying this class, I’m really looking forward to being able to delete my blog come May (and will my comments on others’ blogs go with it? Or will these comments linger, beyond my control?). I really wish UBC didn’t require us to publish our coursework on the WWW. The university says it cares about student privacy, but it doesn’t seem to. What are your thoughts? Should courses like this be permitted? Or should the university be more wary of them?
Hey Heather,
I agree that the online world is becoming more and more dangerous as we progress with technology. I feel uncomfortable if one of my friends uses “checking in” and says my current location on facebook, you never know who can be watching you! I think that UBC is trying to “keep up” with technology and us students who are so used to it! Blogs, online discussions, even Skype office hours offer a certain kind of quick accessibility that some in-person classes do not. However, this ties nicely into the moral of the story that we were re-telling and I too worry about the eternal existence of posts online, this is why we must be very careful with our online lives and every word or picture we use!
Hey Leana,
Thanks for the response! I suppose “checking in” is the location tag on Facebook, is it? I went to a concert with a few friends a few years ago and was pretty freaked out to get home and find that Facebook had tagged me as being there. I think one of the friends I’d gone with had posted something tagging me with the location, but it was really freaky as Facebook seemed to magically know where I was before I’d even gotten home. I’m not sure why anyone would want to post such details on Facebook!
UBC seems a bit too obsessed with “keeping up” with technology in my opinion! I’ve only recently returned to uni and find all the technology really frustrating and confusing. It’s changed so much in the past 5-10 years! I remember having to bring home 4 floppy disks to install a school programme about 15 years ago and now we’re expected to log into the internet to print a reading or do a quiz. It’s a bit ridiculous! So much class time is wasted trying to get technology to work right… I really appreciate the profs who don’t feel the need to meddle with the mess.
The amount of information floating around on the net these days is insane. I preferred it when it was safely anonymous! Unfortunately, we can’t be careful about what we post online when we’re responding to prompts for a class! It seems like UBC has taken online security out of our control.
Heather
Hi Leana!
Wow! Your story was really great, I was hooked! What an interesting version of the story. I really enjoyed that you built a story around the little girl, Tempt. I found that because of this (and possibly because I am a girl) that I could identify with the story and see how all of the events could unfold.
To answer your question on my blog, I do think that people’s histories, outlooks, and minds affect peoples interpretation of stories that are told. I also believe that it can cause conflict in certain situations. In my case, when I told the story, I found that Patrick’s “realist” beliefs came into conflict with my version of the story which included mythical creatures. His mind had a hard time believing in the version I told.
I am going to ask you a similar question: do you think that by using a little girl as your main character could cause conflict with other readers interpretation and their absorption of the story? How would a man interpret this story and would he face any conflicts with your version?
I thought it was great, I really liked that you included the fox and that the fox was the one to tell the story of evil. Why did you choose the fox as the character to tell the evil story?
Thanks so much for sharing! And thank you for your comment and question.
Laura Landsberg
Hey Laura, thanks for answering my question and giving me something to think about!
Honestly, I chose a female for the role because as a writer, I relate more to my own sex. Also, I am quite a curious person myself! I do think that the sex of the main character in a story has a certain reliability factor and that as human beings we generally try to find common ground with anything/anyone to make sense of the situation (or in this case story). However, I have read wonderful stories that were able to “suck me into their worlds”… and the main character was a man! In my own story, I don’t think that the fact Tempt was a female would prohibit a man from relating to her. Instead I tried to focus more on her personality (curiosity and temptation) rather then traits that would mostly be relatable to females (such as makeup or menstrual cramps) haha
I chose the foc because historically and in many stories, he is the cunning trickster!
🙂
Hi Leanal, yes indeed, a great story. Thank you. I am curious to know what you learned in the telling of the tale?
Hi Professor Paterson,
When I retold the story for the first time I found that I was worried about getting every detail correct and learned that it is hard to remember an exact account of a story! I decided to re-write the story using the same moral but with my own imaginings so that I could better remember it.
I felt that oral stories are no so much focused on the repetition of exact words or facts, but rather on re-creating the stories message by interpreting one’s individual feelings and emotions/thoughts so that they convey aspects of the original telling. This is why I re-created the story with my own touches, this way the story still conveys the original message but also evokes a new mixture of feelings from the audience.
He Heather – re your privacy concerns – your blog is private as long you set it up correctly. I have had many conversations with CTLT about this. Let me see if I can find the instructions for blocking the search engines from finding you. I think they might be in the instructions for setting up your blog.