Everyone is on the move in this novel, road trips abound and in order to hit the road what do we need? — a road map. At the same time, Lionel, Charlie and Alberta are each seeking direction in life. As Goldman says, “mapping is a central metaphor” (24) of this novel. Maps chart territory and provide directions, they also create borders and boundaries and they help us to find our way. There is more than one way to map, and just as this novel plays with conflicting story traditions, I think King is also playing with conflicting ways to chart territory. What do you think lies at the centre of King’s mapping metaphor? Marline Goldman, “Mapping and Dreaming; Native Resistance in Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web. April 04/2013.
As mentioned in the question above, few characters in Green Grass, Running Water seem content to be sedentary (in both a literal and metaphorical sense). Everybody seems to be on the go, yet their ways of getting there are all different.
Charlie starts off with the goal of going to see Lionel and Alberta in Blossom, only to have his means of transportation stolen. Instead, he finds himself lying around his motel room, browsing through real estate advertisements for homes all over Canada. At the end of the story, he decides on a new direction: Los Angeles, the current residence of his father, a man with whom he once shared his own fateful road trip.
Lionel, about to turn forty, is adrift in life; he doesn’t like his job and contemplates returning to school, but shows no real motivation, or even a certainty as to what he would study. He struggles with his identity- even his own aunt frequently accuses him of wanting to be white.
Alberta knows she wants a child, but also knows she doesn’t want a husband. She is trying to map her own course in life, but as it is an “unconventional” course, there isn’t necessarily a road map for her to follow.
One of the few characters who seems at peace with his place is Eli. Despite having spent decades away from his family, Eli has now returned to the cabin of his youth, with no intention of going anywhere. Eli, it seems, no longer needs a map. When Eli takes Lionel to the Sun Dance site on his birthday, he takes the lease road, a “long run of potholes and washboards, dusty and slippery in the late summer and fall”, a road that is “a pitch of hill and coulees that dipped and rose on the land” (King Part 4). Prior to this drive, it had been a very long time since Lionel took this road home, as he normally takes the road that goes to Cardston, the road that is “all asphalt and mileage signs and billboards” (Part 4). Unlike that paved road, this lease road is a “wild thing” (Part 4). Lionel, in his search for identity, had been sticking to the signed road, the road that told him where he should go, the road that that seems like the path one should take, yet he has remained lost and without direction, clueless as to where he should be going. Yet on this day, by ignoring the paved and signed road, the “mapped road”, Eli and Lionel are following their own course to the Sun Dance.
Dr. Hovaugh, on the other hand, seems almost feverish about his use of mapping. Desperate to find the four old Indians, he surrounds himself in a “sea of maps and brochures and travel guides” (Part 4), and approaches his mapping in a more traditionally Western style, plotting “occurrences and probabilities and directions and deviations on a pad of graph paper, turning the chart as he [goes], literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogic” (Part 4). Hovaugh also attempts to map the events surrounding the 4 escaped Indians, cross referencing dates and tragic events throughout history that coincide with the disappearances of the allusive women. He believes in facts.
The role of borders in the novel also alludes to conflicting ways of charting territory. To the Native characters, the political borders seem arbitrary, yet they face challenges with these borders. Lionel finds himself stuck down in the United States by inadvertently getting caught up in a protest. Alberta’s family has their dance outfits confiscated by border security. Another interesting view on borders is that of Babo, who is not of European descent, but is not Indigenous either. To Babo, a black woman, the borders seem trivial and are depicted in a manner that is almost silly- take the regal portrait of Queen Elizabeth which is described by Babo as a “large picture of a woman in a formal with a tiara” (Part 3). Dr.Hovaugh, on the other hand, approaches the border with great solemnity.
The question we are asked to consider is “what lies at the center of this mapping metaphor”? I think the answer to this question is two-pronged.
Firstly, there is the more obvious, the more literal approach; the characters in this story have different approaches to mapping because traditional approaches to Western and Indigenous mapping ARE different. As Marline Goldman points out, maps and the strategies of mapping have been central in “conceptualizing, codifying, and regulating the vision of the settler invader society” (19). (One only has to consider the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en case of “the map that roared”).
The second approach to analyzing the mapping metaphor comes back to story-telling. Like approaches to mapping, different cultures have different views on story-telling. Western stories (including creation stories) are linear. There is emphasis on dichotomies, on categorization, on labelling. There must be order, and there must be a satisfying conflict and solution. The Western approach to mapping is not much different- it aims to categorize (land vs. water) and label (Who owns this land? What do we call it?). Like their stories, Western maps are linear; the point is to get to the “end”. On the other hand, traditional Indigenous story-telling emphasizes patience and emotion- Sto:lo scholar Jo Ann Archibald writes that “we should listen with three ears: two on our head and one in our heart.” Stories may not provide “satisfying” or objective conclusions, but may instead encourage readers to seek out answers on their own (tying in to the idea of Coyote Pedagogy). The point of an Indigenous story is not necessarily to reach a conclusion, or final destination, but is instead an exploration of the territory of the story.
Mathematician Alfred Korzybski popularized the idea that the map is not the territory. His idea reminds us that maps are flawed, that they are merely a reduction of the place itself, and that in the mapping we lose important information. Additionally, reading a map is a form of interpretation, and in any interpretation, there is plenty of room for error. I’ve always loved a good road trip story. Admittedly, I’ve also always loved a good conventional map. There was always something mysterious about them. Looking at the name of cities, of lakes, of small towns… I always felt that behind each label there is a story to be told. Green Grass, Running Water explored a different kind of “road trip”. I would love to hear suggestions for other road trip stories, especially ones that explore different cultural approaches to the idea!
(Yes, it’s a bit cliche, but I couldn’t help thinking of the idea of mapping when I saw this commercial).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_h6Jojip2Q
Works Cited
Archibald, J. . “Coyote Learns to Make a torybasket: The place of First Nations stories in education”. 1997. Simon Fraser University dissertation. 06 Mar. 2019
Fee, M. & Flick, M. “Coyote Pedagogy Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”. Canadian Literature 131-139 (1999) . Web. 05 Mar. 2019.
Goldman, Marline. “Mapping and Dreaming Native Resistance in Green Grass, Running Water”. Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web. 04 Mar. 2019.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. ePub edition. Toronto: Harper Collins. 1993/2012. Kindle edition.
“The Map is Not the Territory”. Farnam Street. 31 Dec. 2018. Web. 7 Mar. 2019.
Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 88, no. 3, 1998, pp. 463-495. 05 Mar. 2019.
“Storytelling”. First Nations Pedagogy Online. 2009 .Website. 6 Mar. 2019.
Subaru. “2018 Subaru Outback | Subaru Commercial | See the World (Extended)”. Online video clip. YouTube. 28 Feb. 2018. Web. 09 Mar. 2019.
Marianne! Even though you handed in the blog post a day late, you clearly made up for it with your very in-depth analysis of the function and dysfunction of mapping within King’s work. It’s clear that nothing in King’s writing is one-dimensional, and it’s really amazing how you’ve looked so closely at the many ways King has woven in the concept of maps and spatial boundaries, and differing perspectives. Thank you for doing the work, and really producing a detailed comprehension of Maps within Green Grass Running Water! It was a great blog post to read!
Lexi
Thanks! I appreciate the feedback though I couldn’t help but feel like a barely scratched the surface. You’re absolutely right about nothing the the novel being one dimensional, which makes it a real challenge to analyze an aspect of the book in 1 blog post! It seems like every time I dug into one motif, metaphor, symbol, or allusion, there were 10 more that also begged to be analyzed!
Hi Marianne!
I love the idea of exploring “the territory of a story”. Not searching for a set conclusion that many of us are so used to.
Amazing blog post! I completely understand you feeling like you just scratched the surface, there is so much to talk about. What do you think King hopes to accomplish with this exploration within a story with no end? Is it just to compare the differences from western and indigenous literature or is there something more?
Tamara
I definitely am used to a conclusion! I assumed King was incoportating the idea of Coyote Pedagogy…. leaving us to search for the answers! It for sure had me digging deeper than I usually do when reading.
Hi Marianne,
What an eloquent and enjoyable post here – thanks so much for this! The second I saw this question as a possible blog prompt, I couldn’t help but conjure the image of Dr. Hovaugh hunched over his map like a fussy vulture, oblivious to the beautiful scenery it conveys. I think you’re entirely right to articulate the difference between more goal-oriented Western cartography, and the Indigenous treatment, which seems to skew more towards ‘the journey is the destination,’ as the expression goes.
I found myself wondering about King weaving in strands of history such as Fort Marion (which I was sure would factor in more prevalently for the novel’s climax, and was almost disappointed when it didn’t) almost as asides. In a way, we could consider his at times episodic form of storytelling, punctuating moments in the Creation narratives and ‘contemporary’ plot with pointedly political subtext as a form of ‘mapping’ unto itself – a means of weaving a tapestry of different levels of abuse and mistreatment of Indigenous and First Nations people speckled throughout the ‘fiction’ of his novel. If we can read the novel as both fictional work and as commentary on the general mistreatment of Indigenous and First Nations people, it almost serves as a ‘connect-the-dots’ document aligning past hurt to current day tribulations -a far more poignant and relevant map than borders arbitrarily ascribed (generally for Colonial land plots reassigning unceded Indigenous lands more than anything else, as history tells us…).
As a closing thought, it’s worth giving one last shout-out to your 1.21 Gigawatt title here, which truly put a smile on my face. 🙂 Thanks for a great post!
Right? Doesn’t King create such a vivid image of Havaugh’s obsessive tunnel vision? The idea of a goal-oriented map vs. a “journey is the destination” map certainly seems to sum up a major difference between Western and Indigenous perspectives. The Western attitude seems to be “How can I get to what/where I want as fast as I can?” I hadn’t really thought up King’s use of Fort Marion, but now that you mention it, I can definitely see how there can be an expectation for it to come back in a bigger way. The idea of the novel itself serving as a document/map for this part of history is a beautiful idea!
Hi Marianne, I’ve always been intrigued by the mystery of a map as well. I was generally taught throughout grade school that maps represent our world and everything in our world and it was only once I reached UBC that a prof told me and my class of 70 other fellow geography students that maps are just an interpretation of reality. Just because the map exists doesn’t mean it’s completely true or accurately represents the entirety of the reality it is trying to picture. You mentioned this in your post, and it really got me thinking. I feel like stories also act as an interpretation of reality, but I’d like to know your opinion on which format for interpretation could potentially be considered more “trustworthy” (in a sense).
For records sake, this is Cassie Lumsden, the box for my name wasn’t working when I submitted my comment.
Hi! The “Anonymous” comment certainly had me intrigued for a second haha! I think the fact that maps are only a representation of reality is what has always intrigued me about them. One of my favorite things to examine are old maps, which (incorrectly) represent how the landforms were thought to be shaped in the past… it’s so fascinating to see a representation of how the world was once viewed. And it’s so true about how stories also work as a representation of reality! As for which could be considered more trustworthy…hmmm. I guess some would argue that maps are to be trusted, as they represent a “concrete”, objective “story”. But at the same time, it is merely an interpretation. Cartographers can choose to not show small towns or certain roads… and then there is the whole issue of names! How one group of people refer to a lake or land may be completely different from how others do! Perhaps the answer is that neither can be trusted… they are all merely one perspective of the whole story. Great question!