Prompt 2 – Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

Before jumping right into my views about Coyote’s role in Green Grass, Running Water, I think it is important to write about other elements of the story – the medicine wheel, and the storytelling process. These elements are all connected, so I hope you’ll bear with me and I promise we will get to Coyote eventually.

Let’s start with the Medicine Wheel, as described in our class notes for this lesson:

“The Medicine Wheel is a tool for healing both individual and community problems – but it is also a tool for teaching, which is really the same thing… As the Wheel turns, it is also returning, and in this way all of these elements are continually connecting and reconnecting; the past meets the present and things begin again.”

The turning of the Wheel brings rejuvenation, allowing the seasons and the elements and seasons to continue their cycle. If the wheel stopped, then, the rejuvenation would not happen, and the world would become static and fetid. What could stop the turning of the wheel? The answer, I think, comes from telling stories.

There are a number of characters in Green Grass who express a desire to “get the story right.”  Ishmael tells Crusoe it’s “best not to make [mistakes] with stories,” (King, 14) and a frustrated Babo says “That’s not right either. I keep getting it wrong. I better start at the beginning again.” (King, 93) Most crucially, the unnamed narrator of the story is set on telling the story of the water right, instructing Coyote to “Listen up… I only want to do this once.” (King, 38) He ends up telling his story four times over the course of the novel, which ends with him preparing to tell it yet again.

None of these characters ever do seem to tell their story right, but what would happen if they did? I think part of the explanation is found in Blanca Chester’s article, describing the novel’s relationship between stories and reality:

“The stories themselves are re-created and they simultaneously re-create the world – again and again. The stories continue to theorize, and thus to create, Native reality.” (Chester, 59)

Storytelling is cyclical, and each story told gives birth to a new world, or breathes life into the old one. Like the turning of the medicine wheel, storytelling is a process of rejuvenation. I do not think this is a coincidence, rather that the two are closely linked; the telling of stories is the process by which the wheel turns. I feel like this is well-supported by the novel’s structure, which associates each of its four acts with one of the quadrants of the medicine wheel, and uses each section of the novel to tell a new version of the narrator’s creation story. At the end of the novel, the rejuvenation process is complete (“‘Look at that, Mary. It’s spring again. Everything’s green. Everything’s alive.’” [King, 425]). But it is not over – a new cycle is beginning, as the narrator starts telling Coyote a new story of the water. (King, 431)

A ceremonial drum inscribed with a Medicine Wheel design. Is that the Lone Ranger’s mask in the top-right corner?

If storytelling is what keeps the wheel turning, rejuvenating the world, it follows that an end to storytelling would stop the wheel, throwing the world into decay. The idea of “getting the story right” actually seems like a dangerous one, in that light – if the narrator got the story right, he wouldn’t have to keep beginning again, and would stop telling it. Now that we have taken this appropriately cyclical route of explanation, I think I am ready to theorize Coyote’s role in the novel: Coyote, using his trickster/transformer abilities to alter or disrupt the narrator’s story, ensures the story is never “right” so the wheel can keep spinning.

Coyote has two main tactics for keeping the stories coming. One tactic is disruption: he inserts events, such as the arrival of Moby-Jane (King, 197), and the things he say become dialogue in the story, such as in the exchange between A.A. Gabriel and Thought Woman (King, 271). Secondly, when the story ends, he asks questions and claims not to understand the story, forcing the narrator to start again:

“But what happens to First Woman?”
“Oh, boy,” I says. “You must have been sitting on those ears. No wonder this world has problems.”
“Is this a puzzle?” says Coyote. “Are there any clues?”
“We are going to have to do this again. We are going to have to get it right.”
“Okay,” says Coyote, “I can do that.” (King, 100)

While the narrator wants to finish their story and be done with it, Coyote blocks this effort and makes the story begin again. The narrator seems to think Coyote’s inattentiveness is a bad thing, citing it as the reason the world “has problems” and “is a mess.” But the pattern of their back-and-forth is anything but chaotic; it is predictable and cyclical. Their exchanges ensure the Wheel keeps turning.

I like this explanation, although it leaves a number of questions unanswered. For starters, what are Coyote’s intentions? Does he know the importance of his role, or does he just enjoy a good story? Is he as silly as he appears, or does he just act that way in order to keep the narrator talking? Flick’s description of Coyotes doesn’t provide much in the way of hints, as she notes they are “capable of being brave or cowardly, conservative or innovative, wise or stupid.” (Flick, 143) I am also still lost about the identity of the narrator, and why it is important that they keep telling the story, instead of passing it onto Coyote, as was their intention. I would love to hear thoughts on any of this!

Works Cited:

Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. July 1, 2015.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. July 1, 2015.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1993. Print.