take the story about how evil comes into the world, the story king tells about the witches’ convention in chapter one of the truth about stories, and change it any way you want, except the ending. your story must have the same moral – it must tell us how evil came into the world and how once a story is told, it cannot be taken back. learn your story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. after you have told the story a few times, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered about story telling.
– question posed by erika paterson.
a long time ago there were two children. they were wandering together and scouring the earth in search of wondrous things. they swam through lakes so clear and blue that they shone in the sun like glass. they climbed through the deep cool trees of forests that smelled rich like wet earth and rotting wood. they wandered into cold caves that dripped damp and grew slick, towering rock spires. and they kept on looking for more wondrous things because that’s what the human heart desires above all else – to search for more. so they climbed mountains and gazed on breathtaking views, and visited dry deserts where the earth spread out in miles of dry earth and shimmering sand. and still they kept on searching.
one day one of the children noticed a bright shiny object in the ground. the children circled around it and began to dig to uncover the object. they kept digging and digging and they found that the more they dug, the more of the object was uncovered. it was so shiny and hard, it was unlike any of the other rocks they had seen before. the children began to get very excited as they realized how deep they could dig with their own hands. they began to uproot plants nearby in order to uncover more of the brilliant rock below. they began to chase animals away in order to focus undisturbed on their digging. they started working late into the night and lost concern for the other things going on in the land around them. when other children wandered across them, the digging children hid their holes and shiny rock treasure. the other children did not understand, but this was the beginning of evil in the world.
soon the digging children became old and yet they still dug away at the earth searching for more. the land around them was bare and dead and empty. one of the children, now old, lied down and died because he was too tired to dig anymore.
the other child, now also old, spoke aloud to the empty land around him. “i have dug the greatest hole in the world,” he said.
i’m not sure if he knew it, but once a story has been told, it can never be taken it back.
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this a story i formulated over a few days, mostly with my boyfriend as a listener. we both found it hard to pin “evilness” as being something human or created by humans. the idea of evil brings up ideas surrounding religious morality immediately. after much thought however, i realized i did see a great destructive evil in greed and money. my boyfriend and i both agreed on this and i began to formulate the story of how our human innocence of searching and living can very quickly and easily get caught into greed and selfishness that is harmful to others and the world. sharing the story with people around me meant that i got a lot of input and encouragement, and also inspiration. it wasn’t a story that i wrote. it was a story that i was a part of, just as much as my professor was a part of for giving me the assignment, and the writer thomas king was a part of it for sharing his version of how evil came into the world, and my boyfriend was a part of it for getting excited with me about our ideas and giving me input into his version of what goes wrong in the world.
works cited
Busby, Brian John. “Thomas King”. The Canadian Enyclopedia. April 2008. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/thomas-king. Accessed 25 Sept 2016.
King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories. New York : House of Anansi Press, 2011. Print.
Lines, Stephanie. Molech. 2014.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1.3 – Introduction to Thomas King and Story”. ENGL 4710 Canadian Literary Genres: Canadian Studies. University of British Columbia. Nov. 2013. blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-1/lesson-13/. 25. Accessed 25 Sept. 2016.
Yuxweluptun, Lawrence Paul. Fucking Creeps They’re Environmental Terrorists. 2013. Mcauley and Co. Fine Art. mfineart.ca/macaulay-co-fine-art/artists/lawrence-paul-yuxweluptun/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2016.
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