Paradox of Dichotomies

First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine.

So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

Impact of Dichotomies

Depending on who you ask, the world was created in a hundred different ways. These first stories often decide for us the lens through which we view the world around us. What I mean to say is, if as a child you were told the world was created from the back of a turtle, then you would most likely go outside and see nature and animals in a much different, more magical, way. On the other hand, if you were told that the earth was created at the command of a higher power, in such a way that implies there was a hierarchical order to thing, maybe you would have gone outside and saw the same nature and animals and instead thought to yourself: “I am better”, or “you were created to serve me.”

Thomas King tells two stories about creation in the first chapter of The Truth about Stories.  He starts the first one by saying: “I have a favourite. It’s about a woman who fell from the sky” (King, 10.) He goes on to tell the story of Charm, who while pregnant with twins enlist the help of the sea animals to find dirt and eventually the whole world is created from the back of a turtle. To contrast, after he tell the Christian story of creation, which, unlike the story of Charm, he assumes most readers are already familiar with (King, 23.) He tells each story in a different voice, and sets them up in such a way that the reader is left with the impression that they can only believe in one. The passive way in which he tells the story of creation according to the bible shows very clearly that he does not believe in it. However, at the end of his telling of the story of Charm, he dismisses the believability of it as well saying that “we listen to them and then we forget them, for amidst the thunder of Christian monologues, they have neither purchase nor place.” (King, 21.) I believe that King did not intentionally create the dichotomy in his presentation of the stories, but rather inadvertently paired up and analyzed two seemingly opposing point of views in such a way that the reader is left to think that believing in one discredits the validity of the other. In his style of writing, or more accurately, storytelling, it becomes evident that King is using his voice as an author to emphasize the things he believes the reader is unaware of. He tries to impose on those reading it that one story is more valid than the other, but he also acknowledges that his system of beliefs will be harder for some to accept. By using the different voices, it creates the impression that he simply dismisses the story of creation by an all-powerful god. However, it is to be noted that he does not imply that Indigenous peoples do not have gods of their own, as many subscribe to the idea of a Creator.

I think that King is using this style of writing to get his point across. He wants the readers to become self-aware of where our own beliefs come from. I find it rather ironic that he calls out the biblical story for implying that everything is either good or bad, when in his own writing he presents the stories in the same way – one is right (good) and the other is wrong (bad).

A Different Point of View

Lawrence Kohlberg, a famous American psychologist, came up with a theory on the stages of moral development. To overly simplify his findings, the general premise is that until a certain age, everything we see is either black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, and so on. Everything is dichotomous. The existence of a grey area is not introduced until much later, and even then, once certain thought patterns are created it becomes incredibly different to change someone’s view.  Perhaps King presented the stories in such a way that the reader would feel as though their view – their way of seeing the world – should be challenged. The fact that we are essentially brought up to naturally recognize dichotomies and pair the things we see in to opposing categories it would be hard for any author to not use this in his writing.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

McLeod, S. A. (2013, Oct 24). Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Simply psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html

Smith, Derek G.. “Religion and Spirituality of Indigenous Peoples in Canada”.  The Canadian Encyclopedia, 06 November 2018, Historica Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/religion-of-aboriginal-people. Accessed 06 February 2020.