Prompt:

Question 1)

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?

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Thomas King uses distinctly separate styles of telling The Bible’s “Genesis”, and the First Nation’s creation story about Charm, “The Earth Diver” because it reflects a Western audiences’ perspective. Stories of identity and stories that explain how things came to be are heavily ingrained in people’s concepts of the world. Also religion, for a large portion of the population, is intertwined with how people define themselves and their environment. For these reasons, Thomas King wanted to illustrate the dichotomy to point out how society’s norms affect our thinking, in that one creation story can be recited as fact and the other as fiction.

People are more familiar with the story of Genesis, and due to the popularity it is seen as sacred. In comparison, stories like “The Earth Diver” are told less and do not hold a similar significance, and thus aren’t commonly believed. King compares these two stories to demonstrate that these dichotomous patterns discerning stories are still common, and that many of us still commit the act of separating stories into opposing categories. It also serves to demonstrate how rooted the need to organize information into categories is. Many people don’t realize that we filter opposing stories into truth and non-truths (not lies, but also not fables). By comparing two stories of creation that wouldn’t normally be evaluated together, King allows the reader to think critically about why they would be considered more different than similar.

I imagine people would humor the tale of Charm and her twins, just as they would mock myths of gods and goddesses from Greece and Nordic countries. These same people would debate endlessly that the story of Adam and Eve is historical and actually occurred eons ago, yet both the myths and the tales of Eden cannot be proven. If these stories are so similar why are people so biased to believe one and dispose of the other? I reason that the point King is trying to allude to is that the stories we are raised hearing are the stories we recite and believe later in life. Claiming that “Genesis” is more authentic or true than any other story is ethnocentrism; it would be using cultural values that are familiar/typical to evaluate one that is foreign.

Another point of comparison for why this particular dichotomy is refuted is due to method of storytelling. Much like the differences between a potlatch and Western courts, universities, theatre, and churches, the key is that “Genesis” is written while “The Earth Diver” is spoken. The written word has traveled further due to the ease of distribution/recital, the translatability, and perfect retention of the story (although how stable The Bible’s translation over the centuries has been is debatable).

Comparing “Genesis” and “The Earth Diver” is an ironic demonstration by King of this binary thinking he urges us to avoid. We can’t fix a problem we can’t recognize, and by pointing to a core belief amongst many Western citizens King is providing recognition. He is pointing out an example of what it is that requires change.

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Works cited:

“Creation Stories.” History World. History World, n.d. Web. 13 June 2015.

Paul, Annie. “Your Brain on Fiction.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 17 Mar. 2012. Web. 13 June 2015.