Monthly Archives: November 2016

In Thomas King’s “Green Grass Running Water,” a number of characters have names that are references to other things. Almost right at the beginning of the novel this occurs with characters such as Alberta Frank, Henry Dawes, John Collier, Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Duston, Elaine Goodale, Helen Mooney. All of those characters are introduced between the page 16 and 21.  This blog post will examine the meanings behind the names of those characters with help from some hyperlinks, and Jane Flick’s, “Reading Notes For Green Grass Running Water.” I chose these pages because of the large amounts of references in them. Eight pages with eleven character references seems sufficient for this assignment.

Alberta Frank: According to Jane Flick’s, “Reading Notes For Green Grass Running Water,” Alberta Frank is a character who embodies the fondness that Thomas King has for the Canadian province of Alberta, since he lived there from 1980-1990. She also says that it was the disaster sight of The Frank Slide. The slide is similar to Alberta Frank’s life in that she feels like she overwhelmed and that her life could come crashing down at any moment. To tie the ideas together, the idea of “crashing down at any minute” is why Frank, Alberta never thrived as a town despite having a large hotel, sanitarium, a zoo, and originally a zinc mine.

Henry Dawes: In GGRW this character is asleep during much of Alberta Frank’s lecture about how Indigenous peoples were forced onto reserves and that seems to fit his historical character perfectly. The real Henry Dawes was completely apathetic to indigenous rights and was the man who created the Dawes Act of 1887 which put Indigenous peoples into reserves. This act was not only cruel because it took indigenous people’s land, but also because the small pieces of land that got passed down to the next generation could not be farmed because the act was made at the same time that residential schools came into place, and that generation was never taught farming. With all of this is can be said that the character Henry Dawes, and the real person Henry Dawes are ignorant of the plight that Indigenous peoples have facing in during colonization, confederation, and post confederation.

John Collier: A good listener in Alberta Frank’s class, this character is the modern student version of  a real man who reversed Dawes’s assimilation policies, organized the American Indian Defense Association to fight the Bursum Bill and was responsible for Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, according to Jane Flick’s, “Reading Notes For Green Grass Running Water.” The real John Collier believed that the general allotments of Indian reservation land was a complete failure that led to the increasing loss of Indian land. That is probably why the character Collier was so focused on Alberta Frank’s lecture – one tends to focus more on topics that they believe in.

Mary Rowlandson: This character is read to be talking to Elaine Goodale during class. According to Jane Flicks, “Reading Notes For Green Grass Running Water,” Mary Rowlandson was an held captive during King Philip’s War. Eventually she authored an ‘anti-Indian narrative’, “The Sovereignty and Goodness of God Together with the Faithfulness of His Promise Displayed: Being, a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. After reading some of this narrative, it was heavily steeped in Christian meaning. Rowlandson steadily interjects meaning into her work about “The Lord” or about “The Bible.”

Hannah Duston: Was basically in John Collier’s lap during Alberta Frank’s class. This does not actually makes sense historically as the real Hannah Duston brutally killed multiple indigenous people and her actions were less political and more brutal. She scalped people, including children in revenge for the death of her baby, according to Jane Flick’s, “Reading Notes For Green Grass Running Water.” I would have placed Henry Dawes and this women together. I wonder what Thomas Kings intentions were with this character.

Elaine Goodale: This Indigenous reformer is characterized to be in a discussion with Mary Rowlandson. This character’s biography made me rather confused of the pairings of characters in this part of the story since yet again an Indigenous reformer is paired with someone who is rather anti-indigenous.  I’m wondering if there is some sort of inside joke that readers need to figure out about the placement of characters like Goodale.

Helen Mooney: This historical figure is characterized as the typical class keener, and is seemingly the only one writing down notes in class from Alberta Frank’s Lecture. The real Mooney was an Indigenous reformer and first wave feminist.  Perhaps Mooney is characterized in such a way in Green Grass running water because the real Mooney was also a teacher, like Alberta Franks character and Thomas king himself. After all those who value education tend to spend more attention at it.

As you have read, the characters above are listening to Alberta Frank lecture about how some Indigenous peoples were forced onto reservations while others were imprisoned in Fort Marion. All of characters are students while the real life people that they depict were either Indigenous reformers or anti-indigenous reformers. As stated above I’m not sure what the inside joke is about putting those kinds of characters together in a class room. Classrooms are usually diverse places, but not usually so divided – at least in my experience.

Works Cited:

“Biography – MOONEY, HELEN LETITIA (McCLUNG) – Volume XVIII (1951-1960) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography.” Home – Dictionary of Canadian Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

“Dawes Act.” N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

“Elaine Goodale Eastman.” Only a Teacher: Schoolhouse Pioneers. PBS, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

“Frank Slide – The Mountain That Walks – Mysteries of Canada.” Canada History and Mysteries. Mysteries of Canada, 2016. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999): 140-172. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

“Hannah Duston Massacre Site Statue, Penacook, New Hampshire.” RoadsideAmerica.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

“John Collier (Reformer)”. Project Gutenberg. World Heritage Encyclopedia. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

Rowlandson, Mary. “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary …”  Project Gutenberg Canada, 2009 Nov. 3. Web. 19 Nov. 2016.

Before I type this assignment let me apologize for its lateness. I’ve been ill with a chest infection and the unfortunate symptoms that go with it for the past week or so, and I’m only well enough now to begin typing again. It is a good thing that my symptoms do not show up in writing, or there would be coughs and sniffles all through my work.

When the names ‘Polly Hantos’, ‘Dr. Joseph Hovaugh’, ‘Louis, Ray and Al” are used in Thomas King’s written work, “Green Grass Running Water,” the reader must read such names out loud to understand their full meaning. King playfully changes names of biblical and historical figures to get his readers to look further into his writing and to understand his humor. Phonemes are whimsically used to recreate the names, but they are also used to deconstruct the understanding in the reader that written language is more complex than spoken language. It puts spoken language on equal grounds to written language since phonemes are effectively used in both forms of communication and in doing so lessens the boundaries between those two forms of communication.

The name Polly Hantos when read aloud sounds like Pocahontas. King adds this name into his book as part of a joke. On page 182, it is found among such other names as Sally Jo Weya, Frankie Drake, Sammy Hearne and Johnny Cabot. The names are westernized and the joke on the page is that they all work in the background of Hollywood films as extras and get typecast in the same roles again and again. This is unfortunately true of history as it is written in books (such as those that I read for high school social studies in the early 2000’s), that ‘explorers’ and ‘indians’ are typecast. We know from this course that there are however many sides of history and ‘explorers’ were also colonizers and that ‘indians’ are not the people who are mentioned in history books, but living breathing communities of people living among us who took their land and resources.

The name Dr. Joseph Hovaugh is a reference to Jehovah, which is the name of the Christian God, and to Joseph, who fathers Jesus, despite not being his legitimate father, according to The Bible. The passage where Dr. Hovaugh makes his first appearance is on page 16. He is sitting looking at something that sounds close to the garden of eden. Then a woman named Mary (‘coincidentally’ named the same as the mother of Jesus in the Bible) walks into Dr. Hovaugh’s office and  talks about the ‘Old Indians’ who disappeared from his hospital. In a later passage, on page 94 he talks with a policeman about just how old the missing Indians are, and frankly he does not know. The running joke in the passages with Dr. Hovaugh show that colonialism and Christianity go hand in hand and also that the garden of eden is not the beautiful  place that it once was (thus, colonialism and Christianity are dying and old. )

Louis, Ray, and Al show up on page 335. I knew the first part of the joke because when the names are said out loud they sound like Louis Riel, a Metis Leader who tried to start a founding Metis nation among English and French nations during Canadian confederation. That the men were fishing in Manitoba helped make the joke more understandable. The part of the joke that I did not get was brought to light for me by Margery Fee’s and Jane Flick’s, “Coyote Pedagogy Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water,” where it is pointed out that the names could be an allusion to Canadian modernist poets Louis Dudek, Ray Souster, Al Purdy.

There are plenty of other allusions that King makes throughout his book, and it seems like the more times that I read it, the more of King’s jokes I understand. This is my sixth read so far since I’ve read it in other courses throughout the last few years. I’m glad that King uses his jokes in such a way as to connect them to the language that they are read/spoken in and to make a point that orality is just as complex as the written word. Perhaps when I write my book, I’ll have to make a point like that.

Works Cited:

“Cheeky Phonemes,” Recipes for the EFL Classroom. Web. November 11/2016. https://eflrecipes.com/2015/10/24/phonemes/

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. November 11/2016.

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

“The Fate of Louis Riel” Le Canada. CBC Learning (2001). Web. November 11/2016.  http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP10CH4PA4LE.html.