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.
Hi Sarah,
I really enjoyed reading this blog…it clarified some things for me. Sometimes I am reading all the texts and some of it goes over my head–and the examples you gave were great. Thank you. I knew I had also read something else about Joe Hovaugh…and so I went back and found this in Erika’s notes:
“he is a more subtle allusion to Northrop Frye (not all that subtle if you know about Frye): Frye studied the bible extensively as the source of Western mythology. Frye also wrote literary theory that celebrated and honoured the form of literature as a closed self-contained universe above all else, and in this way he represents a generation of western intellectual stories about literature and all that those stories imply.”
Thanks for a helpful read. Kim
Hi Kim,
Agreed that Thomas King’s references sometimes go unnoticed. One cannot read his work passively, and that’s part of what makes his work so interesting. It seems like the more times I read GGRW, the more hidden messages I find. I’m sure that I still have plenty of other passages to have moments of epiphany with.
I’m glad that you found my blog post helpful. 🙂