The New North

GGRW start “Dr. Joseph Hovaugh sat at his desk … [12] End: “What happened to the Trees …. Yes, said Robinson Crusoe ….” [18]

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My assigned section interwove between multiple storylines, as much of the story does, and posed some interesting dichotomies between characters. I’ve gone through and analyzed the main and most important ones in order to draw connections that can lead to better understanding.

Dr. Joseph Hovaugh – As Flick notes, the name is a play on Jehovah. The parallel is between King’s character and God in the Bible. In the opening scene of my pages, he “seemed to shrink behind the desk as though it were growing, slowly and imperceptibly enveloping the man” (King 11). Before this the text reveals a parallelism between the two in Genesis 1:31 — “And God saw everything he had made and, behold, it was very good” — and page 10 — Dr. Hovaugh sat in his chair… and he was pleased.” The desk behind which he sits is taken from the physically created world, and, like God, the thing he made is the thing that eventually grows to both envelop him and push him away.

 

Alberta Frank – One of the many names with inference, the “frankness” of her character is represented in the character herself as well as the province her name mimics. This trait is shown in Alberta’s response to Mary’s question of what will happen if they don’t spell the names right on the test: “You probably won’t get exactly all the points.”

Lone Ranger – A fictional character from American history, the Lone Ranger was a cowboy who fought American outlaws. Political Blindspot claimed the fictional character to be based off a man named Bass Reeves, who lived a pretty crazy post-Civil War life. Many details of the Bass Reeves’ life are similar to that of the Lone Ranger: “a lawman hunting bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark.”

Hawkeye – A longstanding historic Native character and name, Hawkeye’s Canadian literary history goes back as far as 1826. In James Feminore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans, he is a “is a fearless warrior who carries a long rifle and wanders across the frontier.”

Robinson Crusoe – Based off the real-life shipwrecked mariner Alexander Selkirk, King’s Crusoe symbolizes the sense of survival within the story. “It is a beautiful sky, however,” reveals Crusoe’s ability to make the best of a situation, a survival-based necessity (13).

Ishmael – Ishmael is a character with biblical and literary implications. The name therefore brings implications from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the story of Genesis in the Bible, and other creative adaptations.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013.

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

In order to tell us the story of a stereo salesman, Lionel Red Deer (whose past mistakes continue to live on in his present), a high school teacher, Alberta Frank (who wants to have a child free of the hassle of wedlock—or even, apparently, the hassle of heterosex!), and a retired professor, Eli Stands Alone (who wants to stop a dam from flooding his homeland), King must go back to the beginning of creation.

Why do you think this is so?

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King creates a cyclical theme the same way the theme itself was created. It is a creation paradox that has no end and no beginning and that plays with the structure of time from the beginning of the book to the end.

“But when that Coyote Dream thinks about being a dog, it gets everything mixed up. It gets everything backward.”

Both the structure of time and thought are put into question through Coyote’s introduction and opening story. As Ishmael notes, the Lone Ranger’s creation story from the book of Genesis in the Bible is “the wrong story… That story comes later.” To reveal what most readers would know as the “first story” as something different brings its truth to the forefront. In reality, even though the story of Genesis is about the beginning it stands to reason that the story itself was written after the event of creation occurred.

The purpose of this is to loosen the ties that the Bible’s creation story has and to provide dialogues the space they need to insert their comedic but thoughtful commentary. The entitlement of GOD juxtaposed against Alberta’s carelessness demands the evocation of different ideals from different readers. A Christian reader, for example, may find the scene disrespectful since it is her creation story that is being exploited and questioned. However — and this is where perspective and understanding’s territory reign — since Alberta’s creation story is different, it has no beginning or end, her attitude towards GOD, who she does not think acts like a god, mirrors the disrespect GOD shows her.

The reason King goes back to the beginning of creation is to allow space in the stories of Alberta, Lionel and Eli. Space, I think, is the defining word in regards to the question of why King does this. An interesting intersection between this model of space and a scientific one is Steinhardt’s “Cyclic Theory of the Universe” which states:

The cyclic model proposes that the big bang is a collision between branes that occurs at regular intervals; that each bang creates hot matter and radiation and triggers an epoch of expansion, cooling and structure formation; that there is an interbrane force responsible for drawing the branes together whose potential energy acts like dark energy when the branes are far apart; and that each cycle ends with the contraction of the extra dimension and a collision between branes – a new big bang – that initiates the next cycle.

Reading this introduction is much like Coyote’s conversation with “I” at the end of Green Grass, Running Water. It is the paradox that in the beginning there was both nothing and water, both an epoch of expansion and collision. Rather than an agreement on one answer for Coyote’s question of “where did all the water come from?” I think King proposes that it’s the “interbrane force responsible for drawing the branes together” that matters. The cyclic idea of creation is not so much about creation itself as the periods in between and it is only once we realize that there truly is no beginning or end that we can begin to appreciate the everything in between.

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

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No matter where Ryan went there was always a sense of disruption, discomfort, and an inability to feel completely at ease. For 17 years Ryan had felt this way and, for him, it had become a part of life. While everyone else seemed to enjoy the places they went — his friends were always on social media posting about how much fun they had last weekend or how amazing their friends are — Ryan never felt that sense of connectedness to anything. Sure, he loved his family, his dog, his girlfriend. He had hobbies but he wouldn’t define them the same way as others seemed to define the things they were close to.

To put it simply, there was something missing and he had never been able to find out what it was.

Ryan sat on the grass under a sycamore tree, contemplating this feeling for the thousandth time. The rays of sunlight poked through the branches and leaves and warmed his skin in the cool Spring air. He sighed deeply. He stared at the sky and it stared back. The lack of clouds seemed to both mimic and mock his lack of answers.

“Come on, Ry,” his girlfriend Karen shouted from down the hill atop which he rested. She sat on a 10-speed cruiser, giggling, at the bottom of the hill.

“Can you come here for a sec?” Ryan had spent long enough bouncing these ideas around in his head. It was time to get them out in the open where he could see them.

Karen dropped her bike on its side and jogged up the hill. A little out of breath, she got to the top, smiled, tucked her hair behind her right ear, and sat down beside him.

“Do you ever feel like something’s missing?” Ryan asked.

Immediately, Karen’s eyes shifted to the grass.

Ryan saw the mistake in his phrasing. “Not between us. I love you, you know that. But I mean in life. Like there’s supposed to be this something that everyone feels but it only ever feels like everyone but you feels it.”

Karen recovered from the initial shock of the question and, as she realized Ryan wasn’t breaking up with her, she warmed up to it.

“I think I know what you mean,” she nodded. She blew a piece of floating cotton away from her face then realized the cotton was a good analogy. “It’s like trying to catch a piece of cotton. You can see it but it never quite looks perfectly crisp. And then when you reach out your hand to try to grab it you only ever push it farther away.”

“It’s like every time I try to understand what it is — what’s missing — I just find myself more and more unsure,” he said.

“Okay, well my dad always says that in order to solve a problem you first need to know what it is you’re solving.”

Ryan thought about this and decided it was true. “Okay,” he said. “So how do we do that?”

“First we have to define it,” Karen stated matter-of-factly, adjusting her posture and facing him, ready for the task at hand. “You feel like something is missing, so let’s try to figure out what it is.”

“K,” said Ryan.

“Alright, is it happiness?” Karen started.

“Not really.”

“Love?”

“Nope. Got plenty of that,” he nudged her and laughed.

“Oh I know, money,” she said.

“Well my parents are pretty well off but I guess that doesn’t necessarily make me rich. But I also still don’t think that’s it,” he laughed.

“Okay, speed round. I’m going to say the things that I enjoy in my life and you stop me if any one of them sounds right. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Okay, here goes. Purpose. Hope. Sex. Cars. Monkeys. Adventure. Friends. PS4. Family. Healt—” Ryan cut her off.

“Wait. Family, kind of. That’s close but not really it.”

“Home?” Karen suggested.

“Home,” Ryan nodded his head slowly and looked out at the field below.

He could see his whole town from the hill. The river he grew up on, the forests he ran through, all the places that should feel like home to him.

“But you have a home, Ry. You’ve got a really nice one with a great family,” Karen said.

“Yeah but the thing is, that definition of home just doesn’t seem to fit what I think home should mean.”

“So what should it mean?”

“I was sitting at a bus stop one time next to this old guy — like pretty old, in his 80’s or something — and out of nowhere he just looks at me and says, ‘Would you like to know the answer to all life’s questions?’ I looked around a little to make sure he was talking to me. He was. Seemed like a pretty good offer so I said okay and waited. He seemed to think for a few seconds and then he spoke.

‘Patience,’ he said.

I waited for him to go on but that was it. One word. Patience. We sat there in silence as the bus pulled up. I stood and waited for him to stand too but he just sat there. I asked him if he was getting on the bus, since this was the only bus for this stop. He told me he wasn’t. He told me he was waiting.”

The sun was setting now and Karen nestled in closer as the temperature began to drop.

“It’s a good story but it’s not really an answer,” she said. “Actually, it’s more of a non-answer. You’re saying that in order to find out what home means to you, you have to have patience?”

He laughed. “Maybe.”

The sun took its last look at them as it sunk beneath the mountains. They watched and thought about what it all meant.

Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, from King’s text, and change it to tell it. First, learn the story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. When you are finished, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered. If you want, you can post a video of you telling the story, in place of text.

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I decided to retell my version and try to keep it as close to the original as possible, as a type of “telephone game” experiment. My hopes were to see the subtle changes I made to the story through misremembering and put oral tradition into practice. Here is the version I told to my girlfriend Shannon and my friend Jack:

So did you know that there wasn’t always evil in the world? It came here one day. It was a long time ago when the world didn’t really look like it does now. You probably heard that man brought evil into the world, or God, or something like that. But it was actually witches.

A big group of them gathered, from all over the world, and held a competition. The competition was to see who could tell the scariest story or make the scariest potion. There were some good ones that everyone was entertained by and they were all having a good time. Finally, after almost everyone had had a turn, a witch that no one recognized came forward from the shadows. She told a story that made everyone fall silent and listen with awe and intent. It was the most terrifying thing they had ever heard. She spoke of murder and vengeance and said words they had never heard but instantly knew.

When she was done, there was no applause or cheering but only silence. Solemnly, the other witches agreed that she had won the prize. They told her that she had done a good job, too good some said. But they said that they didn’t want the story anymore. They asked her to take it back but she couldn’t. Now that the story had been told there was no way it could be untold. And that is how evil entered the world.

 

Shannon:

You want my reaction? Well how did that witch find out about evil? Was it Satan? Was she a demon witch? Kind of like a metaphor for the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once you lose innocence you can’t get it back. It’s gonezo. Really, to call something evil is trivial. We just attach moral sentiment to it.

Jack:

Man, fuck that witch. Why didn’t anybody stop her? At least if someone stopped her halfway through there would only be half the amount of evil in the world. Like, maybe we’d still have murder but rape wouldn’t be a thing. Or maybe we’d still have betrayal but no one would ever step on a Lego. I’d be okay with that trade-off.

In review, this exercise revealed a lot more than I thought. Going back and reading the story again, I see that there is a lot of missed and some things that I even changed. Hearing Shannon’s reaction’s showed an initially Christian-centric viewpoint and understanding of the story but evolved into something more human. Jack was hilarious and hit on some interesting points that certainly provoke thought.

At the heart of the intersection between story and literature we will easily find the meeting of native and newcomer, and as Chamberlin says, “I keep returning to the experience of aboriginal peoples because it seems to me to provide a lesson for us all. And for all its [Canada] much-vaunted reputation as an international mediator and peacemaker, it is in this story of natives and newcomers that Canada really has something to offer the world” (228).  And, then he goes on to propose: “Why not change underlying title back to aboriginal title?” (229). Explain how Chamberlin justifies this proposal.

Chamberlin’s stories are seemingly endless. The creativity with which he approaches ideas previously unquestioned results in perspectives and understandings otherwise left misunderstood or worse, not contemplated or considered at all. The importance is on not only the stories he writes and their validity, but all stories. The truth of the stories, as he asserts multiple times throughout the novel, is two-fold. It is both real and not real. The stories happened and they didn’t. This understanding is what allows Chamberlin to provoke the argument of changing “underlying title back to aboriginal title.” It is this shift in perspective on which the argument stands.

Canadian understanding of claim and title is based largely upon definitive legislation that leaves no room for the interpretation of stories. Sure, it’s a good thing to be definitive in terms of “equal treatment before and under the law, and equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination” but the legality leaves out a component of understanding and rather proposes one of entitlement (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

Chamberlin makes his case simple, he wishes “to give the reader a sense of how important it is to come together in a new understanding of power and the paradox of stories” (239). He warns that the Them and Us mentality is inevitable but that, rather than a choice between one or the other, we should take the stance that, like the validity and truth of stories, coexistence is possible. The physical common ground we share can be more beneficial if understanding is met on both sides of the story. Changing underlying title back to aboriginal title allows the first peoples to keep what is important to them while not sacrificing what is important to the settlers. It is a win-win situation and the only price to pay is the smallest amount of humility and understanding. Not a bad ROI if you ask me.

 

Works Cited

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s 2, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11. Web.

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003. Print.