English LPE: Class Ten Carrier 1

ENGLISH LPE: THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION

CLASS TEN, FEBRUARY 18th
(ASYNCHRONOUS CLASS – LECTURE NOTES)
ON PAGES 85-125 IN GREEN GRASS, RUNNING WATER
Hi again!

THE LEFTOVERS
I managed to get a little further with one section than I did with the other in my live classes
earlier this week, so here is some material from the end of my notes for that class, just in case your
group didn’t get far enough to cover it. Take note: most of the points here only include page numbers
and not the actual details from those pages that support the claims I’m making; my plan was simply
to flip to those pages as we discussed all of this together and then quote or summarize the relevant
details out loud. I’m now hoping that you can find and identify those details on your own with the page
numbers provided, because I need to keep this section relatively short in order to leave plenty of
room to discuss today’s assigned readings.

Doctor Joseph Hovaugh and “GOD”

Doctor Joseph Hovaugh’s name — by the way — is an allusion wrapped up in a pretty bad
pun. In case you didn’t spot it yourself, it goes like this: the name “Joseph Hovaugh” can be
shortened to either “Joe Hovaugh” or even “J. Hovaugh,” either of which sounds a bit like
“Jehovah,” one of the Judeo-Christian names for God. With his authority over the psychiatric
hospital, his big book and his preoccupation with his garden, Doctor Hovaugh is one of the novel’s
parodies of God as he appears in the Bible. The novel’s other parody of God is Coyote’s dream, a
magical being who gets his designation as a “dog” backwards, mistakenly but enthusiastically
claiming godhood for himself (1-2). And if you found yourself thinking that neither of parodies is
especially flattering in its representation of Christianity, you are absolutely correct.
Hovaugh in particular is a terrible authority figure, both as a boss and as a doctor.

 He doesn’t recognize Babo’s name when Cereno brings her up, even though she has
worked for him for sixteen years, and he knows less about the missing patients than she
does (75).
 He wants one of the doctors at the hospital to declare the four missing patients legally dead
even though there’s no proof to that effect, and even though the patients in question have
disappeared before only to come right back on their own (46-47).
 He’s about as brave and hard to push around as Lionel, which is to say: not very (75-76).
 He cares more about the hospital garden than he does about his patients, his employees or
his actual responsibilities as a doctor and administrator.
 And he is obsessive and paranoid, jumping to conclusions, insisting that he has all the
evidence to back up his theories of doom and disaster even though a lot of the evidence is
far from conclusive or just doesn’t fit (46-48).

Meanwhile, Coyote’s dream (or “dog,” or “GOD”), isn’t any better, stubbornly insisting that
everything has to go exactly according to his expectations and angrily expecting that everyone follow
his rules and orders, even though they’re shown to be both unfair and unreasonable, and even
though everyone else is being quite friendly, even offering him something to eat despite his rudeness
and inflated sense of entitlement (41).
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We’ll see more of Hovaugh soon, but we’ve seen the last of Coyote’s dream. However, we will
be seeing some other parodies of biblical characters, many of which are quite similar to “GOD” in
some key ways. Be on the lookout for that.

Coyote
Coyote himself is an interesting figure, too, one we’ll need to come back to and discuss in
more detail later on. For now, though, I just want you to notice the following:

 He utterly lacks humility or self-consciousness (2).

 He can be a bit narcissistic (38-39).
 He’s easily distracted, especially by the prospect of tasty treats (68-69).
 And he’s quick to avoid taking the blame for anything, whether he did it or not, lying
clumsily in the process (69, 70).

Now, a lot of this is pretty cute so far, making Coyote come across as somewhat childlike, or like
something out of a cartoon for children. However, Coyote isn’t just some silly talking animal; he is an
ancient being from the dawn of time, and his power is downright godlike. For example, he has one
bad dream and suddenly there’s a GOD running around as a result. And that’s not the last
demonstration we’ll get of what happens when that kind of personality has access to that kind of
power.
And now, on to my notes for pages 85-125…

THE STORYLINES CONTINUE TO CONVERGE

I want to once again begin by pointing the various ways in which the novel’s storylines are
coming together, since it’s becoming a bit more explicit now:

1. Norma and Lionel have just stopped to pick up four elderly hitchhikers. Those are the same
four elderly travelers calling themselves the Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, Robinson Crusoe and
Ishmael, who are also the same four Indigenous patients who mysteriously escaped from Dr.
Hovaugh’s psychiatric hospital in Florida.

2. In the first creation story the narrator is telling Coyote, First Woman and Ahdamn get locked up
in Fort Marion in Florida, and are invited to draw to pass the time during their incarceration, just
like the prisoners in Alberta Frank’s university lecture on the Plains Indian Ledger Art.

3. To escape from Fort Marion, First Woman once again disguises herself as the Lone Ranger,
and immediately bumps into other escapees calling themselves Hawkeye, Robinson Crusoe
and Ishmael. This essentially confirms that the individual going by the name “The Lone
Ranger” in the backseat of Lionel’s car is actually First Woman, a supernatural being who has
been alive since the very beginning of the world, and who was incarcerated at Fort Marion (in
Florida) long before being a patient at a psychiatric hospital (also in Florida).

4. When the narrator and Coyote start their story over again, this time it’s about a similar woman
with a different name: Changing Woman, who — in case you hadn’t already guessed it — is
now one of the other secretly supernatural characters now riding in the backseat of Lionel’s car
(Ishmael).

5. Both Babo and Doctor Hovaugh end up trying to tell origin stories of sorts to the police, and
what they say ends up sounding awfully similar to the creation story the narrator has been
trying to tell Coyote.
English LPE: Class Ten Carrier 3
Some of this stuff is still in the process of being hinted at or spelled out, but you’ve gotten enough
clues so far that it seems worth it to just nail a bunch of that down now.

THREE CHARACTERS & THEIR RELATIONSHIPS

Alberta Frank
Alberta Frank — like Lionel, Norma and Charlie — is Blackfoot, from the same reservation just
outside of Blossom, Alberta. She lives and works in Calgary, now, however, as a university professor
of North American history.
Alberta’s professional life is going pretty well, but it doesn’t seem especially fulfilling or
exciting to her. When we see her in the classroom, the narration keeps emphasizing that most of her
students don’t care about the subject matter, falling asleep on themselves or flirting with one another
right in front of her during her lecture, and the ones who are actually awake and alert seem to only
care about their grades. The whole thing feels pretty limp and dispiriting, but… that’s work, I guess:
even when you like your job and believe it’s important, it’s still… work. It’s not always easy to maintain
one’s enthusiasm and energy. Not that I can relate to any of this on a personal level, of course. Heh.
Anyway, Alberta’s current preoccupation is the fact that she wants to have a baby, but she
wants to raise it by herself, despite the fact that she’s been dating two men (Lionel and Charlie) for a
while now, either of whom would very likely agree to marry her and raise a child with her.
In past years, I’ve had students tell me that they don’t like Alberta, at least not at first. The two
reasons they most often provide for this are:

A. she doesn’t seem like a very passionate teacher, and

B. she’s stringing along two men who like her a lot, using them for sex and company now
and again, but then pulling away and playing them off of one another whenever one of
them gets too clingy. Students have told me that they find that she’s being selfish and
manipulative, and that she’s afraid of commitment in a way that strikes them as a little
pathetic.

As with Norma and Babo, I can see how someone could get such a negative first impression of
Alberta, but — as with Norma and Babo — I think it kind of misses the point to see her that way, and
possibly — once again — due to some biases and maybe even sexist double standards we don’t like
to admit we might have rolling around in the backs of our minds sometimes…
When it comes to Alberta’s lack of enthusiasm as a teacher, well… try to put yourself in her
shoes rather than in the shoes of her students for a minute. Do you really think it’s easy and fun to get
a bunch of university (or college) students to genuinely care about the material you’re teaching, or
even just to pay attention? Re-read that short chapter (18-21) and try a little harder to imagine
yourself in Alberta’s position rather than automatically identifying with the students in the room just
because you happen to be a student yourself. Focus on what’s pointed out about the students, and
how it could justify Alberta’s demeanor in that moment.
As for Alberta’s relationships with Charlie and Lionel, well… consider what the two men in
question are actually like, especially as prospective partners. Once you do, it gets a lot harder to
blame Alberta for avoiding commitment. Charlie can be pushy and a bit sleazy, not to mention a bit of
a hypocrite, giving Alberta a hard time for dating someone else even though he himself has been
dating lots of other women (43-44, 115-116, 118-119). And Lionel — as we’ve already discussed — is
directionless and unmotivated, often lying to others and himself about how his life is going.
And both Charlie and Lionel can be extremely immature and inconsiderate as hosts and
boyfriends: their bathrooms are filthy, their sheets are thin and cold, their kitchens are bereft of
anything one could use to make an actual meal, and they only ever pick movies they want to watch,
even when she complains about it (44). They act and live like adolescents even though they’re both
English LPE: Class Ten Carrier 4
middle-aged, treating her in a way that suggests that they take her for granted, even without even
realizing that that’s what they’re doing. They each have some good qualities, sure, but it’s hard to
blame Alberta for being nervous about what they’d be like as partners and fathers, especially when
you consider what her previous relationships with men have been like.
When Alberta reflects on what it’s like to be married to man, she compares it to being a
passenger on an airplane (passive, with no control over the situation), whereas she much prefers to
drive when she travels, because she values her independence and her agency, her ability to make
meaningful choices about her life for herself (85). She’s found it hard to do that in the past because of
men in her life expecting and “insisting on privileges, special favors” (90). We see that in the case of
Bob, Alberta’s ex-husband, who kept expecting her to put off getting her degree to support him
financially while he finished his studies, and then to stay home and raise their children while he
pursued his career (86). And when Alberta tried to make it clear that that wasn’t what she wanted,
that her priorities and plans were different, he’d either ignore her, make fun of her (with a racist joke
about teepees, no less), or accuse her of having an affair (86-87).
We also see it in Amos, Alberta’s father, who — when Alberta was a child — came home
drunk out of his mind one night, having crashed his truck into the outhouse, and kept expecting his
wife to help him up, help him pull up his soaking wet pants from around his ankles, and help him into
the house, even though he was yelling insults at her the whole time (calling her an “ugly cow”), hurling
an empty liquor bottle against their home so hard that it shattered just inches away from her head
when she refused to help him, in a gesture that was either intended as an actual physical attack that
thankfully missed or — at the very least — as a threat of physical violence (87-89).
Charlie and Lionel aren’t nearly as bad as either Amos or Bob, but they do have certain
characteristics in common with them, or at least there are hints that they might be similar in some key
respects that Alberta — given her past experiences with her ex-husband and her father — finds
troubling, most notably: an unfair double-standard and a lack of consideration for her needs and
desires, both of which seem to stem from an inflated sense of entitlement and unchecked,
unquestioned assumptions that they are entitled to certain privileges even though they haven’t
done anything to earn them.

Eli Stands Alone

You’ve now met Eli Stands Alone, Lionel’s uncle, Norma’s brother, another university
professor, this one now retired. And he is currently back in his mother’s house, living there to stop a
brand new hydroelectric dam from being finished and activated. What is Eli’s problem with the dam?
Well…

A. Once activated, it’ll change the course of the river in such a way that it’ll destroy the house his
mother literally built with her own bare hands, the house in which he and his siblings grew up
(113).

B. Also, it’s been built on unceded Blackfoot land, but the tribe knows it won’t profit from the dam
project, despite the ridiculous promises they’ve received to the contrary (they’ve heard those
kinds of empty promises before, as many Indigenous people have).

C. And finally, the fact that the dam was built in that spot is absurd, given that none of the
scientific studies that were conducted to choose the best location for the dam recommended
that particular site (111). So… why is it being built there? Simple, for the same reason big,
disruptive things like dams, diamond mines, fracking sites and oil pipelines are so often built on
Indigenous land in North America: racism. The big businesses and government officials in
charge of these kinds of projects know that white people won’t tolerate having things like that
polluting their own back yards, but they also expect that white people (and the media that
English LPE: Class Ten Carrier 5
chiefly represents their interests) won’t care much if those kinds of projects disrupt the lives
and livelihoods of Indigenous people. And so, land is seized and treaties are broken, just so
that non-Indigenous business interests and political careers can keep profiting off of the land at
the expense of Indigenous people.

The man in charge of the dam project, Clifford Sifton, regularly meets with Eli in the hopes of getting
him to give up his legal claim to the land, since Eli has (remarkably) managed to get the dam project
stalled in the courts. When he meets with Eli, Cliff tells him that the dam isn’t political or personal,
but — by seeing it from Eli’s perspective — we can see that that’s not true at all (111, 114). The only
reason the dam was built in that spot was because it was deemed politically convenient — with the
people in charge counting on mainstream indifference towards Indigenous people in order to turn a
profit more quickly. And of course the matter is personal to people whose homes are being affected
by it, who are having something precious taken from them in exchange for a bunch of insultingly
laughable empty promises.

Latisha Red Dog

Latisha — Lionel’s sister — owns and manages a restaurant on the reservation, which she has
recently rebranded and turned into a tourist trap: The Dead Dog Café. The bait in this particular
tourist trap is the not-so-subtle suggestion that the restaurant serves dog meat, even though that’s
not even remotely true, and even though that would not be even remotely traditional (as Lionel points
out: the Blackfoot have never actually eaten dog).
Latisha also has the staff greet customers while wearing costumes inspired by the traditional
clothing of Southwest Indians and Plains Indians (or a combination of the two), even though those
types of clothing come from a long time ago and a long way away, and have no connection
whatsoever to either contemporary or traditional Blackfoot clothing (the traditional garb of Southwest
Indians and Plains Indians have been featured in a heck of a lot of Hollywood westerns, however,
regardless of what tribe those westerns were supposedly depicting).
We are told and shown that tourists love all of this stuff: the lie about dog meat, the ridiculous
staged photographs of Indigenous folks hunting ridiculously non-indigenous breeds of dogs from
horseback, the culturally inappropriate costumes, etcetera. It’s all fake, it’s all nonsense, but the
tourists love it, showing up by the literal busload, eating it up, buying souvenirs, just like Norma
predicted they would… Why? Because it matches their expectations, their prejudices, their
misconceptions about Indigenous people in general, catering to their warped ideas about
Indigenous culture, most of which came to them from Hollywood movies made by equally ignorant
non-Indigenous writers, directors and actors. Also: because it allows them to congratulate themselves
for being multicultural and open-minded, patting themselves on the back for experiencing something
authentically exotic (which is pretty ironic given that it’s all bullshit, and it wouldn’t take much effort for
them to figure that out).

Three Characters, Three Relationships, A Pattern

In the case of each of the characters I’ve discussed above, the novel has focused quite a bit so
far on a relationship they have with someone or something else:
 Alberta’s relationship with men
 Eli’s relationship with the dam
 Latisha’s relationship with tourists

What I’d like to do now is draw your attention to some of the similarities between these various
relationships:

1. We get multiple examples of people making some clumsy, ignorant assumptions: Bob’s
English LPE: Class Ten Carrier 6
assumptions about Alberta, for example, or the tourists’ assumptions about Indigenous culture.

2. We also get multiple examples of people feeling unfairly entitled to things, like the support
Bob and Amos unfairly expect from their wives, or the government and corporations feeling
entitled to build their dam on unceded Indigenous land.

3. And we see a lot of this stuff hinging on prejudices of various sorts, particularly sexism and
racism. For example, the dam project depends on the racism in the form of the lack of
support, attention and sympathy Indigenous communities usually get from non-Indigenous
Canadians. And Bob’s assumptions about Alberta clearly aren’t rooted in anything Alberta
herself has said or done, so they must instead be rooted in sexist notions and generalizations
about women, the misogynistic belief that a woman’s role, purpose and deepest desire is to
support a man. Finally, Latisha has managed to keep her humble restaurant afloat by finding a
way to tap into and exploit the casual racism of non-Indigenous tourists.

A pattern is emerging, with certain issues coming up again and again, often hand-in-hand:
- assumptions,
- prejudices,
- an inflated sense of entitlement,
- and unfairness.

Here are a few charts to map that out:

ALBERTA
& MEN

LATISHA
& TOURISTS

ELI
& THE DAM

ALBERTA
& MEN

LATISHA
& TOURISTS

ELI
& THE DAM
English LPE: Class Ten Carrier 7
ALBERTA
& MEN

LATISHA
& TOURISTS

ELI
& THE DAM
Not all of these issues come up in all three situations, at least
not in the same way, but we can still see that King is
establishing patterns here, pointing out the various ways
certain factors end up affecting the lives of his characters.
And notice, these issues are shown to manifest themselves
both when it comes to ethnicity and when it comes to gender.
We see racism and sexism going hand-in-hand in a few
instances, but we also see them affecting folks in similar ways
even when they show up independently of one another. That
might explain why First Woman — when she needs to escape
from her captors — pretends to be both white and male: the
famous fictional cowboy vigilante from American television in
the 1950s, the Lone Ranger.

That’s it from me for today!

BUT BEFORE YOU GO, DON’T FORGET:
1. I WILL NOT BE HOLDING A LIVE CLASS OVER ZOOM EARLY NEXT WEEK, I WILL NOT
BE DISTRIBUTING ANY ASYCHRONOUS MATERIALS ON THURSDAY, AND THERE ARE
NO FURTHER ASSIGNED READINGS UNTIL MARCH 22ND. YOUR ONLY
RESPONSIBILITY IN THIS COURSE NEXT WEEK IS WORK ON YOUR FUN HOME
ESSAY, DUE BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON FEBRUARY 26TH. THE INSTRUCTIONS AND
AVAILABLE TOPICS FOR THE ESSAY ARE ON OMNIVOX, AND I’LL BE AVAILABLE
BOTH OVER MIO AND OVER ZOOM NEXT WEEK QUITE A BIT MORE THAN I
NORMALLY AM IF YOU NEED CLARIFICATION ABOUT THE ASSIGNEMNT OR
FEEDBACK ON YOUR IDEAS. I’LL BE SENDING OUT A MIO SHORTLY ABOUT MY
EXPANDED OFFICE HOURS FOR NEXT WEEK SHORTLY.

2. AS I’VE MENTIONED IN CLASS, I HAVE CHANGED THE LOCATION OF OUR

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THIS COURSE, MAKING A FORUM THAT IS
EXCLUSIVELY FOR THIS SECTION RATHER THAN HAVING YOU IN A GROUP FORUM
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WITH THE STUDENTS IN THE OTHER SECTION OF THIS COURSE. I HAVE ALSO
POSTED NEW DISCUSSION QUESTIONS IN THAT FORUM, SPECIFICALLY ABOUT
WHAT WE HAVE SEEN OF GREEN GRASS, RUNNING WATER SO FAR. GO CHECK
THOSE QUESTIONS OUT AS SOON AS YOU HAVE FINISHED THIS READING, AND TRY
TO ANSWER ONE OR TWO OF THE QUESTIONS THERE IF YOU’RE FEELING UP TO IT.

3. ALSO, CHECK YOUR MIO INBOX FOR YOUR THIRD POP QUIZ IN THIS COURSE. YOU
HAVE UNTIL THE END OF THE DAY TOMORROW (FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19 TH) TO
SUBMIT YOUR ANSWERS IN A REPLY MIO.
– Nic (he/him)