59 pages • 1 hour read
Green Grass, Running Water
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaBackground
Authorial Context: Thomas King and Activism
Thomas King was born in Roseville, California, in 1943, to a mother of Greek and German descent and a father of Cherokee descent. His father left the family when he was young, and he was raised primarily by his mother. He attended grade and high school in California, then spent a year at Sacramento State University before running out of money. Too embarrassed to return to the reservation, he spent years working various jobs—an ambulance driver, a bank teller, a photojournalist—in New Zealand and Australia.
When he returned to the United States, he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Chico State University in California, before completing his PhD in English at the University of Utah. His PhD dissertation was on Native American studies and was one of the first works to explore oral storytelling as literature. This interest in oral storytelling influenced his fiction and is foundational to the style and structure of Green Grass, Running Water, which both literally and thematically places written and oral storytelling in dialogue with one another.
In addition to his academic and writing interests, King has been devoted to fighting for Indigenous rights in North America. Through books and interviews, King has criticized many government policies and programs that he sees as harmful to Indigenous peoples. He worked to identify laws such as Bill C-31 of Canada’s Indian Act, which, until it was amended in 1985, withdrew Aboriginal status from women if they married a non-status man. He is also concerned with land rights and that Indigenous land will continue to be taken away—an issue he explores in depth in his nonfiction book The Inconvenient Indian.
King’s concern for Indigenous rights suffuses Green Grass, Running Water, and he highlights many injustices against Indigenous communities in contemporary North America and traces their roots in colonial oppression, all while structuring the story in a way that encapsulates Indigenous ways of thinking, teaching, and living.
Literary Context: Western Postmodernism
Postmodernism initially emerged in the West as a mode of literary criticism but has since been adopted across many different disciplines: visual art, architecture, anthropology, music, philosophy, theology, and many others. It is a mode of thought characterized by its skepticism of grand narratives (sometimes called master narratives—that is, narratives that are deeply embedded in a particular culture and purport to be comprehensive explanations of historical experience or knowledge), and the idea that any kind of objective truth or reality can be attained.
For postmodernists, all knowledge is subjective and conditional within specific social, cultural, political, and historical contexts because it is impossible to be free of the biases that these contexts impress upon us. Thus, postmodernism is also actively aware of the role sociopolitical ideologies play in the dominant group’s ability to assert and maintain power.
Throughout Green Grass, Running Water, King challenges many Western and colonial grand narratives, pointing out the ways that they are, in fact, constructions that create and reinforce social hierarchies that continue to play a role in asserting power over Indigenous peoples. The novel also embodies the postmodern belief that interpretation is everything: No idea or explanation can be valid for all groups because reality arises from our individual interpretations of what the world means to us. This idea is imbued throughout the text, as both King and his characters refuse to explain any of the stories for the audience. They implicitly understand that what is important is not exactly what they, the storytellers, intend the meaning to be, but what the audience takes from the stories themselves.
Finally, given postmodernism’s attempts to decenter grand narratives and embrace plurality, postmodern literature is often highly intertextual to emphasize that no work is created in isolation but, rather, exists in conversation with other works and the wider world around it. Green Grass, Running Water is overflowing with references and allusions to other works of literature and pop culture, historical events and figures, and creation stories from both Indigenous and Western traditions. Understanding these references is not required to understand the text, but they add layers of meaning to those who do pick up on them and situate the text in very specific cultural and historical context.
Unlock all 59 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Thomas King
