Previous
Prologue
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Green Grass, Running Water, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Indian Culture and White Culture
Storytelling
Oppression and the Justice System
The Power of Nature
Summary
Analysis
Near the town of Blossom in the province of Alberta, Canada, where many Blackfoot Indians live, Lionel and his aunt Norma debate which color of carpet Lionel’s mother would like best. Meanwhile, in a different but parallel narrative, the Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye, and Ishmael debate how to best begin telling a story. They agree that beginnings are important and that none of them should try to tell the whole story on their own.
This novel, particularly in the first part, cuts back and forth rapidly between different plots that occur in different times and places. While Lionel and Norma seem to exist in something like the present (when the novel was published in the 1990s), it’s unclear until later where in time and place the four Indian characters are located. They also talk about storytelling in a way that recalls the conversation in the prologue between the narrator and Coyote.
Themes
In another parallel story, in an American psychiatric hospital near the Canadian border, Dr. Joseph Hovaugh sits at his desk and stares out the window. An assistant comes to see him and informs him that the police have stopped by with some questions.
Author Thomas King lived in both the U.S. and Canada, and this novel takes place on both sides of the border. Significantly, this border is primarily the creation of European-heritage colonists—it was not invented by Indians but nevertheless creates divisions and restricts free movement.
Themes
Shifting again, now to a university in Calgary, Canada, Alberta Frank gives a lecture about the U.S. Army’s attacks on Indigenous tribes in the late 1800s. Out of the Indians the Army rounded up, most were sent to reservations, but 72 were chosen to send to a fort in Florida, where one prisoner attempted to escape along the way and was killed. A student named Henry Dawes listens in class, feeling sleepy. Alberta explains how several of these Indian prisoners created drawings during their time at the fort.
Some writers use words like “Indigenous,” “Native American,” (mainly in the U.S.) or “First Nations” (mainly in Canada) to describe the descendants of those who originally lived in what’s now called North America. Author Thomas King uses “Indian” in this novel. Partly, this is because the novel explores popular depictions and stereotypes of the “Indian” stock character, who was often pitted against the cowboy in Westerns. The sleeping student in this passage perhaps suggests the indifference of many outsiders to the challenges Indians have faced.
Themes
Going back to Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye, and Ishmael, the four of them again debate how the story is progressing so far. Hawkeye wants more trees in the story.
At this point, the identities of these four characters is still a little mysterious (fitting, since the character Lone Ranger traditionally wears a mask). Hawkeye’s request for trees suggests that these characters have some connection to the natural world.
Themes
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In another part of the same hospital as Dr. Hovaugh, Babo Jones sits in the staff room where Sergeant Cereno and Jimmy are questioning her. Babo says she’s been working at the hospital for 16 years. She describes her day as a janitor, starting with how she carries around a lot of Life Savers candy because she’s trying to quit smoking. Cereno asks her to focus and remember when she unlocked the back door of the hospital. Babo says she came in at about six in the morning, when the hospital was still quiet.
The escape of four Indians from a psychiatric hospital is important enough to get the police involved. This provides an early hint of how official institutions of justice, like the police, become ways to restrict the freedom of Indians, a theme that gets developed in more detail as the story progresses. This passage also shows how normal people like Babo also unwittingly take part in restricting the freedom of the Indians.
Themes
Back in an unknown location, Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye, and Ishmael come to the side of a highway, where the grass and sun are beautiful. But Ishmael wonders if they’ve gotten lost.
This passage depicts the border between the manmade world of the highways and the natural world of grass and sun. These four Indians, like many Indians in the story, must navigate both worlds.
Themes
Near Blossom, Lionel reflects that he’s made three mistakes in his whole life, and one of them was when he was eight and wanted to convince his mother to let him have his tonsils removed. He remembers going to see an old doctor named Dr. Loomis. At the time, Lionel complains of pain, and Dr. Loomis agrees that the tonsils should go. But Lionel is disappointed when Dr. Loomis suggests doing the operation in the summer, when Lionel won’t miss school.
This passage implies that Lionel made up his illness as a way to avoid going to school, suggesting that school is difficult for him. Lionel’s insistence that he’s only made three mistakes is humorous and suggests that perhaps Lionel doesn’t have enough self-reflection to identify other mistakes that he’s made in his life.
Themes
Still when he was eight, Lionel keeps complaining to his mother, and eventually, Dr. Loomis arranges for Lionel to go to Calgary to get his tonsils removed in February. At the children’s ward of the hospital in Calgary, Lionel wanders around on his own. A blond woman finds him and tells him it’s almost time for his plane ride. Later, a nurse comes and puts him on a plane to Toronto. But when Lionel arrives in Toronto, a nurse starts talking about a heart operation on Lionel, and Lionel fears there’s been a mistake. Lionel runs away. When the hospital finds him at an arcade, they call Calgary and realize the patient is supposed to be a 10-year-old white child, not an 8-year-old Blackfoot Indian like Lionel.
Lionel’s experience with the medical system involves him being moved around without any control over what happens. Several Indian characters in the novel experience similar feelings of powerlessness, and Lionel’s situation recalls the four escaped Indians, who have also been trapped by the medical system. The fact that the hospital wants to take Lionel’s heart could be a metaphor for how white people want to separate Lionel from the things that he holds dear, under the guise of helping him.
Themes
Back in the present, Norma says she thinks Lionel resembles his uncle Eli because Eli also wanted to be a white man. For years, Lionel continued to get letters from the children’s heart foundation in Calgary asking for donations.
The many letters that Lionel gets from the hospital in Calgary symbolizes how white people always want more from him. They want money, despite the fact that Lionel only ever ended up there by mistake, showing how irrational their greed can be.
Themes
Picking up from the prologue of the novel, GOD asks Coyote where all the water in the world came from. Coyote tries to explain that there are two worlds, Sky World and Water World, but GOD insists that everyone knows there’s only one world. The narrator interrupts to explain things and tell a story.
This creation story has several parallels to the creation story in the Book of Genesis, which is about the Judeo-Christian God. This creation story has a more heightened and humorous tone—instead of being the solemn God of the Bible, this GOD is stubborn and a little childish.
Themes
In the narrator’s story, there’s a big, strong woman called First Woman who lives in Sky World. She walks off the edge of the world and reaches Water World. She ends up on the back of grandmother Turtle. First Woman and grandmother Turtle start making land by putting mud on grandmother Turtle’s back. Soon she has a garden, where she lives with a man named Ahdamn. GOD recognizes the garden as his own and says he’d better go talk to First Woman.
The character First Woman has strong parallels to Eve from the Book of Genesis (who, according to that book, was the first woman created). Meanwhile, the idea of a turtle that holds up the world shows up in several Indian religions, as well as other religions around the world. Ahdamn is like Adam (Eve’s husband), and in keeping with the novel’s satirical tone, his name is spelled like the regretful phrase “Ah, damn.”
Themes
At the university in Calgary, Alberta returns to her office and sees she has a message from Charlie Looking Bear. He invites her to come see him over the weekend, but she says she has to be at Lionel’s birthday. Charlie says Alberta’s relationship with Lionel isn’t very serious, and she agrees but says her relationship with Charlie isn’t very serious either. Charlie tries unsuccessfully to convince her that Lionel is a failure because he’s turning 40 and still sells stereos and televisions. Alberta likes not having the pressure of being in a relationship with just one person.
Alberta, Charlie, and Lionel are all in their 30s and face pivotal turning points in their lives. Alberta struggles with her desire to be a mother vs. her reluctance to commit to a partnership with either Lionel or Charlie. Charlie tries to present Lionel as an old failure, but Charlie’s comments hint at his own insecurity and perhaps his feelings that Alberta is leaning toward choosing Lionel over him.
Themes
At the psychiatric hospital, Dr. Hovaugh talks with Dr. John Eliot, trying to convince him that four old Indians who have disappeared recently are dead, citing 37 other cases in history where Indians also disappeared and never came back. Dr. Eliot insists he needs a body for a death certificate.
This passage raises the idea that even the “real world” plot lines of the story may have an element of the supernatural to them, with Indians who disappear mysteriously and never come back. It also hints at the darker reality of how many Indians have “disappeared” and even died while under the control of the government, such as at boarding schools in the U.S. and Canada.
Themes
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the hospital, Babo asks Sergeant Cereno if he has any more questions about the missing Indians who escaped from the psychiatric hospital. Cereno asks about their age, and she says they’re probably about 400 or 500—it gets hard to tell age after 70 or 80. The names of the missing men are Mr. Red, Mr. White, Mr. Black, and Mr. Blue, but Babo doesn’t recognize these names. She says that she actually thinks the Indians were women, although that’s not what Cereno has in his files.
If the Indians are 400 or 500 years old, that would mean they were born around the time when Columbus and other European explorers first began colonizing the Americas. The story of these four Indians seems to be directly tied to the story of Indians as a whole, ever since settlers from Europe began to encroach on their traditional lands.
Themes
Near Blossom, Lionel remembers the second big mistake of his life, when he went to Salt Lake City for a conference, back when he was working in the Department of Indian Affairs for a university. At the conference, he dressed too formally, and his lecture got a bad reception. After some other speeches, he went with a large group to Wounded Knee for a protest. Police stopped the van he was in, and through a misunderstanding where they thought Lionel had a gun, he got hit in the head and needed 11 stitches. He got held up for several days, including time in jail for disturbing the peace, and by the time he made it back to his hotel, his things were gone. He lost his job, and it took him almost a month total to get home from Salt Lake.
This novel came out in 1993, just a few years after one of the most notorious cases of police brutality in the United States, against Rodney King in Los Angeles. Wounded Knee was the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre, when the U.S. Army killed almost 300 Lakota people. In this passage, Lionel learns that while he has earned tentative acceptance in the white world working at a university, all it took was one misunderstanding to change the course of his life. Lionel gets judged as dangerous because he’s Indian, even though nothing about his life up until this point had been violent.
Themes
In the present, Norma tells Lionel he needs to stop selling televisions and get a real job. She suggests maybe he could run for council or something. She mentions his uncle Eli, whom she thinks is a positive example of someone who could help him.
Like Lionel, Eli is also an Indian who left Blossom and lived among white people for a while before eventually coming back. Norma sees Eli’s return as a positive, but Eli himself later reveals that he has more complicated feelings.
Themes
At the university, Alberta wants children but doesn’t want to marry Lionel or Charlie. She decides maybe it would be better to try to meet a stranger at a bar, but her one attempt fails, and she begins to consider marriage again.
Alberta’s main fear as a character is commitment, and this leads her to act irrationally. For example, she can’t even commit to the idea of trying to find a low-commitment relationship.
Themes
Meanwhile, in the creation story, GOD intervenes to tell First Woman she’s doing things wrong and that she should never eat his apples. First Woman thinks GOD is a bad neighbor, so she decides to leave the garden with Ahdamn and look for a new home, heading west. There, they come across some dead rangers in a canyon. All of a sudden, live rangers come up and accuse First Woman and Ahdamn of killing them. But she manages to convince them that she’s the Lone Ranger and Ahdamn is her Indian sidekick, Tonto. She thinks she has gotten away, but then some soldiers arrest her for being Indian.
This creation story continues to blend the Book of Genesis with Indian religion and history. Unlike Eve in the Bible, First Woman decides to leave GOD’s garden of her own free will. The portrayal of GOD as a bad neighbor perhaps reflects how the largely Christian settlers in the Americas were bad neighbors to the Indians. The part where First Woman disguises herself as the Lone Ranger relates to a comment that Babo made earlier about how she couldn’t remember whether the four escaped Indians were men or women.
Themes
Sergeant Cereno goes to see Dr. Hovaugh in his office at the hospital. Cereno asks Dr. Hovaugh if he thinks the missing Indians are dangerous. Hovaugh is confused when Cereno says Babo said the Indians were women. Hovaugh says that even though he had to keep the Indians locked up, they weren’t dangerous—that was just government policy.
Dr. Hovaugh is a classic example of a man who doesn’t seem to have any personal grudge against Indians but who nevertheless participates in a system that keeps them trapped. His willingness to unquestioningly follow government policy leads to injustice.
Themes
On the roads near Blossom, Lionel is falling asleep at the wheel, so Norma asks to drive. She again tries to convince him to get a better job because otherwise Alberta will never marry him. Lionel thinks back to his third big mistake in life: getting a job at Bill Bursum’s stereo and television store after he lost his university job. The job opened up because Charlie Looking Bear just left it. Lionel insists he plans on going back to school at some point.
The fact that both Charlie and Lionel have worked at the same store shows how the two of them are on similar life paths, whether they like it or not. The fact that Lionel is taking the job at the same time that Charlie is leaving it suggests that Lionel is moving backwards, however, while Charlie is trying to move ahead with his life.
Themes
Early in the stereo-selling job, Lionel found that he wasn’t making much money, and the local band (community of Indians) didn’t have any money left for him because more young Indians are going to universities. He’s 32, and his grandfather died before that age. One day, he runs into Charlie, who drives a nice car now and who advises Lionel to leave his job with Bill as soon as he can for a better one.
While more young Indians going to universities is a sign of progress, it also means that some slightly older people like Lionel get left behind and passed over for opportunities. Lionel’s grandfather’s young death forces Lionel to think about his own mortality and adds additional pressure to his situation.
Themes
Alberta likes driving. She thinks about how it was a mistake for her to marry Bob when she was a young university student. He wanted children and a traditional wife, but she wanted to wait, and they soon divorced. Alberta thinks back to another time when Amos, her father, drove a truck into an outhouse. He was drunk, as he often was, and paranoid about being chased. Alberta’s mother, Ada, put a blanket over him, but the next morning, the blanket was folded, and he was gone forever, leaving the pickup truck behind.
This passage juxtaposes two different unsuccessful marriages—Amos and Ada’s and Alberta and Bob’s. Amos’s sudden disappearance connects him to the four Indians who ran away from the psychiatric hospital. It also helps explain why Alberta herself may have mixed feelings about being in a marriage and fulfilling what’s seen as a traditional wifely role—she also fears being left alone.
Themes
At the psychiatric hospital, Sergeant Cereno asks Dr. Hovaugh to tell more about the missing Indians. He asks if they have any friends on the hospital staff who might have helped them escape. Hovaugh isn’t aware of any. He tells Cereno of how the Indians first ended up at the hospital. He says they arrived in 1891 and were already old. But Cereno protests that 1891 was 101 years ago. A confused Cereno asks Hovaugh to go back to the beginning, so Hovaugh says in the beginning, there was nothing except water.
Like Coyote or the narrator, Dr. Hovaugh has a mischievous quality to the way he tells the story to Sergeant Cereno. Whereas Sergeant Cereno tries to make sense of the story and understand things in a rational way, Dr. Hovaugh just accepts things as he sees them, even if they don’t make rational sense. The year 1891 is significant, because the massacre at Wounded Knee (where Lionel also got arrested a century later) occurred right at the end of 1890.
Themes
Near Blossom, Lionel sleeps while Norma drives. When he wakes up, he sees four Indians by the side of the road. Coyote interrupts to ask about First Woman and Ahdamn. The narrator says they get sent to Florida by the soldiers who found them earlier. Ahdamn becomes famous for his drawings of buffalo. First Woman wants to get moving again, believing they have a duty to fix the world. She puts on a Lone Ranger mask and goes out the gate of the place where she’s being kept, along with Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye. Coyote is confused because he doesn’t know who these other characters with Lone Ranger are.
By the end of the first part, it becomes clear that Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, Lone Ranger, and Hawkeye are in fact the four Indians who have escaped from the psychiatric hospital. But their identities still remain confusing, intentionally so. These four characters seem to simultaneously be men and women, from the past and from the present, telling the story and appearing as characters within it. All of these identities help the four characters embody a wide range of Indian experiences.
Themes
