Green Grass, Running Water: Analysis of Major Characters
"Green Grass, Running Water" explores the lives and complexities of various characters, primarily from Blackfoot Indian heritage, as they navigate cultural identity, personal aspirations, and community ties. Lionel Red Dog, a well-meaning underachiever, symbolizes the struggle between individual potential and societal expectations. He faces numerous misfortunes that reflect his stalled ambitions, particularly regarding his education and career. Alberta Frank, a professor of Native Studies, grapples with her desires for motherhood and personal independence while maneuvering through societal norms and expectations of relationships.
Charlie Looking Bear, Lionel's cousin, represents the tension of cultural assimilation as a successful lawyer who finds himself at odds with his heritage while working for a corporation impacting Blackfoot land. His father, Portland Looking Bear, embodies the challenges of identity and belonging, having fleeting success in Hollywood while battling the stereotypes of being Indigenous in the film industry. Eli Stands Alone, a former professor, reflects on resistance against external forces threatening his community, while Latisha, Lionel's sister, is an informal leader who uses her restaurant to support her family and community. Meanwhile, the trickster figure Coyote introduces a narrative that challenges conventional storytelling, emphasizing the importance of culture and history in shaping identity. Together, these characters illustrate the intricate interplay of personal and cultural narratives within contemporary Indigenous life.
Green Grass, Running Water: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Thomas King
First published: 1993
Genre: Novel
Locale: Blossom, Alberta, Canada
Plot: Comic realism
Time: The 1960's to the 1980's
Lionel Red Dog, a good-natured underachiever of Blackfoot Indian heritage. All his life, Lionel has stumbled into mishaps. As a child, misidentified as another boy, he narrowly avoided receiving heart surgery instead of his tonsillectomy. As a college student, he was mistaken for a Wounded Knee protester and arrested after he read a paper on cultural pluralism at a conference. On the brink of forty, he sells television sets and stereos in Bursum's electronics store; everyone, including Lionel, thinks the job is a waste of his talents. He has to wear a garish gold blazer at work. The blazer, which becomes increasingly ratty as time goes by, symbolizes Lionel's stalled plans. He dreams of finishing his university degree but has taken no steps to do so beyond talking about it. It is unclear at the book's end whether he will go on selling TV sets, move back to the reserve and live in his uncle's rebuilt cabin, or go back to school; his direction probably will be determined by other people or by fate.
Alberta Frank, a professor of native studies at the university in Calgary. Alberta dates both Lionel and Charlie Looking Bear. She is fond of both but does not want to marry either. A brief, youthful marriage made her wary of too close an involvement with any man. She does, however, feel her biological clock ticking and wants to have a baby. Artificial insemination seems to her the most trouble-free way, but because most clinics reject unmarried applicants and the others have long waiting lists, she is unable to follow through with this idea. Meanwhile, she teaches Native American history to bored white students and plans to travel back to Blossom, where she can attend the annual Sun Dance and help Lionel celebrate his fortieth birthday. By the time she arrives, she is plagued by nausea. Her female relatives are sure she is pregnant. Alberta vehemently denies it for fear of being pulled into the marriage trap.
Charlie Looking Bear, Lionel's cousin, a successful lawyer in Edmondton. Charlie formerly had Lionel's job of selling televisions at Bursum's; he even wore the same unattractive gold jacket. Charlie went on to build a career working in the white man's world, becoming outwardly smooth but inwardly ambivalent about his own identity. Because the Duplessis company wants an Indian lawyer, he represents it, thus working, albeit amicably, against his own uncle Eli's crusade to halt the hydroelectric project on Blackfoot land. Charlie is fired when the dam breaks, and he sets off for Hollywood to find his father.
Portland Looking Bear, Charlie's father, a sometime film actor. Before Charlie's birth, Portland acted in many Westerns, usually as an extra but sometimes in supporting roles as an Indian chief. To his distress, he had to wear a large artificial nose for these roles so he would “look like an Indian.” When jobs become sparse for him, he goes back to the Blackfoot reserve in Canada, but after Charlie grows up, he returns to Hollywood, his favorite place in the world, and arduously builds a second acting career.
Eli Stands Alone, who formerly was a professor of literature. He returned to live in his mother's house on the reserve when she died, for reasons even he does not entirely understand. The house is located just below the dam built by the Duplessis company for the Parliament Lake development. Eli files a series of lawsuits and manages to hold up the project's implementation for ten years. The company representative comes by his house every morning and drinks coffee with Eli, cheerfully inquiring whether the old man has changed his mind. When the dam cracks from an earthquake, Eli is swept away in the ensuing flood.
Latisha, Lionel's sister, who owns a restaurant called the Dead Dog that claims to serve dog meat. It actually is beef, but the pretense attracts the tourist trade, and the Dead Dog provides a good living for Latisha and her children. Latisha, who has tossed out her abusive white husband, is an informal community leader who helps crystallize opinion and gives good advice.
Coyote, the trickster of Native American lore. He narrates a separate story interwoven with the main one, questioning the whites' creation story by telling it his own way. Coyote appears to Lionel once, as a funny yellow dog dancing outside the electronics store.