Aboriginals in Canadian Literature: Neither Flesh, Fowl, Nor Good Salt Herring

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Aboriginals in Canadian Literature Neither
Flesh, Fowl, Nor Good Salt Herring
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Lesson Objectives

• Identify basic elements of short fiction
• Apply a framework of analysis to study a work of
  short fiction
• Deconstruct the image of the Indian in Canadian
  literature

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Elements of Short Fiction

• Plot (describes relationships consequences)
• Point of View (refers to the persona the author
  adopts)
• Characterization (To what extent do you
  empathize/sympathize or identify w/character?
• Language/style (what does the dialogue reveal
  about the characters? Narrator?
• Setting (How do characters relate to the setting?
• Imagery (any images carry symbolic meaning for
  the whole story?
• Theme (your interpretation of what message the
  author conveys through the story)

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Looking at the settings in M. Laurences The
Loons

• Tonnerres setting consists of
• Scrub oak, chokecherry bushes
• A chaos of lean-tos, wooden packing cases, warped
  lumber
• Tangled barbed wire

• McLeods Summer Cottage consists of
• The filigree of spruce trees
• Wild strawberry plants which were white in flower
• Everything was the same as previous summer

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Negative Space

• Where is the Tonnerre home located?
• What impression do you get from the scrub oak,
  grey-green willows, and choke-cherry bushes?
• Symbolically, willow trees are associated with
  griefscrub oak and choke-cherry bushes imply
  what?
• Everything the Tonnerre family says or does is
  cast in a negative light

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Negative Identity Neither Flesh, Fowl, Nor Good
Salt Herring

• Vanessa talks about where the Tonnerres dont
  belongestablishes the background for a
  description of Piquette, who
• Attended school only sporadically
• Was responsible for looking after her family
• In and out of the hospital w/TB of the bone

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Negative Identity Cont

• As a construct Piquette is diseased in the
  foundational structure of her being, symbolized
  by the TB in her leg bone
• Piquette is described as having a broad
  coarse-featured face that bore no expressionit
  was blank, as though she no longer dwelt within
  her own skull, as though she had gone elsewhere.
  

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Negative Identity Cont

• As a teenaged girl, Piquette is described by
  Vanessa (p. 103/104) as
• Animated by a violent gaiety
• her lipstick is bright carmine and her hair is
  cut short and frizzily permed. She had not been
  pretty as a child, and she was not pretty now,
  for her features were still heavy and blunt. But
  her dark and slightly slanted eyes were
  beautiful, and skin-tight skirt and orange
  sweater displayed to enviable advantage a soft
  and slender body.

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Canadian Literary Chickens Come Home to Roost

• The intervening years between the publication of
  Laurences (1963) The Loons and Kinsellas (1977)
  Linda Star could be construed as the period of
  time that Indigenous literary chicks come home to
  roost.
• In fictional terms, Piquette dies and is born
  again in Linda Star

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Examining the Inconsistencies in Kinsellas Linda
Star

• Silas characterization (naïve country bumpkin)
• Lindas characterization (she is both bold and
  hesitant)
• If youre not doing anything why dont you buy
  me a beer Linda say, and she smile at me real
  nice but real bold too, like she want something
  from me but she dont know how to ask

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Walking with Helmut Walking Eagle

• Lucy Flora live in a society have has
  established norms of custom, behavior ways of
  seeing.
• Whereas in The Loons, the McLeods and their
  society set the norms against which the Tonnerres
  are implicitly compared. The value system upon
  which the story rests determines the themes of
  the story.

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Warriors Compatriots

• Narrative provides richly drawn characters who
  are humorous, hospitable, complex and
  contradictory
• What is the opening image?
• Who is Hilda looking for?
• Warrior constructs a web of relationships as we
  progress through Lucy Hildas day. What are
  those relationships?
• They are primarily familial and yet reveal the
  socio-economic conditions and political realities
  

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Elements of a true picture

• Bunky stays out all night
• No running water an outhouse
• Lucy doesnt attend the Sundance
• What is Hildas response to this news?

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We Now Pause for a Commercial Break

• And no we are not selling flesh, fowl nor good
  salt herring
• Themes can be construed as an artistic thesis
  statement through which the author makes an
  observation or a recommendation for action
• Theme statements are best made in complete
  sentences at mid-level generalizations

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