| The Dilemma of Identity in the Novels of Thomas King focuses on three novels by King: Medicine River (1989), Green Grass, Running Water (1993), and Truth and Bright Water (1999). Using two terms by Pierre Bourdieu, "disposition" and "position," I suggest that King's texts play out both his primary disposition, which is that identity, including King's own identity, is a dilemma of trying to be a part of and apart from something at the same time, and his didactic position, which preaches that an Indian is better off in his own culture.; Discussions of Indian identity in Western culture typically situate Indians in one camp and whites in another. My thesis contends that Indian identity is more than belonging to either the Indian or the white world, but is, instead, the result of a complex process of simultaneously becoming a part of and apart from either or both worlds. King's texts, I attempt to demonstrate, organize themselves around a central narrative procedure, a basic structure---a part of/apart from, coming home and back to culture---that his protagonists adhere to, or are encouraged into, as they work out their lives as Indian people living alongside white communities in a sometimes symbiotic relationship. In King's world one can observe his characters operating along a kind of spectrum where on one end there is partial assimilation and on the other end total assimilation. Inside the spectrum, characters, and even settings, enact variations on the prevalent a part of/apart from theme. These characters and settings are versions of King's own dilemma as an artist, who appears to fall somewhere closer to total assimilation into white culture and partial assimilation into Indian culture. In each text there are a number of different boundaries that separate recognizable signs of Indian and white culture, boundaries that King often blurs. This blurring of boundaries can make the reader laugh but, most often, it can make the reader feel uncomfortable because it challenges the stereotypical representations of Indian and white culture that King's North American readers, both Indian and white, expect. The result is often a zone of in-between-ness that King uses to promote his primary didactic position---an Indian is better off returning home to the reserve---and that also mirrors his own disposition: that being an Indian in today's Western society requires a kind of simultaneity, almost a dual consciousness. In many ways, King is offering Indian and white readers a chance to rethink and, quite possibly, redefine the narrow definitions of Indian and white that currently separate us. |
