Oral Patterns of Performance by Barre Toelken

Author:Barre Toelken [Toelken, Barre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: d9NjrgEACAAJ
Publisher: Utah State University Press
Published: 2003-01-15T04:06:35+00:00

I have an idea that the full meaning and emotional force of this occasionally humorous tragedy will elude us. Even so, many fascinating things are going on in the story, and we can ask some fairly pointed questions about them. For example, we notice several places where the narrator must have illustrated his story with hand gestures, such as when the man “slapped this way” when he accidentally struck the grizzly’s vulva by thrashing around, or when the narrator describes the grizzly’s hands as “that large her paws.” What other gestures, volume levels, facial expressions, or eye contact did he use? We have little indication, for Boas was mostly looking for language examples, not performance styles, unfortunately.

We can observe that the activities in Part I essentially depict male hunters going after meat, while those in Part II describe women harvesting berries and salmon. Part I is mostly about human behavior; Part II is mostly about the behavior of the bear. Part I takes the human characters away from the familiarity of a tribal town and toward unforeseeable, open nature in the woods; Part II takes a bear in the opposite direction: away from the woods and into town. The oldest, “improper” brother is welcomed into the family of the great grizzly bear (once the possibility of killing is converted by the female to sex) in Part I, while the great grizzly is welcomed into the family life of the town (once they get used to her odd way of carrying berries) in Part II. Yet, as we see toward the end, the berries episode is not fully accepted by the people, for the angry young man uses it to scold the bear. And even though the great grizzly works hard to harvest enough salmon to distribute to everyone, she is apparently doing it wrong—presumably by not letting anyone else help in a process that is normally shared among the townspeople. The man, who in Part I has saved his own life by accepting marriage with the grizzly bear (what options did he have, one wonders?), nonetheless eventually misses his family and wants to return to them. In spite of sexual intimacy, life among the bears isn’t entirely satisfying; indeed, he is described as “lost.” Similarly, though the grizzly in Part II gets along amazingly well with her husband’s family and her cowife, calms the baby, supplies food (if you don’t mind her processing method), and labors diligently at the fish trap, she somehow isn’t fitting in. She is still a grizzly bear living away from her natural element in a human town. When the young sister first sees the grizzly and runs in fear, she is providing an important commentary found in many Northwest stories: The young can often see—and be honest about—something that the grownups are trying to overlook to be polite.

In the stories about women marrying bears, the union lasts a considerable time, and the woman has children by her grizzly husband. Nonetheless, sooner or later, realities seep into the story: Hunters are out looking for bears—that’s what hunters do.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.