What is “Really” Real?: Time and Perspective in 'Green Grass, Running Water' Julia Tilson 12th Grade

Thomas King’s novel of First Nations, Green Grass, Running Water, intertwines the lives of several Blackfoot Aboriginals with the existences of the Elders. The connections among these characters emphasize the way reality is viewed in society. As Vega points out in the journal “Subverting the “Mainstream” Paradigm through Magical Realism in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water,” “[w]ithin the magical tale which is Green Grass, Running Water, King also creates a series of ‘real’ stories, which are as real as fiction can be, about the lives of people living in the natural world of the Blackfoot reservation” (11). The novel changes the accepted perspective of reality through the use of characters that are both real and unreal, as well as through an undefined dimension of time and the notion of what it means to be a real Indian.

In Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, the existences of the four Elders and Coyote is significant because it exemplifies the theme of real and unreal. These five, as well as the unknown narrative, have the ability to exist within the real world and the unreal world. For example, the Lone Ranger can exist as a hospital patient (King 427) in the real world, and as First Woman (68) in a creation...