59 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas KingGreen Grass, Running Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaPart 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4, Lionel, Alberta, and Charlie Summary
Pages 334-336, 346-348, 356-360, 362-376, 378-380, 383-392, 409-411, 416-420
Alberta stands outside the Dead Dog Cafe in the rain until she is soaked through. Inside, Latisha gives her a blanket, hair dryer, and cup of coffee to help her warmup. After a lengthy conversation in which she unloads all her problems, Alberta feels warmer and realizes the nausea is back and that her breasts ache. Latisha notes that she felt that way when she was pregnant, but Alberta scoffs at the idea. As Latisha gets ready to leave for the Sun Dance, Alberta decides she wants to go too, instead of seeing Lionel. On their way to the camp, they discuss marriage and having children, but Alberta still denies that she could be pregnant. At the camp, she is surprised to learn that Lionel is there with Eli.
Lionel and Eli leave the store to go for breakfast, but on the way, Eli changes his mind, and the two head toward the Sun Dance. Along the way, Eli tells Lionel about his life, and Lionel grows increasingly uncomfortable as they approach the circle of teepees that makes up the camp. When they arrive, Lionel sees his father and Norma, who are both happy to see him. Norma suggests that he and Eli join in the dance later. Eli agrees to do it, but Lionel does not. Shortly after, Lionel is met by the elders at the edge of the camp. They tell him they need the jacket back because they had only lent it to him to see if it would make him feel better.
At this moment, Lionel sees his sister, Latisha, talking to her abusive ex-husband, George. Latisha tells him George is somehow taking pictures of the Sun Dance, and George tells Lionel that it is his jacket that he’s wearing—the elders confirm this is true. Lionel determines that George has a camera hidden in his briefcase, and with the help of Eli, takes George’s film rolls. He gives the jacket back, and George leaves, insulting their beliefs and the Sun Dance as he goes. The elders tell him that they’ve now done all they can for him and not to mess his life up again. Lionel greets Alberta and Latisha, and they wish him happy birthday. Lionel realizes the elders are gone.
Charlie lays in bed at the Lodge, reading a magazine and attempting to call his father. He is surprised when someone finally picks up.
The next morning, Lionel is awoken by the sound of the earthquake. Norma informs him that Alberta is pregnant, and he goes outside looking for her. Alberta denies being pregnant and tells him it’s not his business when he asks if the child is Charlie’s. Soon, the ground begins to shake.
A month after the dam bursts, the water levels drop, and Lionel, Norma, and Latisha look over the wreckage. Eli was in his house and was killed in the flood. They miss Eli, but Norma reminds them he lived a good life and lived it right—especially because he came home in the end. The remains of the dam are going to be torn down, and Norma wants to rebuild the cabin. Alberta arrives with Charlie, who tells everyone he has lost his job since the dam burst and that he is going on vacation to see his father, who has become a big movie star again in Los Angeles. Lionel assumes Alberta is going with him, but she is not. They spend an hour digging out the main porch post, and Norma asks Lionel if he is going to stick around to help rebuild the cabin. He is unsure and talks about potentially going back to school, but Norma ignores him, and they get to work.
Part 4, The Escaped Elders Summary
Pages 336-337, 348-351, 360-361, 383-391, 400-401, 404-408, 411-413, 420-423
Hawkeye takes over as narrator. Pleased with themselves for fixing the Western, the escaped elders sing a “Happy Birthday” to Lionel. Claiming that they’ve done all they can for now, they leave the store. They head out toward the prairie in a single file line when Coyote catches up with them, asking to come along. They agree that he can join him, so long as he doesn’t take any pictures or do any more dancing.
After the dam has burst and the river is flowing again, the escaped elders talk to Coyote. They tell him it’s a lot of work to fix up the world and that the last time he fooled around like this, they had to start all over again. Coyote claims he didn’t do anything except a little dancing and a little singing. He then reveals that he did help as well: He made Alberta pregnant.
Upset that his car is missing, Dr. Hovaugh storms around the parking lot in the rain looking for it. Once Babo convinces him to come inside, he tasks her to rent them a car while he goes to change. When he returns, Babo has bought them tickets for a tour bus because there are no rentals available anywhere, given that it is a long weekend in Canada. The tour goes by the Indian Reservation and ends at the dam. This sparks an idea for Dr. Hovaugh, and after feverishly consulting his notes on past escapes the elders have made and how they align with world events, he concludes that something is going to happen the next day at Parliament Lake (where the dam was built).
In the morning, Dr. Hovaugh and Babo board the tour bus early to ensure they get seats at the front. When they finally arrive at the lake, the tour guide notices that there are three cars floating in it: a red Pinto, a blue Nissan, and a white convertible Karmann-Ghia. When the earthquake hits, the swelling off the water causes the cars to repeatedly crash into the dam until it bursts.
Back in his office, Dr Hovaugh is informed the escaped elders have returned. He seems reluctant to accept this and asks for John. Meanwhile, Babo talks to the elders and asks how their trip went. They respond that it went well, and while it was only a small part of the world that they fixed, and part of it got messed up, that it still felt was good. They suggest maybe next time they’ll help Dr. Hovaugh.
Part 4, Creation Stories Summary
Pages 333-334, 351-356, 393-399, 413-416, 423-424
Old Woman is looking for something tasty to eat when she comes across a tender root sunbathing near a tree. Old Woman asks the root if it is tender, but it does not respond and jumps back into its hole. Old Woman begins to dig and dig, trying to find the root. She digs all around and under the tree, until she has made a hole so big that she falls into the sky. From the sky, Old Woman falls into the water. She looks around and sees a young man walking on water, who claims to be looking for a fishing boat. She offers to help, but he refuses. They soon come across a boat that is rocking back and forth in some giant waves. The men aboard ask for help, and Young Man Walking On Water says he has to be the one to help them so that they will love him and become his apostles. However, he is unable to calm the waves, so Old Woman steps in and sings them a song. This works, but when the men on the boat learn that it is a woman who helped them, they don’t believe it and assume it must have been Young Man Walking On Water.
Old Woman leaves them and floats around some more, in rivers, bathtubs, bays, and lakes. She soon floats ashore and is met by a man named Nathaniel (“Nasty”) Bumppo, who assumes she must be Chingachgook because she is Indigenous. He tells her that “Indians have Indian gifts” (351), like a keen sense of smell, good eyesight, agile bodies, and being able to run fast and endure pain, while white people have gifts like being patient, intelligent, sensitive, and philosophical. Old Woman points out that this makes it seem like white people are superior, and Nasty Bumppo agrees with her. He then claims that white people are also good killers, and if she is not his friend Chingachgook, then he will kill her. However, just as he is loading his big rifle, he is shot from somewhere.
As he is dying, Nasty Bumppo tries to name Old Woman something more appropriate for a killer. He provides a few options—Daniel Boone, Harry Truman, Arthur Watkins—and then settles on Hawkeye. Then, Chingachgook comes out from behind a tree. As the two talk, some soldiers come along and arrest them. They’re sent to Fort Marion in Florida.
Coyote interjects that they’re back at Fort Marion again, and now Hawkeye is there with the Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, and Ishmael.
Things get crowded at the prison, so the elders decide it is time to leave. Lone Ranger puts on their black mask, and the guards allow them all to walk out the front door. They soon come to a river, and the Lone Ranger tells it they need to cross because they’re trying to save the world. The Big Muddy River tells them to hang on, and the earth starts to shake. By the time the shaking is done, they are on the other side. From there, they keep walking until they arrive in Canada.
Coyote returns to the narrator wet and covered in mud. The narrator says they’ll have to tell the story again, but before they do, the elders urge Coyote to apologize in case he has offended anyone. Then they start back at the beginning where there is nothing but water.
Part 4, Eli and the Dam Summary
Pages 344-348, 362-369, 376-378, 399-400, 406-408
Eli and Lionel leave the store and head to the Dead Dog Cafe for breakfast. On the way, Eli wants to talk about the Sun Dance, but Lionel is now preoccupied with the elders and the jacket they’ve given him. Eli pulls the car to the side of the road and asks and asks Lionel if he could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? After responding that he’s spent his whole life in Blossom, Eli turns around and heads toward the Sun. On the way, Eli tells Lionel about how he left the reserve as a young man, about his relationship with Karen, and how he eventually came home. Lionel asks why he decided to come home, but Eli refuses to tell him because it would ruin the story.
At the camp, Eli talks to Harley, Lionel’s father. Eli notes how there are fewer tepees than when he was here last, and Harley tells him about some of the families that have started to come back. They also discuss the dam and how it poses a threat to the Sun Dance tradition. Normally, the river floods every year, providing the cottonwoods with nutrients. Given that the cottonwoods are where the Blackfoot get the Sun Dance tree, the fact that the dam will disrupt the natural flooding means the Sun Dace tradition is at risk too.
After the incident with George, Eli returns to his cabin. Sifton turns on the massive floodlight at the dam, and Eli does not sleep well. In the morning, he piles some wood into his truck and waits for sunrise. As he wishes he was at camp to see the sunrise over the teepees, Eli realizes the elders are standing infant of his porch. He offers them coffee, and they discuss the dam. The Lone Ranger tells him it is going to be a good day, then the earthquake hits and the dam bursts.
Karen enters remission and wants Eli to take an early retirement so that they can travel. The first place she wants to go is to the Sun Dance. Once the plans are made, their friends decide to throw them an early going away party. On the way to the party, Eli considers what he’ll say to his mother when he sees her—he hasn’t been home in over 20 years. However, it is a snowy and icy night in February, and Karen is killed in a car crash when they’re hit going through an intersection.
Part 4, Latisha Summary
Pages 337-344, 375, 380-383
The unknown caller leaves another message for Latisha, this time telling her he’ll see her at the Sun Dance. She assumes it must be Eli or Lionel, but it is later revealed that George was the caller when he shows up at the Sun Dance. George is carrying a suitcase and claims he is there to take pictures of the Sun Dance for a magazine. When Latisha reminds him that this is forbidden, he tells her it isn’t a big deal. Throughout the conversation, Latisha can hear a clicking sound every so often and is sure George is taking photos somehow. Anxious, Latisha looks around, hoping Norma or her father will show up.
Part 4 Analysis
This section highlights the theme of Storytelling as Colonial Resistance. Like all the figures from Biblical stories before him, Jesus—here, given the “Indian” name Young Man Walking on Water—insists on establishing rigid rules and asserting his authority over those around him. Young Man to refuses the help of Old Woman, despite that fact he is completely ineffectual at calming the waves. King uses Young Man to point out how obsessive Western culture is about individuality and the idea that great men are responsible for everything meaningful that happens throughout history. This point is driven home once Old Woman actually saves the men in the boat, only to be easily persuaded that it couldn’t have been her that saved them because she is a woman. Later, through Old Woman’s encounter with “Nasty” Bumppo (the protagonist from James Fenimore Cooper’s popular series the Leatherstocking Tales), King provides an efficient deconstruction of how stereotypes can be used to create hierarchical binaries.
After leaving Bursum’s store, Eli’s initial attempts to talk to Lionel about the direction of his life are not landing, as Lionel is too preoccupied with his new jacket to understand what Eli is trying to tell him. However, in telling his story to Lionel, Eli finally comprehends the mistake he made in leaving his people to try to live his life as a white man, and that fighting against the dam for them now has given him a purpose he never felt before. It is not until he turns the car around and pulls onto the lease road to head toward the Sun Dance that Lionel starts to pay attention to the importance of the landscape around him. Symbolically, this signifies a move away from the predictable linearity of “asphalt and mileage signs and billboards” that is the modern Western world into the expansive Indigenous lands, where it feels as if at any moment the road might disappear, causing them to “tumble into the grass and disappear” (365). By taking this path—one that seamlessly blends into the natural world—Lionel is primed to understand the significance of the ceremony he is about to see.
It is also crucial that during this sequence, Eli refuses to tell Lionel why he came home. Eli suggests this would ruin the story, which falls in line with the overarching approach of the novel and Indigenous storytelling in general. Green Grass, Running Water isn’t just telling Indigenous stories and teaching about Indigenous social issues; it is also doing it as part of an oral tradition that encourages readers/listeners to process information differently. At no point does King spell out exactly what the reader/listener should conclude about the text. Instead, he provides a wealth of knowledge, ideas, and references and leaves them open to interpretation so that every individual can take whatever they need from the text. Likewise, Eli recognizes that Lionel has lost direction in life because he has tried to adopt Western ways of living. Providing direction for him means recalibrating the way he thinks about the world. Thus, rather than directly telling Lionel what he should do with his life, Eli tells a story, giving Lionel the opportunity to come to conclusions for himself.
While Lionel is not yet ready to participate in the Sun Dance like Eli—a sign that Eli is fully reconnected with his cultural roots—Lionel finally “[feels] peaceful, as if the rest of the world, the store, the town, the dam, had all disappeared” (369). Moreover, the jacket that initially felt snug and formfitting (a symbol of his ties to whiteness), suddenly feels suffocating and smells stale or rotten. The confrontation with George—the owner of the jacket and all that it represents—is what finally allows everything to click into place for Lionel. Narratively, George represents the worst, most exploitative aspects of colonial culture. He shows no respect for the Blackfoot traditions and demonstrates the kind of entitlement that the world exists for his consumption. By protecting his people and cultural tradition from the intrusion of George, Lionel is finally ready to reconnect with his cultural roots, discover a more empowered version of himself, and find direction for his life. In many ways, this trajectory mirrors the one Eli followed in rediscovering himself and his cultural identity through defending the reserve against the dam.
That the plotlines all converge on the earthquake—usually a random act of nature, but, in this case, a result of coyote’s joyous dancing—provides one final emphatic blow against the rigid, ordered, control that has been associated with the Western colonial worldview throughout the text. Making it even clearer is the fact that the dam—symbol of continued colonial dominance and oppression—is taken down by three floating cars (aptly chosen to be a Pinto, a Nissan, and a Karmann-Ghia because they humorously evoke the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria—the three ships of Christopher Columbus). As the dam and everything it represents break down, Dr. Joe Hovaugh, Sifford Clifton, and Bill Bursum must all watch helplessly, as the typical forms of control and dominance they assert are no longer of use.
Unsurprisingly, given the novel’s cyclical structure, the ending is focused mostly on new beginnings. Following the symbolic cleansing provided by the bursting of the dam, Lionel, Charlie, and Alberta are ready to look forward, each with their own newfound sense of direction and purpose, thanks to their interactions with the escaped elders and the Sun Dance. They help Norma reconstruct the cabin using as much of the original material as possible, signaling the importance that whatever comes next must remain connected to the past. Alberta, who initially felt reluctant to accept that she was pregnant, has accepted it. While the text implies that Coyote is responsible for her pregnancy, it does not dwell on who, if anyone, will help her raise the child—and most importantly, no one else seems to care, either.
Unlike Lionel and Alberta, who seem poised to stick around the reserve, Charlie is not. However, having reconnected with his father after seeing the altered Western, Charlie has found his own route to come to terms with his Indigenous identity—one that will take him back to Hollywood, the primary source that severed his connection in the first place.
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