Last Friday I was enjoying my graduate school seminar (with nine fun people, five officially enrolled, three unofficially joining, and one TA) as we were talking about a great Native American (Passamaquoddy) story called "The Girl and the Chenoo" that I've used a dozen or more times in my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class for first-year university students, and we were explaining the character of the protagonist, Little Listener, and after most of our members had said something about her, I pointed out what I like to point out about her every time I teach this story, that although she changes the Chenoo from a monster into her grandfather she herself doesn't change because she's perfect from the start, when Hui, one of my Chinese grad students, spoke up and said something like, "She does change! She smiles on page 53! Because she has had her own adventure and her life is usually boring."
And then we found that she smiles again a little later... Two times after not smiling during the first half of the story! Ah, the wonderful nature of literature, whereby you can think you know everything there is to know about a story and then someone, often a student, will point out something that you've been missing and it changes--deepens--how you understand and appreciate the story. Yes, I can see that: Little Listener usually stays in the camp that she and her three older brothers make when they go on their seasonal hunting trips into the wild forest, and then when her brothers return in the evening after their days of hunting, she listens to their exaggerated hunting stories (hence her name), and then one day this giant man-eating monster the Chenoo comes to their camp and she deals with the threat by calling him Grandfather and offering him food and shelter, so he learns that she's his relative so he can't eat her or her brothers. Finally, the Chenoo suggests that they make a sauna in which to sweat away his giant monster body, after which he coughs out his icy monster heart so Little Listener can toss it in the fire and melt it, leaving him permanently their grandfather. So this might be her first real adventure. So perhaps it stimulates her into smiling. Anyway, it is a nice story and I do like my class, so it was a great way to finish my third week of classes. Now for a long Golden Week vacation (ten days off this year!)!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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