83 pages • 2 hours read
Thomas KingA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Every chapter but one begins with King telling the story of turtles holding up the earth. King argues that each time the story is told, it changes slightly for the speaker and the listener. What the turtles represent, then, is something permanent that does not change in the story. Every time the story is told, the ending is the same. What changes for the speaker and listener or reader are the details that lead to that ending. This suggests that stories both do and do not change.
Additionally, the turtles relate to the book’s larger project. The creation myth that ends with the earth being held up by turtles is different from the Judeo-Christian creation myth. King does not advocate for one over the other but indicates that we should imagine both as stories, not truths, and then choose to believe them or not. We can take from each creation story what we will, but we should wonder what impact such stories have on us and the world around us.
Photographs dominate several chapters of The Truth About Stories. King writes of the artificially constructed photos of Indians taken by Edward Sheriff Curtis and Richard Throssel, and the effect those images have on other Indians.
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Borders
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Green Grass, Running Water
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Medicine River
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The Back of the Turtle
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The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
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Truth and Bright Water
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