Transcript Lysbilde 1 - Passage new

Understanding
“Tony’s Story”
The title
 There are many different ways to tell the same story. Most
stories have a sequence of events, but it is the way the narrator
presents these events that decides how we understand them.
 It is the narrator that makes the connections. “Tony’s Story” is
written by Leslie Marmon Silko, but it is told by Tony.
 In fact, the title underlines an important theme in the story – that
the world can look very different from different perspectives. The
title reminds us before we start reading that we are dealing with
one perspective on events.
The drought
 First sentences in short stories are often important. In this
one it seems at first glance to be fairly straightforward:
It happened one summer when the sky was wide and hot
and the rains did not come.
 The oppressive heat of the drought is referred to several
times during the story, and we may think of it as just part of
the setting.
 But by the end that we realize that how vital the drought is in
Tony’s understanding of his own story. The drought has an
active influence on events.
The pueblo – and beyond
 The story takes place in or near a pueblo, a Native American
reservation, where Tony has lived all his life.
 The pueblo is in some ways a world of its own. It has its own
administration, its own laws and even its own police force.
 But it is also in America, and we are constantly reminded of
the larger world outside – the gas station, Grants, Kool-Aid
and, not least, the state policeman.
The start of the conflict
 In the very first scene of the story, these two worlds meet
head on.
 It is San Lorenzo’s Day, a festival which the pueblo
celebrates with processions and a funfair. The following day
there is to be a ritual Corn Dance. The purpose of this is to
help the corn grow.
 Tony meets his old friend, Leon, who has been away in the
military. Leon is drinking from a hidden wine bottle – drinking
alcohol is forbidden in the pueblo.
 Suddenly a state cop (i.e. a police officer from outside the
pueblo) pushes through the crowd. Without saying a word,
he punches Leon in the face, breaking some of his teeth.
Two worlds
 Leon’s reaction to the assault surprises Tony, and shows the
difference in their outlooks. Leon has been influenced by his
period in the military. He has become a “troublemaker”, as
Tony puts it, and talks about rights and justice. We can
imagine that in the multiethnic environment of the military he
has learned a thing or two about standing up for himself.
 Tony, on the other hand, has never left the pueblo. His
source of wisdom is “the stories that old Teofilo told”.
 We don’t know exactly what these stories are, but we can
guess that they are old stories, handed down through the
generations, perhaps about the spirit world.
The cop and the Corn Dance
 Because Leon is the more dominant of the two, it is his
viewpoint we hear most clearly. Tony’s understanding of why
the state cop is bothering them is never stated clearly.
 But there are hints all the way. After the assault on Leon, Tony
has a dream in which the state cop takes part in the Corn
Dance.
 This connection is confirmed later when the cop follows them
from the gas station. After describing the drought again, Tony
says: and then I knew why the drought had come that summer.
He gives no further explanation, but we understand that the cop
and the masked figure of the Corn Dance are for him the same
thing. They represent something threatening – and non-human.
Worlds collide
 In the final, fatal meeting with the policeman, we see more and
more clearly that Leon and Tony are taking part in different
“stories”.
 In Leon’s story they are being harassed by a racist policeman
(referred to as he) and Leon has brought a rifle along to defend
himself.
 In Tony’s story, however, they are dealing with an evil spirit
(referred to as it) - and Tony is wearing an arrowhead for
protection. As the cop raises his billy club to beat Leon, Tony
sees him as masked figure pointing with a human bone, as in
his dream.
Reading “backwards”
 “Tony’s Story” is one of those short stories that have to be
understood “backwards”. The first time you read the story you
may have been surprised that it was Tony, and not Leon, who
killed the policeman. It is only when you look back that you can
make sense of it. (This does not mean that you read the story
badly, but that the author was good at covering her tracks!)
 That is one of the things a good story can do – surprise us into
realizing that the world is not as straightforward as it first
appears.
 And in case you have decided that Leon’s world is the real one
and that Tony’s is just a primitive illusion, then look again at the
last line. He actually succeeds in ending the drought!