The World On The Turtle's Back Analysis

The novel “The Back of the Turtle” by Thomas King is relevant to Canada in both present day and history. Through the setting, characters and theme the story is portrayed in a way that makes it sound like a calamitous prediction for the future of Canada’s treasured natural world. Riddled with corporate greed and environmental disaster, the story follows those involved and affected by the catastrophe that destroyed Samaritan Bay. His lifelike characters are tangled with labyrinthine emotions that add another layer of complexity to the story. In my opinion, the novel “The Back of the Turtle” by Thomas King is a great novel because of the depth of storytelling that the author can achieve, and deserves to be recognised as a “Great Canadian Novel”.

The presence of evolution in literature was evident hundreds of years ago. The The World on the Turtle’s Back is a myth created by the Iroquois. This myth is an explanation of how the world was created. From 2000 B.C. to 1620 A.D. literature was centered around the beginning of the world. There are four functions of a Creation Myth.

In the Genesis story, God created two lights, one to control the darkness and one to control the heavens, essentially, good and evil. “And God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars.” (Genesis). This is similar to The World on the Turtle’s Back, where the two brothers controlled the good and evil, the light and the darkness. “The right-handed twin made the deer, and the left-handed twin made the mountain lion which kills the deer. But the right-handed twin knew there would always be more deer than mountain lions.” (Iroquois). This quote tells us of the balance that there was between the two twins. While the left-handed twin always made animals to counter with the animals made by the right-handed twin, there would always be enough animals made by the right-handed twin that the system would stay balanced. “the daylight realm of the right-handed twin… the domain of the left-handed twin – the fearful realm of night.” (Iroquois). This shows us the differences between the twins in which the right-handed twin symbolized good and light, while the left-handed twin symbolized evil and darkness. These two stories however differ from that of the Creation story. In the story, Creation, there is no god that controls good or evil, there is only light and darkness, but the two gods together make the world balanced with both good and evil. “All the mysteries and power in the Above belonged to Tawa, while Spider Woman controlled the magic of the Below.” (Hopi). These two gods worked together, neither was evil but Tawa was seen as light and Spider Woman was seen as darkness. “Rain Cloud will pour down waters, and Tawa will smile upon it so that green things will spring up to feed my children.” (Hopi).

The next comparison between two stories is that of Norse mythology and Greek mythology. Both stories have very similar ideas and ways of telling their stories of how their world came into being. Norse has their giants, who gave birth to the original three gods that created Midgard. The Greeks have the Titans who bore the Greek gods who overthrew them as well to control the Earth. Both myths contain the presence of creatures in their stories, beasts who helped shape their respective worlds to move the culture’s creation stories further along. Creatures within these worlds would be the dwarves, the serpent Nidhogg, and demons of Norse myth and the Cyclopes, the furies, and Typhon of Greek origin Furthermore, the children of some of these creatures were divines, who ended up overthrowing their elders to lead the creation of their own worlds, to rule over their own creations as well. And speaking of the world, both myths have multiple layers to their

They then go on to explain how the right and left-handed twin are content with the worlds that they helped create.

In the beginning there were two worlds. The lower world, and the upper world. Everything existed in total darkness. The upper world was to hold mankind, and the lower world was where all of the monsters lived. A woman gave birth too twins. One twin was the good mind and the other was the evil mind. The good mind

Ymir was such a cruel god, Odin and the other gods could not tolerate it any longer and plotted against and killed him. Then Odin and his brothers made all things from the parts of Ymir’s body. Odin had positive interaction with his brothers and they all agreed he was the most powerful. His aunts, Ymir’s sisters were very upset over the death of their brother and constantly caused trouble for everyone.

In the story of The World on the Turtle’s Back two twins are actually complete opposites. One being evil and one being good they create things that balance out the Earth, one without the other would result in no stability. The constant competition between the two also created balance. Today we still need equilibrium in good and evil. With the competition that drives us to do better today, we can only succeed.

After reading The Earth on the Turtle’s Back and When Grizzlies Walked Upright, many key details are displayed about the Onondaga and Modoc cultures, these tribes vary in their beliefs but the morals that are conveyed through their folklore are very similar. In the story, The Earth on the Turtle’s Back, there is a group of mythical people that live in the Skyland. After the chief's wife dreams about the Great Tree being uprooted, the young chief pulled the tree from the soil, exposing a large hole in the ground, his wife leans to look into the hole and falls through to a sea of water, where the animals that inhabit it created Earth on the Turtle's back for her to live on. In When Grizzlies Walked Upright, the Chief Sky Spirit creates a mountain of snow and ice on Earth and

The Norse story did not have one maker of good, but multiple elements and events that emerged from one evil giant in this creation myth. Ymir was malicious and wicked and when Odin and the other gods could no longer tolerate Ymir's evil acts, they united to kill the giant. "Ymir’s huge body formed the earth, his blood became the sea, his flesh became the land, his bones the mountains and his hair the trees" (Distant Train, Inc., 2011). The other gods and Odin shaped the sky with his skull, it was held up by four towering tall pillars. Odin created the sun and moon out of sparks of the fiery depths of Muspell and placed them in the sky. The ice began to melt in the new world of Ginnungagap from the illumination of the sun and moon and vegetation began to grow. Odin named the new world Midgard, meaning 'The Middle Land'. Odin discovered two fallen trees, of ash and of elm, which he then extracted from the mud and shaped the first woman and man. "Odin breathed life into the beings, gave them reason and feelings, hearing and sight" (Distant Train, Inc., 2011). Similar to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, Odin then called the man Ask and the woman Embla.

Each ethnic group has their own depiction as to how nature should be valued. Native Americans see it as a valuable resource which was not created for them, but they were created for it; therefore, Native Americans tend to respect all aspects of nature. Europeans, however, believe God created this Earth for them to take full advantage of it. The Native American point of view is shown through two texts entitled “The World on the Turtle’s Back” and “The Powwow at the End of the World.”

In The World On The Turtles Back the right handed twin represents day and heaven, the left handed twin represents night and also hell. “The day time rituals they thank the master of life. The night time or darkness the people dance and sing for the left handed twin” (39). The right handed twin is smart, does good and he brightens things up. The left handed twin is evil, mean and is just a dark person that’s why he reminds me of hell. In this next story God distinguishes day and night so we could find a place where we belong. Genesis explains a lot more than we can understand because there is a lot of info. “And God made two great lights the greater light ruled the day and the lesser light ruled the night” (1). Day and night are very different because they represent different things, they have different meanings. The sunrises in the morning it brightens life and is like a heaven, can make you happy but night time it’s dark, mysterious and scary. TWOTTB twins and Gods day and night are similar because the right twin can compare with day and the left handed twin can show similar qualities with night

How does power impact a society? I read yertle the turtle. I think that this book answers this question perfectly. Power affects the whole society in this book when yertle the turtle forced everyone in town to stack on top of each other and stay there for days. This impacted that whole society because they were all forced to be stacked on top of each other just so yertle could be satisfied.

The Blanding turtle are freshwater medium sized turtle usually found in The Great Lakes Regions in USA and in Canada. They are from the omnivorous species and usually eat crayfish, small animals, and plants. Their life histories traits occurs between April and November, as May and April tend to be more for mating and Early June for nesting. Less than half of these females will actually go on to reproducing. Many of these turtles can actually live up to sixty to a hundred years in age. Though these turtles spend a majority of time in the aquatics they also come on to the mainland. This is were the problem starts to occur and this is why the Blanding sea turtles are currently threatened and may soon be extinct. It is because of us humans that these species are currently facing habitat loss, have threatened nesting areas, and are unable to get from nesting areas to the lakes because of manmade roads. Why should we as humans care so much if these Blanding’s turtles go extinct? These turtles play an important

A one-day excursion to Watamu’s most famed beach resort, Turtle Bay, is barely enough time to absorb the inviting array of luxury that the tropical paradise offers. The dense Arabuko Sokoke forest whose ecosystem spills into Watamu stirred recollections.