"From 'The Winnebago Trickster Cycle'"

This blog entry is comprised of my notes and thoughts on The Winnebago Trickster Cycle as it is presented in the seventh edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume A.

Text Notes on Story 19:

• This story opens with Trickster wandering about the world.  As the tale progresses, he encounters (one at a time) a little fox, a jay, and a nit.  Each in turn agrees that they should all live together because separately, each was looking for a place to settle down.
• The group decides that a patch of land where a river forks and red oaks grow is a good place to live, so they build their home there.
• In the autumn, food is plentiful, but when winter and snow come, the group becomes very hungry.  To solve this problem, the Trickster proposes a plan to take the form of a woman in order to marry a nearby single man who happens to be a chief's son.  Thus, he proposes, the group will be able to eat what the chief's son hunts until Springtime.  The tale ends with all four agreeing that this plan is a good one.

Text Notes on Story 20:

• Trickster begins this story by creating female parts for himself and becoming a woman.  Upon doing so, he allows the fox, the jay, and the nit each to impregnate him before finally donning female apparal and going to the village to court the chief's son.
• When the Trickster arrives in the village, there is an emphasis placed on the inappropriate roles and the incorrect order in which things are done (i.e. a woman courting a man).  Nevertheless, they are married and a traditional wedding meal is consumed.
• The Trickster proceeds to be impregnated by the chief's son and give birth to a son on three separate occasions. 

Reactions to Story 20:

It is only the footnotes provided by the anthology that explicitly state that the order of things is wrong.  The old woman who points out that a woman has clearly come to court the chief's son appears to play a pivotal role in this role-reversal humor, though.  

I am disturbed by the absence of follow-through with the Trickster's having been impregnated six times (once each by the fox, the jay, and the nit  and three times by the chief's son) but only bearing three children.  Perhaps in a different version of the story there is some sort of allowance for the other three pregnancies, but in this translation, I find it a bit confusing.

Text Notes on Story 21:

• The third son that Trickster bears to the chief's son cries incessantly.  Finally, the crying son asks for a white cloud (and recieves snow), a piece of the blue sky (and receives blue grass), a green leaf (which he also gets), and finally for a roasting ear (of corn).  All of these items are obtained and given because it is the chief's son who is requesting them.
• While roasting the corn, the Trickster's 'sister-in-law' teases the Trickster and chases him around until he jumps over the fire pit and drops "something very rotten" (the liver-vagina he made himself in story 20) (80).  
• Immediately, all know that it is the Trickster, so he and his three friends must flee the village immediately (because what they have done is an exceptionally bad thing).

Reactions to Story 21:

Again, there are footnotes about how very bizarre the interactions between Trickster and his mother/sister-in-law is.  The absurdity evidently stems from the Trickster's true gender being male.  Because no man's mother-in-law would ever be permitted to tease him, the story instead calls her a sister-in-law; however, without the technically inappropriate teasing, the fact that it was inappropriate (because the Trickster is a son-in-law) would not have been discovered.  When one thinks about it in this way, the absurdity of the tale becomes a bit more obvious.

It is also important to note that Trickster has shamed the chief's son mightily by making him unwittingly perform homosexual acts.  This is why he must flee so quickly.

Text Notes on Story 22:

• Trickster thinks on his actions towards the chief's son and decides that it is time he should return to his true wife and son and get his life in order there.  He does so and is a good father until his son is grown.  Then, Trickster decides to travel once again.

Reaction to Story 22:

Trickster's doing things outside of the traditional normal way is much more evident to the modern reader than the occurrences in the previous stories.  The father leaving home upon his son's adulthood is clearly backwards; even today it is generally accepted that a child grows up and leaves his/her parents' home.  

Text Notes on Story 23:

• This story is primarily scatalogical humor.  Trickster hears a bulb on a bus repeatedly saying, "He who chews me, he will defecate; he will defecate" (80), so he eats it in order to prove it wrong.
• As Trickster continues on his travels, he begins "to break wind again and again" (81).  He continues to do so with such force that he lifts himself off the ground repeatedly (and higher each time) until it gets to the point that he hurts himself from the fall.  At this point, he must secure himself to the earth by holding onto a tree and finally by being buried under a dissembled lodge upon which people sit.
• After he scatters the lodging and people on it, Trickster finally feels that he must defecate, and once he does, he is unable to stop.  He winds up having to climb a very tall tree in order to stay out of his own feces; however the story ends with the pile of excrement slowly reaching him on his high branch.

Reaction to Story 23:

Apparently poop humor has been around forever.

Text Notes on Story 24:

• This is an extremely short story.
• Trickster falls off his tree and into a pile of his own excrement, thus becoming filthy.  Even the box in which he keeps his penis is very dirty, so he empties it and continues on.

 Text Notes on Story 25:

• The Trickster makes his way to water with the help of trees that guide him (by talking to him).  Once in the water, he takes an extremely long time to clean all the filth off of himself and his possessions.
• It is noted that without the help of the trees, Trickster would probably have died because the excrement had blinded him.

Reaction to Story 25:

This story kind of strays away from the poop-humor of the previous two stories and forces the reader to see that Trickster's humorous ways are actually very detrimental to his well-being.  By wanting to prove a bush wrong, he eats a fruit that leads to him severely injuring himself after falling from a severe fart.  This isn't the only ill thing to happen to him though!  He also falls into the excrement and gets it in his eyes, thus blinding him and leaving him helpless and vulnerable.

I think that there is something to be said for the trees helping him though.  After all, Trickster is the "first son" of the Earth, so he is not simply left to die.  It also illustrates that Trickster has some extraordinary help keeping him alive and in the position of a trickster.  If anything, the closing of these excerpts suggests that Trickster is an integral part of human life and that he cannot simply die and leave people in peace.  Thus, the trials he puts people through are also an integral part of life.