In the Preface to his book, The Trickster, Paul Radin wrote, "manifestly we are here in the presence of a figure and a theme or themes which have had a special and permanent appeal and an unusual attraction for mankind from the very beginnings of civilization." He continued, "Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being." (Radin, Paul. The Trickster (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), p. xxiii)
The trickster is found in all ancient literature --- Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Semitic, and (yes) Native American. In Native American animal stories, the trickster is typically raven, coyote, hare, or spider. Coyote was pervasive in the Western US. But the characters are not animals in the normal sense; they all have normal human endowments.
One may ask, of course, why coyote (Canus latrans) was to become the trickster figure for all of California and the Great Basin as well as for portions of the Northwest and the Southwest. Perhaps it was because coyote is pervasive; perhaps, because he is wily; perhaps, because of his yodelling nocturnal howl; perhaps, because he integrates his life so intimately and thoroughly with humans.
We may ask (and should) who plays the trickster's role(s) for us today. And this is a serious inquiry because the trickster is a necessary cultural possession!
Why do we need the trickster character?
If the trickster isn't personified in one figure, then it will have to arise somewhere else; the trickster is omnipresent in the world and in time. At a most basic level, we come to this statement because life itself is a trick --- and a deadly one!
Create a world in which everything is eating everything else? A world in which all living things come into magnificent bloom and then, almost immediately, rot away into trash? Life in which the only certainty is death --- perhaps violent death? Come on!
The trickster, then, is both a symbol and a medium. He is a symbol of life as it actually is; but he is also a medium into understanding and reconciliation. He is "Everyman," embodying everyone of us and everything. He doesn't blush. He steps between worlds --- between the world that we dream of having, that we construct, and the world that really is, that is given us.
Why is Coyote the way he is?
Coyote is impulsive and gross. Always (almost) he messes up. He is the antithesis of our perfectionism. He is the last person that we'd want in a delicate situation.
In all of this, Coyote reminds us of what we could be, and he reminds us that all of these instinctual impulses are still within us. Most of all, he reminds us that, when we are most focused on some well-reasoned plan, we are blindest to the complexity of our own motivations.
Why is Coyote triple-X rated? He is, in fact, the epitome of all sexuality --- crazy, fun loving, risk taking, impossible to discipline, ever present, and dangerous. Coyote is outrageous! In a society where it's taboo to even look at one's mother-in-law, to say nothing of speaking to her, Coyote sets the old woman up and has at her in the middle of a river crossing!
Indian society was no more sexually liberated than our own society. But through Coyote, Indian society could laugh at themselves. How do we laugh at ourselves?
[Note: There is good psychological evidence indicating that human drives, needs, motives, etc., are extremely complex and mutually conflicting. Thus, we are healthiest when we can hold these many sides in view. Whenever we try to construct life in a way that ignores this diversity and prohibits any outward or conscious expression, we set ourselves up for major accidents in which the repressed material returns unrecognized to hinder or even destroy us.]
Copyright 1996, 1998 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
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