Teacher Notes

I got a good grade on my paper on the short story Gussuk by Mei Mei Evans. I want to keep a list of the teacher's comments on my paper, even though I don't personally believe it deserved 40 out of 40, I'll take it.

Matt Butcher
Mjb0123@yahoo.com

Exploring Culture in Mei Mei Evans’ Gussuk
Matt Butcher

Culture is the essence of a group of people. Throughout multicultural literature pieces, it has become apparent that culture cannot be transplanted without great hardship. Whether forced or involuntary, one cannot easily drop oneself into the middle of a new alien culture and be expected to survive without purposeful intent. Like a fish out of water, a new environment can be harmful and even constricting. Unlike fish, humans have the mental capacity to handle situations, but only if humans understand their own backgrounds and abilities. In Mei Mei Evans’ short story Gussuk, she shows that a fish out of water and a human out of its own environment can be just about the same thing.[I see you are inspired by the author’s salmon-swimming-into-fresh-water-and-dying imagery. :)]

Evans is the Master of Arts program director at Alaska Pacific University and teaches classes in ecofeminism and other women’s studies classes (Alaska Pacific University). At the age of only 20, she says she hitchhiked from Boston to Alaska and fell in love with the area and that “It was love at first sight; something about the preponderance of wilderness and the open-mindedness of the people I encountered fired my imagination and made me feel that I'd come home” (Evans “Faculty Bio"). She sees a tight connection between culture and nature mixing with a form of national identity. “It has become my labor of love to study, write about, and teach the potential and the peril afforded by the interconnection of these values in American and Alaskan culture” (Evans “Faculty Bio”).

As the short story Gussuk starts, the reader immediately senses an attitude of adventure within a new culture. The protagonist of this story is the new nurse to the Alaskan area of Kigiak, Lucy, a young Eurasian American from Boston, and events are all seen from her eyes in a third person limited perspective. This is important to note because most readers see this story the same way, from the eyes of an outsider gaining access to a new culture. The reader finds that the only way to enter into this new world encircled by mountains is by a small float plane. Immediately, the perspective makes the reader take note that outsiders cannot share the same perspective. This sense of adventure that Lucy has in the beginning is only her sense of adventure. The indigenous population would not say that everyday life is an adventure.[Excellent contrasting cultural and situational perspectives] Lucy is already, even before the plane touches down, the fish out of water. The very fist sentence starts the motif of water and nature because the plane lands “so smoothly that it felt to Lucy as though the surface of the lake had risen to meet it.” The water is already interacting with Lucy.

As she gets off the plane, she notices that the clothes she thought would make a good impression single her out even greater. “Lucy felt conspicuous suddenly in her khaki skirt and tasseled loafers” and when she sees the natives, “All of them wore pants.” When a native man begins to speak to her in Yup’ik over the roar of the plane’s engines, she realizes that she resembles these people in appearance. Her Eurasian blood makes her so similar that the man doesn’t [avoid contractions in formal writing] even realize she doesn’t speak Yup’ik and isn’t Eskimo. On the surface, they are the same. Lucy looks the part enough to fool even a native. Here, though, she realizes that there is an immediate difference, that looks aren’t the only factor. If it were looks, she would be part of the new culture easily. Culture goes deeper than that but as yet, Lucy doesn’t realize it. She straight away realizes she has been thrown into this situation and she must “Sink or swim.”

While Lucy starts to settle in, she wonders why the nurse before her “left so abruptly” and that “no one seemed to know.” If she thought deeper on it, she may have sensed that this happens in this position as if it were the natural way of things. She doesn’t think on it any more than the others do.

The native children that she meets spotlight another simple way that Lucy is different. The simple words that reference blue jeans separate them. She calls them “dungarees” and the children don’t understand until she explains. These simple word differences set them a world apart. It is the children who introduce her to a new word too. Gussuk. The children use this word to describe the white missionaries who live in a separate house from the village. She cannot tell if this word is derogatory or not.

Researching the word Gussuk was not easy. There are not many references to it, almost as if the native culture it comes from has not wanted it to leave their surroundings. In all mentions, it is not a flattering word. The Anchorage Daily News has printed that “Gussuk means gullible” (Toomey). The Alaska Native Foundation has produced material about the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, with the Alaska Department of Education, and defined Gussuk as an “outsider, stranger; often means ‘whites’” (Alaska Native Foundation). In other media, the word is used derogatorily, such as on a comparison to the harshness of the Iditarod dog-sled trail and the strange food prepared on it that if one is “a squeamish Gussuk, the Eskimo of Shaktoolik will magically produce a steak or pork chop to satisfy your palette” (Runyan). Used harshly, it means something akin to intelligence and cultural awareness. One author notes the word used against him as he courts a native woman’s daughter. He realizes that he must prove he is not “a bumbling, incompetent Gussuk” in order to win the mother’s approval (Hammond). Another author states how this word never really hurt him, even though he was separated from the rest of the culture because of it. “They would either call us ‘gussuk’s son’ or ‘downriver woman’s son.’” It was derogatory, but it never bothered me much then” (Huhndorf). Clearly, this word separates any outsider trying to fumble about in the native Alaskan world. [Valuable research]

Lucy does not want to be a Gussuk. She instantaneously wants to be a part of the Eskimo world. She wants to fit in so much that she eats the offered seal oil-dipped fish that inwardly sickens her. She again realizes how much she looks like them as the native Robert is wearing mirror sunglasses. As she looks upon Robert, she looks upon herself, in both the mirror of the glasses and in reality. They are not as far apart as she would like to believe. Lucy however thinks that just eating the fish is enough. She is reminded by Mercy, the woman feeding her the fish that “’You look Eskimo. Now you gotta act Eskimo.’” She says this in almost the same breath that she calls her a Gussuk and, even worse, an Avuk, a halfbreed, clearly putting her down as she tries to size her up, placing Lucy into her position as the “other.” Lucy gets offended but tries not to show it. Lucy does not point out that this native woman is sipping from an aluminum can of Pepsi Light while smoking on a Salem cigarette lit by a disposable lighter. She should have pointed it out to Mercy and the natives instead of just to herself. [Yes, a public health practitioner should take the opportunity to teach a bit.]As she sits there with Mercy, being offended and not standing up for herself, she thinks, “The point was that she was sitting in an Eskimo house, eating real Eskimo food.” She divides herself from these people in her own head, as if this was some great adventure and not her new life.

This sense of adventure is typified in her view of the world around her. As she talks to the native Robert, she speaks of how lovely and peaceful the area is. These mountains and surroundings are alien to her, but they are second nature to Robert. She is telling a native how amazing his normal backyard is. He patronizes her harshly, saying, “’Just like a calendar picture, right?’” as if all these surroundings were from another world. We have calendars of faraway and interesting places, not our own backyards. Lucy even stumbles when she says, “’You’re so lucky to live here,’” but realizes that Robert does not consider himself lucky. He feels “trapped here.” Amazingly, people find elsewhere always alluring until living there. [Depends on the place. I found the Riviera to be divine!]

The recurring motif of nature and water is exemplified in the salmon run. The salmon race for their spawning grounds. But as “she watched the water and felt Robert watching her,” he expresses how the fish depress him. “’I can’t help thinking how they’re all gonna die.’” The fish are going to die simply for coming here. They mill about in the water, waiting to spawn, as Robert mills about Lucy, wearing her down. [Excellent!]

In a moment of weakness during the ironic Independence Day celebration, Lucy and Robert come together. “Lucy sat down and reached for Robert’s hand,” showing that the feelings were at least mutual. “When they made love she had cried out—something she’d never done before,” showing that she wholeheartedly accepted it for that moment in time. However, she doesn’t even hear her own words on the situation as Robert talks to her. Robert says, “’Your world is different from mine.’” And Lucy responds, “’That doesn’t mean it’s better.’” Lucy is Robert’s calendar picture.

Noticeable after she and Robert came together, the salmon thin out in the stream, another image of how nature and humanity merge together. The salmon accomplished their task. Like the salmon, Lucy hangs around the area, “straggling.” She realizes that “she was and always would be a gussuk. She didn’t belong here.” As the dead fish wash ashore, Robert loses his job. As Lucy leaves the area, she watches Robert speed “away across the darkening lake” on a boat.

Two years later, Lucy is in Anchorage, after finishing her American education in Boston. She is in Anchorage with its quarter of a million people and not the bush of Alaska. She is close enough to her calendar picture without being a part of it. She meets again a native, even though she doesn’t remember meeting her in Kigiak. She learns that Robert has died, drowned just like the salmon.

Anna, the native woman remarks twice how much Lucy looks like Robert. Lucy still doesn’t realize that this likeness is not just in physical appearance. Like the mirrored glasses Robert wore, Lucy sees something of herself in Robert. She cries perhaps because she does not understand her own role, caught between two cultures, Eskimo and American, as she is caught between her own ethnic makeup. She does not want to think that she is like the salmon, only once coming together and then dying.
This short story shows the reader the similarities between nature and humanity. Like a fish out of water, humans have trouble understanding other situations. However, humans can accommodate with learning new cultures and understanding their own cultural roots. Humans can learn to swim in a new environment with the knowledge that the new environment is just as good as the calendar pictures that they study.

Beautifully done, Matt. I like the way that you picked up on the imagery and symbolism in this story. In particular you point out that Lucy came into the situation with a completely different mind-set, one of adventure, compared to the mind-set of struggle and hardship that the native people had. She seems not to have been as aware of her overall purpose there, providing health care, as she was of the romance of being in this wild environment with these uniquely different people. 40 points.

Works Cited

Alaska Native Foundation. “ANCSA: Caught in the Act, Teacher’s Guide.” 1987. 27 May 2005 <http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/caught.html>.

Alaska Pacific University. “APU MAP Program Director.” 26 May 2005 <http://www.alaskapacific.edu/graduate/programs/map_director.html>

Evans, Mei Mei. “Faculty Bio.” 26 May 2005
<http://www.alaskapacific.edu/faculty_staff/faculty_bio.php?id=46>.

Evans, Mei Mei. “Gussuk.” Imagining America. Eds. Wesley Brown & Amy Ling. New York: Persea Books. 2002: 237-251.

Hammond, Jay. “Ghosts from Christmas’ Past.” Alaska. Anchorage:
Dec 2003. Vol.69, Iss. 10; pg. 80. 26 May 2005
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3787/is_200312/ai_n9302254.

Huhndorf, Roy, as told to Alexandra J. McClanahan. “Native Rights Started in a Freezer.” LitSite Alaska. 26 May 2005 <http://litsite.alaska.edu/aktraditions/huhndorf.html>.

Runyan, Joe. “Shaktoolik: In a word, unforgettable.” Cabela’s Inc website. 2005. 27 May 2005 <http://www.cabelasiditarod.com/coverage_2002/prerace_article0214.html>.

Toomey, Sheila. “Alaska Ear.” Anchorage Daily News. 24 April 2005. 26 May 2005
<http://www.adn.com/news/politics/v-printer/story/6415650p-6294336c.html>.