Qalupalik

Normally, I will take a myth that I have found over the years and retell it.  This week, I wanted to tell the story of Qalupalik, an Alaskan story dealing with the Innuit version of the kelpie.  However, the Nunavut Animation Lab has done a remarkable video of this same story, and it would be a shame not to call attention to it.  So this week, rather than read my version of a legend, you can access the Nunavut Animation Lab here.  Once you've watched it, I've got a few thoughts on it.

 Have you watched it yet?  Good.  One thing I find most interesting about this myth is that it highlights an age-old tradition in storytelling:  that of The Moral.

The Moral has been around for almost as long as storytelling has existed, and even today persists as a means of conveying a message.  In Greek plays, the Chorus existed to condense and give the audience something to "take home" - a lesson to learn.  In the Bible, we see morals in the parables of Christ, the struggle of Job, even the Garden of Eden.  Today, we may find morals in Aesop's Fables and other children's stories, such as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."  Jurassic Park, one of my favorite novels (and movies), teaches us that we don't have the right to play God.

The list goes on and on; morals abound in literature, and this week's myth all but screams its moral.  In the story this week, Qalupalik's hunger for children derives from a child's unwillingness to listen to his or her parents and elders.  The moral is clear:  obey your parents.  It's interesting that there are many versions of the Qalupalik story, and yet most of them contain that simple qualification:  Qalupalik snatches children who don't obey their parents.

While it is certainly an important lesson to learn, we must ask ourselves why we even feel the need to put morals into literature.  Jonathan Gotschall, author of The Storytelling Animal, argues that stories - particularly moral stories - teach us how to behave in social settings.  They encourage us to interact with each other in mutually beneficial ways, creating a stronger society.

Of course, this flies in the face of the ever-popular "survival of the fittest" myth.  We are taught that the strongest survive, the ones with the greatest advantages carry on their blood lines while the rest simply die out.  Evolution only works when we're selfish.

But that isn't what the literature teaches us.  Indeed, when a character in literature is self-serving, he or she is typically the villain in the tale, while the hero acts selflessly for the good of the whole.  Whether it's William Wallace dying for freedom or Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of humanity, whether it's Captain America crashing his own plane or Darth Vader sacrificing himself to destroy the Emperor, the popular - the good - stories teach us that self-sacrifice and moral behavior are the best course of action for everyone. 

So whether or not Qalupalik actually exists is irrelevant (though the parallels between the Innuit tale and the Celtic tales of the kelpie are compelling).  What matters in this tale is the moral:  if parents are leading correctly and the children are following, society will remain intact.  It is when our roles begin to break down that monsters emerge.