Revised: Open Prompt 1

2010. Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience. Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Alienation and exile can be a frightening experience that allows for character development in both the real and literary world; a scared new student put into a new high school may be shy at first but can overcome that fear and develop a new confidence in himself.  Likewise, the character Tayo in Ceremony by Leslie Silko feels estranged from Native American culture because he is part Indian and part white. Coming home from the trauma of World War II, after losing his brother figure, Rocky, Tayo realizes the rift in himself and struggles to put those two parts of him together. Silko uses this rift in Tayo is symbolize the generational difference in the young and older Natives and how it could be healed by a ceremony.

Tayo's internal strife that the novel centers around comes from his surroundings yet starts in his roots. His father is estrange, presumably a white man that slept with his mother who abandons him at four years old with his uncle, Josiah. While Josiah does his best to incorporate him into the family, his wife, called Auntie, distances him from her and her son, Rocky. The alienation grows even further as Tayo comes back from World War II, where he struggles with the part of him that relates to the old, spiritual ways while growing up in a changing culture.

Eventually, Tayo does find a way to heal the two parts of him; by doing a ceremony. The series of events, objects and people are meant to allow him accept certain things in his life that he has not and embrace a part of himself. He falls in love with Ts'eh, also known as Montano, symbolizing his love for the wild and clues him in on the fact that the ceremony actually exists. Once he begins to believe in it, animals also begin to appear to help him, making Tayo acknowledge the fact that he also has a deep belief in the mythical teachings that whites disdain. By the end of the summer, he is able to return the missing cattle that Josiah had bought; thus letting Auntie accept him into the family. Finally, he completes the ceremony by watching the death of his friend, Harley, accepting that life completes itself in a circle and death is the end and there was no use in bringing back the past, something that Tayo struggles through. By the end of the novel, Tayo is able to return home, accepted into his family and community, completed and whole by healing the two sides of himself.


The internal strife within Tayo is also used to generalize Silko's theme of consolation between the generational differences within Native Americans, the older believing in spirituality and the young embracing American culture while forgetting their roots. Tayo represents these two conflicting sides and his eventual consolation between the two sides of him also helps bridge his separating community. 

The rift that Tayo has between himself is important to the novel because it comes to symbolize the many things that Silko is trying to say; its not just a division of Tayo but also representative of the rift between of two cultures as well as the different generations in Native American culture. Having Tayo complete the ceremony, Silko proves her point that there are problems created by the intrusion of American culture but it can be eventually cured.