Ceremony by Silko

Sorry no cute gifs or meme for this one. It has yet to come to me.

Ceremony by Leslie Silko

Silko is an American-Native American, writer, similar to the story’s protagonist, Tayo who is half white, half inidian. The story’s narrative jumps from past to present to myth at strange times so excuse me if this gets a little confusing. I’ll try to keep things straight in the tangle of Tayo’s head/narrative.

The story starts with Tayo being bed ridden, sick from the trauma of war. He remembers his time at war, seeing the face of his dead uncle, Josiah, in a crowd of Jap soldiers that would be shot a second later. He remembers the death of Rocky, his brother figure, really cousin to Auntie, the woman that takes care of him now. He is guilt ridden, blaming himself for the things happening around him. Tayo notices he isn’t the only one lost, his friends are as well, soothing the pain he has with alcohol and stories of glory when they were in the Vietnam war. However, Tayo does not find comfort in alcohol the same way the rest of his friends do, hating the stories that they tell because it reminded him of the discrimination that Natives are treated with. Tayo’s frustration is so weld up and his hatred so deep that one day at the bar, Emo, an ruthless war vet, insults him and takes a broken beer bottle in the stomach from Tayo.

His grandmother brings in a medicine man that tells him a different set of stories, Native tales and he preforms a ceremony to try to cure Tayo. It helps but doesn’t cure him. Tayo slowly recovers, the memories not floating around as much anymore. He remembers back to Rocky, how Auntie would keep them together but treat them separately. He remembers Night Swan, a half blood like him, who Josiah had a sexual affair going on with, despite her age. He remembers Josiah, buying rough cattle during a drought. When it lets up, Josiah sends Tayo to give a note to Night Swan where they eventually sleep together for only one night.

Snap back to the present, the medicine man refers Tayo to another, more infamous medicine man in the town of Gallup. That’s where he meets Betonie, another half blood like him, where he learns that the problem within Tayo and Native Americans had to do with the contact with whites. He says that there are ceremonies for that, but the ceremonies have to change with the times, to accommodate themselves for the present situation in the same stories change yet essentially stay the same. He also reveals that it was Native American witches/evil people that invented white people, to try to stir up trouble and that only Tayo can perform this ceremony.

Tayo embarks on his ceremony, looking for clues that guide him, following the stars and cattle until he meets with a woman named Ts’eh. He spends a night with her and then leaves to find Josiah’s cattle. Just as he’s about to get to cattle, he’s caught by two patrolmen. However, they let him go in pursuit of a mountain lion. He follows his herd’s trail created by the snow and is led to a hunter/ranger that turns out to be Ts’eh’s (isn’t that just awkward, with two apostrophes?) hubby. It turns out that she’s managed to catch Tayo’s cattle and then hand them over to Robert when he comes to pick them up.

Tayo spends his summer with Ts’eh, bonding and doing lovely couple-y things like finding flowers together but when the summer draws to a close, Robert reports that Emo’s been spreading rumors about Tayo going crazy again. Ts’eh tells him how to avoid the police and then leaves. Tayo takes the advice and avoid the police. He hides in the crack of the earth in a uranium mine and realizes this is the last part of his ceremony that will complete him, the binding of his native and white self. Pinkie, Leroy and Emo are within earshot and he learns that they are torturing Harvey, trying to taunt him out to save him. Tayo is lured away, grabbing a screwdriver to kill Emo with but he is stopped just a moment from doing so, realizing that subcoming to their threats meant leaving the ceremony and risking exposure. He backs up and lets them kill Harvey.

He survives the night and returns to Betonie. The ceremony was a success, the drought has stopped and the impending destruction scared away. It ends with Grandma saying the stories are all the same and sunrise.

Characters:

Tayo- The half white and half native son of a prostitute. He grapples with his own existence and guilt throughout the novel, the ceremony finally curing that rift within himself created by the death of Rocky (his “white” side) and Josiah (his “native” side) and makes him realize the existence of life and death and the cycle in which he shouldn’t feel guilty for. He’s more aware and spiritual than his war friends.

Auntie- The mother of Rocky and aunt of Tayo, the sister to Tayo’s mom. She tries to fit in with the culture and prizes Rocky above anything else. She puts up with Tayo only because he’s her nephew and purposefully seperates him from Rocky. Is married to Robert. Also, Tayo seems to know her more than anyone else and they have some mutual understanding.

Ts’eh/ “Montana”- the literal personification of “Montain” or mystical goddess of nature of some sorts, Tayo falls in love with her and she presents him with crucial information for him.

Emo- The symbolic figure that represents the witches and witchery that they do. He was a star soldier in the Vietnam war and enjoys killing things. Has a beer bottle shoved into him by Tayo. Eventually (at the end) he disappears from the story, not killed off like Leroy or Harvey.

Leroy/Harvey- Friends of Tayo that are recovering for the war. They spend their time and money drinking away their sorrows and telling stories of the past rather than trying to move on.

Narrative Voice:

The narrative voice in this one works very well in confusing its reader. Which is great since that’s how Tayo feels and I’m pretty sure that’s what Silko was trying to get the reader to sense. The point of view is third person, limited omniscient, mostly from Tayo’s perspective although there are moments when the story breaks from this and evaluates the past or present from another person’s POV, like Helen Jean, Tayo’s mom and Night Swan. The purpose of this is so we can see and feel the thoughts of others in the Laguna community and learn the things that may be confusing if not stated explicitly. Because Tayo is lost in the dark and doesn’t know so much, it’s not only a nice break from his constant puking but allows the reader insight in the intentions of the other characters and how they react to whats going on in the story. Along with the segmented narratives, the story is paralleled with ‘poems’ interspersed throughout the story. It seems like these are old tales/ceremony told by the older generation and the story or narratives works as a reinterpretation of them.

 There are two different tones, while in the narrative, depending on the person, most of the time, it’s a very gritty reality, often times marred with frustration (Tayo), anger (Emo), passiveness (arguably Night Swan) and etc. In the poems, it’s often characterized with very simple, folklore-ish language that foreshadows or reflects whats happened in the narrative.

Symbols:

Emo’s bag of teeth: Symbolizes his witchcraft and the teeth inside functions to symbolize his need for death and destruction.

 Tayo’s puking: His inability to hold anything in shows that his body is just rejecting everything that he is because the two sides of him are at conflict. It symbolizes his awkwardness in his culture, as if even his body rejects who he’s trying to be. Finally, the fact that he can’t hold down the alcohol the same way the rest of his war buddies are able to implies that he needs a more spiritual method of dealing with the pain and guilt.

Drought: The evidence that something is running amuck in the Laguna/Native community. Tayo blames himself for the drought, and it may well be because of him since once he’s finished with the ceremony, it’s rained again but I think it more likely shows the health of the entire community, shows that everything’s dying because there’s something wrong/someone’s done something wrong like the people in the poems who did witchcraft.

MountainLion/Ts’eh: The mythical and the presence of a guiding force that acts to help Tayo.

Colors: I can’t even. No. I’m not even going to try to dissect this color thing. It plays an important role if you’ve picked up on the fact that yellow is good and alludes to the sun god and blue is for rain and etc but theres so much referencing that I’m not even going to get into it. Sorry.

Numbers: Four is good.  Five is bad. The end.

Quotes:

"It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different." The book begins and ends with sunrise and there’s multiple parallels between the poem and the novel and finally, at the end, Grandma, the oldest and probably wisest in the book, states the thing that Silko has been pounding on us since the beginning: all of this has happened before, there are differences but, the essential and core of a story doesn’t change, only the names and little details. It also alludes to the necessity of storytelling, a constant motif in the novel.

“I’m a half breed, I’ll be the first to say it.I’ll speak for both sides.” This is particularly powerful because the reader realizes that it is Tayo’s job to seek to fill the rift between natives and whites. It can only be him and those of mixed heritage because they possess the power to integrate both cultures together. That’s why no one else has been able to bring the drought to an end; they needed a Tayo, a combination of Rocky (white culture) with Josiah (native culture).

Theme:

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is a novel written to show the necessity of stories/knowledge and the need to continuously adapt traditional methods to keep up with changes in the present.

The ceremony in the book works to cure the rift between the two conflicting sides of Tayo. On the macro level though, the ceremony cures the rift between natives and whites. Ceremony is hardly a novel about a guy struggling with himself, guilt and death, it’s also a very political novel. Silko critiques on things like the atomic bomb and the discrimination against minorities to prostitution and nation of drunkards. Putting aside the native American culture, the novel is also about accepting death and the need to keep tradition alive with change without killing the core of it.