Ceremony

Excuse the formatting!!

Ceremony

• • Leslie Marmon Silko
• • Setting
• o Laguna Reservation and surrounding area
• o Gallup = evil town where the NA live dirty and drunk on the streets, too proud to go
• • Characters
• o Tayo
• o Emo
• o Betonie
• o Aunite
• o Ts’eh
• o Josiah
• o Rocky
• o Harley
• o Night Swan = Mexican whore that seduces Robert and Tayo along with other NA men
• • Plot
• o Tayo is coming home from WWII. He thinks he saw his dead uncle Josiah in the crowd of Japanese he was ordered to fire. Rocky died. Those two things drove him a bit mad
• o He goes home and grieves for Rocky and Josiah. He feels tons of guilt and thinks hes responsible for the 6 year drought they’ve been having
• o His age-mates, Harley, Leroy, Emo and Pinkie also fought in the war and now spend all their time getting wasted. They talk about the respect they used to get during the war and it makes Tayo really angry and frustrated
• o Ku’oosh performs an old ceremony on Tayo to help him out but it doesn’t work
• o Tayo thinks about his childhood with Rocky and how Auntie would always keep them apart and that it was her who always favored Rocky. When they enlist in the army, Rocky calls themselves brothers. Rocky was always good at sports and very white
• o Josiah has an affair with Night Swan the Mexican prostitute. He buys cattle from her brother in an attempt to make more money.
• o Tayo goes to see Betonie and they have a ceremony that combines white and Native practices
• o Tayo then goes in search of Josiah’s cattle and meets Ts’eh. After his night with her, he follows a mountain lion’s track to the cattle. The cattle have been stolen by this rich white guy and TAyo is pissed. Patrolmen come and arrest him but then they decide to go after the mountain lion again
• o He takes the cattle to Ts’eh and it starts snowing saving him and the mountain lion
• o He spends the summer with Ts’eh and the cattle but then Robert comes to tell him of Emo’s rumors.
• o Tayo runs to an abandoned uranium mine and Emo, Pinkie, Harley and Leroy arrive. They kill Harley. Tayo stabs Emo in the stomach and then he goes home.
• o He tells his story to the elders and they proclaim him cured.
• • Author’s Style and Narrative Voice
• o Point of View
• • Third person through Tayo and his actions
• • The narrative is broken by traditional Native American stories/poetry
• • The timeline resembles a jumbled web and is relevant to the story in that Tayo is also jumbled and tangled in Thought-Woman’s web
• o Tone
• • It starts off resentful and slightly confused. Tayo isn’t sure what he is or who he is and that causes resentment to both the Native Americans and the white people. By the end of the novel, as Tayo finds himself, the mood changes to hopeful because not only does Tayo decide he is Native American, but he knows that there are ways to preserving his dying culture.
• o Imagery
• • Silko creates beautiful landscapes of her imagery.
• o Symbolism
• • The color yellow is really big because it represents Sun Father, who is one of their main gods.
• • The wind creates circles and directions. The whole novel takes place in a circle. Circles are a huge part of Native American culture.
• • Quotes
• o “’It seems like I already heard these stories before… only thing is, the names sound different”
• • Grandma’s line
• • Native American stories are very important and are passed down to teach lessons and give important information to the next generation.
• o “The people mistrust this greatly, but only this growth keeps the ceremonies strong”
• • Betonie’s line
• • He talking about how he has adapted the ceremonies to better fit the new times and traditions that have been adapted from white culture. This helps contribute to the theme in that in order to survive and thrive the ceremonies and therefore the Native American culture must change and adapt.
• • Theme
• o Silko is trying to say that we need to bend with the wind and be flexible and adaptable to the changes that are to come
• • Its pointed out that the Native American cultures are dying out because they are so stuck in the past. The influence of white culture has drowned out a lot of the Native American’s traditions.