Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)
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In her novel Ceremony, author Leslie Marmon Silko writes of the psychological anguish of Native American veterans returned from World War Two. This would make Ceremony, first published in 1977, a somewhat outdated account of a past cultural event - were it not for the form of her storytelling. Ms. Silko adopts a ritualistic approach to the story of the half-breed Tayo's coming to terms with his war experiences. In so doing, she creates of his tale a myth: it takes on the characteristics of Native American "history," an oral tradition mixing fact and allegory, ritual and reality. This paper will explore some of the aspects of myth in Ceremony, and the techniques Leslie Marmon Silko utilizes to strive for that goal. She does not create of her main character a mythic protagonist in the classic Euro-American mold. Hers is not an "heroic" ex-warrior in the Greek, Roman, or Arthurian traditions. Tayo, the half-white/half-Laguna "reservation Indian," is a war vet who readily acknowledges that he probably never killed anybody intentionally during the War. Instead, Tayo is haunted by memories of two instances where he failed to save lives: the lives of surrendering Japanese enemies, murdered by his G.I. comrades-in-arms, and the life of his cousin Rocky, the success-oriented pride of the reservation, who Tayo had promised to bring home safely. In Tayo's mind these deaths blend into another death, that of Josiah, Tayo's uncle. Tayo had promised Josiah not to go to war but
. . .
War's end. The spokes connecting these "warriors" to their own Native American consciousness were broken. They can only approximate the feelings of time/space nonlinear connections through the haze of alcohol.
It is one of Ms. Silko's accomplishments that she understands in her writing the appeal of alcohol: it is similar in result to the vision-inducing rituals of the old medicine man, Betonie. Tayo's uncle, Robert, and old ones from the Laguna Pueblo reservation convince Tayo that he must see Betonie. There is a battle between worldviews, between "connections" to time/ space in this suggestion. Auntie, Robert wife and Tayo's blood-aunt, is a Christian who is clearly offended by the lack of propriety afforded by turning to the seedy Betonie: "What kind of medicine man lives in a place like that, in the foothills north of the Ceremonial Grounds? (116)". Tayo himself is skeptical, because Betonie's ceremonies had not helped other vets. His problems are different, though, and he knows it. Recalling the "spoke" analogy, it becomes clear throughout Ceremony that friends like Harley and Leroy have broken all connections to the time/space continuum of their own kind; they are to be pitied and taken care of (when possible),
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Native American, II Indian, California Tayo, Harley Leroy, Earth Mother, Tayo Japanese, Mexican Indian, Coyote Buzzard, Marmon Silko, Instead Tayo, native american, marmon silko, leslie marmon, leslie marmon silko, time/space continuum, native american sense, american mythic, white people, mythic stories, war vet, laguna pueblo, own native american, american sense time/space, pueblo reservation, native american mythic,
Approximate Word count = 1805
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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