rst pages of Ceremony the reality of Tayo's experience is cast in a mythic environment where vision and verity are one. If time and space in the real world are linear, in the mythic world they are circular - with the individual the axle to which all is connected as if by spokes to a wheel. In such mythic environs, stories of the different generations intermingle constantly. Allegory and reality mix: at one and the same time Tayo can be in a hospital in Los Angeles and virtually dead, his spirit of being dissolved into "white smoke."
There are physical connections. When in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, suffering from fever and skin-fungus, Tayo prays for the jungle rains to stop; now, in New Mexico, there has been a drought stemming from that moment. An "Earth Mother" figure repeats her appearances in two different guises of unselfish fulfillment: as the old Mexican ex-whore whom Josiah loves and who initiates Tayo into sex, and as Ts'eh, the pure-spirited Monta±o woman whose undemanding love in the near-final chapters allows Tayo to rebuild his spiritual strength. These are the connections of myth, when wish and action bring results on more than one plane of existence.
Some of the "spokes" are broken. (Please note: "spokes" is this writer's analogy, not the author's.) It is inti
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