Leslie Mormon Silko's Novel Ceremony

The Laguna Pueblo are a Native American people that, according to Silko in Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit, "embrace the whole of creation and the whole of history and time" (49). In this essay and in her novel Ceremony, we see that the Laguna are not only connected to nature but are part of it. The land and its creatures are their creation, their history, and their time. In her essay, Silko writes of this embodiment of the land within the identity of the Laguna: "Pueblos have�always been able to stay with the land. Our stories cannot be separated from their geographical locations, from actual physical places on the land" (58). We most clearly see this connection to nature in the story of the protagonist of Ceremony, Tayo.

In Ceremony we are treated to the homecoming of Tayo, who has been away fighting a war in a foreign place. His experiences have distanced him from emotion and from his heritage and connection with nature. Tayo's barren emotional state and his disconnection from self are mirrored by the drought-ridden land which greets his return. Before he can reconnect with his lost self, Tayo

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