Ceremony

 

Summary and Analysis the Quick Kenzie Way:

Ceremony

Leslie Marmon Silko

First published 1977

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Setting: The Laguna Rez, (New Mexico I believe?), area beyond the Rez owned by whites/State land, the jungle of the Philippines/Cities Tayo visited during the war, and the spiritual past. 
 

Plot:
Tayo is a WWII vet, haunted by his status as half-Indian half-white and the trauma associated with war.  He comes home physically and mentally sick, and does not recover until he meets with an old Navajo healer, Betonie.  Betonie guides him through a series of steps and ceremonies (scalping ceremony, stars, a woman, finding the cattle) which heals him.  When Tayo resists the temptation from a corrupted Indian veteran, Emo, and resists violence, he brings the world back to peace, and banishes all the witchery and tools of the witches (whites) back to order.

 

Significant Characters:

Tayo:  Our main guy.  Mixed kid from the Rez, never fully accepted by Auntie, looks to Josiah and Rocky as two father-figures.
Betonie: Navajo healer.
Auntie: Tayo's Aunt, a failed yellow woman, Rocky's mom, wants the white culture
Robert: Auntie's husband, soft-spoken.
Josiah: Father figure for Tayo, Auntie's brother.
Rocky: Tayo's cousin.
Harley and Leroy: Tayo's friends, ultimately fail him in the end
Emo:  Evil. Basically a witch.
Night Swan: Old cantina dancer, involved in Tayo's pre-war life
Ts'eh: Yellow woman, heals Tayo, love each other

 

Narrative voice/POV: Third person limited to Tayo, some of parts of the story told by other characters such as Betonie, Grandmother Spider.

Tone: In-your-face, everything is going downhill but there's some hope, somber, realistic.  Silko doesn't squirm away from gory details and never fails to mention colors or the landscape. 
 

3 Significant Quotes and why:

1. "If the white people never looked beyond the lie, to see that theirs was a nation built on stolen land, then they would never be able to understand how they had been used by the witchery; they would never know that they were still being manipulated by those who knew how to stir the ingredients together: white thievery an injustice boiling up the anger and hatred that would finally destroy the world: the starving against the fat, the colored against the white" (191).
= It's witchery, not exactly white people.  White people are a huge part of it, but they were created by witches to bring their evil, they were never supposed to be here.

2. "Everywhere he looked, he saw a world made of stories, the long ago, time imemorial stories, as old Grandma called them" (95).
= It's the circle of life. These things have happened in the past, they will happens again.  Also brings up the idea that the world is just a story, Grandmother Spider tells the story and that is how life goes.

3."Old Betonie might explain it this way -- Tayo didn't know for sure: there were transitions that had to be made in order to become whole again, in order to be the people our Mother would remember; transitions, like the boy walking in bear country being called back softly" (170). 
= It's a transition.  Times are changing, as they always have, and nothing is ever the same.  In order for the people to be healed they must change, and not be afraid of change.

 

Theme: The current  white vs Native American culture situation

Elements which Support this Theme:

n      Setting – Located where this issue is most obvious

n      Plot – When Tayo heals, he doesn't just heal for himself, he heals for the people.  In fact, most of the healing he must do and all the anger is directed at witchery, which the whites are being used by.

n      Author’s style – Laguna stories/poems are throughout the book, creating a "backbone" which the story continually goes back to.

n      Tone – shows the hardships, keeps it real

n      Symbolism – EVERYTHING IS SYMBOLIC.  Colors, cows, directions, the land, the stars, it's symbolic in the Laguna culture.