Summary and Analysis: Ceremony

Ceremony:

                A novel by Leslie Marmon Silko.  The novel takes place in the Southern United States after World War II, predominantly on the Laguna reservation.  The novel is written in flowing, poetic prose which both emphasizes the dreamlike connection Tayo experiences between past and present, and contributes to the overall beauty of the work—a work all about the beauty of storytelling.  Sometimes this prose is interrupted by poetry, combining ancient folklore and modern stories, like the characters in the novel.  These poems also often reflect events occurring in the “present” time of the novel.

·         Plot: The story begins when Tayo is in the hospital, recovering from apparent post-traumatic stress disorder pending his service in Japan during WWII.  Tayo is clearly mentally confused, flitting between past and present events, resulting in vomiting.  He is released from the hospital, but is still very sick and confused.  He returns to the Laguna reservation.  His relatives try to get him to behave “normally” and help out along the ranch.  Through a series of flashbacks we learn that he was exceptionally close to his cousin Rocky (fully Native American) and uncle Josiah.  He has a rocky relationship with his Auntie because he is half white.  Tayo is wracked with guilt—he believes because he prayed to stop the rain in the Japanese jungle, there is now a draught going on in the reservation.  Tayo spends time drinking with fellow veterans, but he ends up sickened by their attachment to a white culture that scorns them now that they are out of uniform.  Tayo flashes back to the past even more, and the reader sees Josiah in a relationship with a Mexican dancer called Night Swan, who Tayo also slept with once.  We also learn that Josiah was breeding white cattle with Mexican cattle, to form a breed that could survive the tough desert conditions.  Meanwhile, Tayo’s grandmother calls a medicine man to try and help Tayo.  Tayo is not “healed”, but the medicine man sends him to Gallup, to another medicine man, Betonie.  Betonie is an odd mish-mash of white and Native American culture, and explains to Tayo that they must change the ceremonies to adapt to these combining cultures.  Betonie also says that this is part of a wider ceremony that must be completed to stop the “witchery.”  He tells a story of how some witches got together and one of them created white people as a curse that would destroy the world.  Tayo begins his ceremony by looking for Josiah’s escaped cattle, following them south.  Before he finds them, he meets and sleeps with a woman called Ts’eh.  The cattle have been caught in a white ranch, but he releases them, after encountering a mountain lion.  The cattle end up back at Ts’eh’s house—once Tayo leaves, he realizes he is in love with her.  He returns the cattle—at this point feeling more at ease with the connections between things, staying grounded in the present—and then goes back to Ts’eh.  Their time together is interrupted, because Emo has been hunting Tayo down with the police.  Tayo flees to an abandoned uranium mine.  The mine is the perfect sight for this part of the ceremony: it is related to earth and land, which Silko argues he must reconnect with, and is also a symbol of white culture, industrialism, and abuse of the land.  Tayo watches Emo arrive and torture Harley, but prevents himself from reacting violently, because this is what the witches would expect him to do.  He must break the cycle of violence.

·         Characters:

o   Tayo: the protagonist of the novel.  He fought in WWII and since an encounter in Japan struggles with connections between his past experiences and the present.  When he sees something that reminds him of another experience, he flashes back to that moment in time.  This is accompanied by vomiting.  Tayo also has many conflicting ideas about how white culture and his experience in the military should relate to Native American culture, which are intensified by his mixed background.  Through a series of ceremonies, Tayo eventually is able to reconcile with the connection between all things and defeat the witchery of prejudice.

o   Rocky: Tayo’s cousin, very close to Tayo, who dies fighting in Japan.  Rocky is very careless about Native American culture and eagerly wants to embrace white American values.

o   Josiah: Tayo’s uncle and father figure.  He dies while Tayo is at war, and represents a man very in-tune with his Native American culture, but who is also willing to adapt his customs to the times.

o   Auntie: Tayo’s aunt.  She does not love Tayo and is disgraced by his mother sleeping around with non-Native American men.  She is a devout Christian and Rocky was her pride and joy.

o   Robert: husband of Auntie. 

o   Night Swan: a half-Mexican dancer who is both the lover of Josiah and of Tayo. 

o   T’seh Montano: Tayo’s lover (the one he’s actually in love with) who lives apart from the Laguna reservation.  She is one of the steps in Tayo’s ceremony toward being able to cope with his knowledge of the connections between all things.  She symbolizes the land, indicating that Tayo—and all people—must learn to love and become closer to the land.

o   Emo: the evil veteran who Tayo attempts to kill.

o   Harley and Leroy: two veterans who have abandoned Native American culture and drowned their struggles in alcohol.

·         Theme: All cultures, experiences, and stories are connected, and we must coexist peacefully together—but we must all love and care for the earth and appreciate these connections, appreciate that we are all a part of a repeating ancient story that will continue to cycle.

o   The main theme of this novel is the connection between all things.  It begins with Tayo’s epiphany when he sees the Japanese man as Josiah, and when he prays the rain away in Japan and there is a draught in America.  Tayo realizes that everything is connected, but he can’t handle it.  He throws up and can’t control the connections he sees between the past and the present.  These connections are underlined by Silko’s use of the poems about Thought Woman, who spins webs with her thoughts and spins the world with her stories.  The image of the spider web ties into the circular nature of time.  There is never any new stories—they just have to adapt.  This is very apparent through the ancient stories Silko incorporates.  The events in these poems reflect the things happening to Tayo.  All stories, all cultures, all events are connected.

o   The only way for Tayo to ultimately heal is for him to adapt the old Native American ceremonies to the white culture around him.  When characters go only one way, and do not see the inevitable connection between cultures, they suffer.  For example, the veterans like Harley, Leroy, and Emo get stuck trying to sustain all-white values as Native Americans, and end very unhappily.  Just like in order for the cattle to survive, they must be white and Mexican, Tayo must adapt his traditions to suit this new way of life.

o   Perhaps the most important Native American value that must be retained is the love and care of the land.  This begins when Tayo prays away the rain and a drought begins.  He has disregarded tradition, to disastrous consequences.  The biggest problem with white culture that is underlined is the destruction of nature.  In order for Tayo to heal, he must love Ts’eh Montano.  Her last name means mountain, and she symbolizes the earth.  Only when the earth is (in this case literally) embraced can the people be healed.

·         Quotes:

o   “No word exists alone.”  This is a description of the Laguna language, which extends to so many themes in this novel about connections.  Each word in the Native American language is connected to the others, just as past and present are connected, all stories are connected, and all peoples are connected.  Nothing exists by itself.

o   “It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different.”  Old Grandma says this at the end of the play.  This is a very prevalent theme throughout the novel.  The poems of ancient stories that Silko incorporates mirror Tayo’s experiences.  History repeats itself, changing slightly with the times, just as the people must.  Everything in Ceremony is connected, especially the stories. 

o   “I will tell you something about stories…they aren’t just entertainment.  Don’t be fooled.  They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”  In this story about stories, this is a crucial line.  Tayo must depend on the story of his life and the stories of his ancestors to heal himself and understand his world.  It is a story which created the trouble with the white people in the first place—now, stories are the only thing that can help Native American culture survive.  Everything is a story, Silko argues, a story that repeats itself and heals us.