Ceremony Summary and Analysis

The Basics:
Author: Leslie Marmon Silko (written in mid 1970's). Silko has mixed ancestry of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican American, and Anglo American. She spent her early years in the Laguna community and identifies strongly with it. She was educated in a Catholic school.

Setting: Most of the novel takes place on and around the Laguna reservation in New Mexico in the mid 1900s. There are a few scenes that take place in war zones in the Philippines (WWII) and a hospital and train station in California.

Characters:
Tayo- a young man with a Laguna mother and an unknown white father. He essentially is the Sun Father, and he is living the stories told in the poems throughout the story. He is stricken with grief after the war and the death of his Uncle and Brother. At the beginning of the story, he is out of balance with himself his community, and the different cultures he's exposed to. By the end he finds this balance and realizes the importance of being adaptable and open to new ideas.

Rocky- Tayo's full Laguna brother. He has fully embraced the white culture, and plans on leaving the Laguna reservation to go to college. He dies in World War II before he gets the chance. He is nice to Tayo for the most part, but scorns at Tayo's loyalty to Laguna traditions. He can be kind of manipulative (e.g. he gets Tayo to sign up for the war with him). Still, Tayo loves him very much.Bet

Auntie- Rocky's mother. She is quite ashamed of Tayo, and tries to get attention for taking on the "burden" of raising him and taking care of him when he's sick. She's very manipulative, and makes it very clear to Tayo that she likes Rocky better, while putting on an act for everyone else that she treats them the same. She's very concerned with the latest gossip and her appearance to others. She goes to Catholic church and identifies more strongly with white values. Secretly, she's kind of jealous of Tayo

Robert- Auntie's husband, who is more soft spoken. He seems to sympathize with Tayo.

Josiah- Tayo's Uncle, who Tayo is quite close with. He is very loyal to Laguna traditions (contrasting Rocky). He risks a lot to invest in some cattle, and struggles with them a lot, but remains determined. He dies of an unknown cause while Tayo is at war.

Old Grandma- Tayo and Rocky's Grandmother. She is blind and sits by her stove every day. She is a Thought Woman/Spider Woman figure. Thought woman told all of the stories originally, so she knows Tayo's story before it's even finished.

Betonie-  a mixed heritage medicine man that Tayo visits to try to cure himself. He blends elements of Laguna as well of white cultures in his methods, demonstrating the power of hybridity. He takes Tayo on a Ceremony that helps cure his grief and stop the drought.

Yellow Woman- A Laguna spirit that shows up in three different Mexican female incarnations (Young- Descheeny's lover, Middle- Tseh, and Older- Night Swan). She sleeps with several men, including Tayo, Josiah, and Descheeny (Betonie's Grandfather). As Tseh, she guides Tayo through his Ceremony and his prevention of the witches' Ceremony. Yellow woman basically is the land/nature. Her last name is Montaño, which means, "Mountain."

Emo- a Laguna who grew up with Tayo and also suffers from PTSD. He is an evil witch, who is obsessed with inverting cultures and creating destruction and suffering. According to the stories, the white people and the negative elements of white culture arrived due to competing displays of Witchcraft gone too far. Emo is Tayo's ultimate nemesis.

Leroy, Harley, and Pinkie- other Laguna war veterans suffering from PTSD. They drink a lot, and are basically Emo's posse of witches (although Harley is probably the most innocent of the group, and ends up becoming the victim of the witches' ceremony).


General Plot:
After a traumatizing experience in WWII, where he witnessed the death his brother Rocky (who pressured him into signing up for the war), and imagined a Japanese soldier in a shooting lineup was his Uncle, Tayo is sent to a hospital in California, and then home to the Laguna reservation. He's still very sick (he throws up a lot), and Auntie begrudgingly takes care of him to help her reputation. He finds out Josiah died while he was gone, and severe drought has set in. He blames himself for the drought, because he cursed the rain away as it poured relentlessly in the Philippines Jungles at the scene of Rocky's death. Suffering from PTSD, he drinks a lot with Harley and some other veterans. On one occasion, Tayo stabs Emo in the belly, partially because of the alcohol in his system, and partially out of fear of Emo's witch-like qualities. After seeing a traditional Laguna medicine man and not getting much better, he visits mixed heritage and cultured Betonie, who starts him on a Ceremony, and sends him off. After briefly slipping back into his old ways with Leroy, Harley, and a Navajo prostitute named Helen-Jean, he gets back on track. He spends a night with Ts'eh after following the stars to her house, and then goes to the mountains. After a risky quest involving help from a Katsina in the form of a mountain lion, he retrieves Josiah's spotted cattle that had been lost when he died, and ends up back at Ts'eh's house. It snows and rains and fertility is restored to the land. Tayo spends an unspecified amount of time (I think a few months) blissfully with Ts'eh, until Robert comes and warns Tayo that Emo is coming after him. Ts'eh gives Tayo some advice, and leaves him. Tayo finds Emo, Leroy, and Pinkie at the site of a mine shaft for uranium, used in atomic bombs. They torture Harley. The scene gets more chaotic as Leroy and Pinkie start fighting, and Tayo gets a strong urge to stab Emo, but he resists, because doing so would cause more destruction and complete the evil ceremony of the Witches. He beats the Witches by refusing to fight violence with violence. Tayo returns home and soon finds out that Leroy, Harley, and Pinkie are dead, and that Emo, the main source of all the evil, has moved away.

The story is not told in linear time, but instead jumps around the timeline effect. This helps relate it to the Laguna story-poems in throughout the novel, giving it a kind of cyclical aspect. The story of the novel is just a retelling of the Laguna stories, which are constantly being told and retold, making the events happen again and again. This is highlighted when Old Grandma (Thought Woman) says "These goings-on around Laguna don't get me excited any more"... ..."It seems like I've already heard these stories before...only thing is, the names sound different"(Silko 260).


Narrative Voice:
The novel for the most part is not narrated by a specific character or person, and is told objectively. The small story-poems inserted throughout the novel are narrated by Thought Woman, a Laguna Spirit. Silko's point of view comes through in Ceremony a lot. Like Tayo, Silko has mixed heritage, and had to face some of the same cultural issues. Silko grew up on a Laguna reservation, but she also went to college at the University of New Mexico, thus embracing aspects of more than one culture. This idea that embracing ideas from different cultures can be helpful and restore balance comes through a lot in Ceremony, and is the main theme that I will discuss later. Tayo cures his grief by completing Betonie's Ceremony, which draws from Laguna and white cultures.

Mood, Imagery, and Tone:
The mood of the story seems dark and even hateful at times because of Tayo's PTSD and grief. During the drought, nature imagery of weak and dying animals and dry, dusty landscapes contributes to the somber mood. A example of this imagery can be found in this dramatic, extensive description of the starving mule: "It's hip bones looked sharp enough to push through the gray hide, the way bones tear through a carcass"(Silko 25). There does seem to be a mood shift when Tayo finds the cows. As he completes the ceremony, fertility comes back to the land, and imagery of ponds and lush grass and clay and strong, healthy animals turns the mood lighter. There is also a shift in Tayo's character, and we see how much he has grown when he is able to resist the temptation to stab Emo, and thus avoid completing his evil witch Ceremony. This shift in mood and characterization helps set the tone, which seems to be optimistic. The shift from dark to light occurs when Tayo completes the Ceremony, embracing both cultures, implying that Silko is optimistic towards the idea of embracing ideas from multiple cultures.

Symbols:
Spotted Cattle- The cattle represent hybridity. The fact that fertility is restored to the land when Tayo gets them back is key to the overall theme, which I will explain later. The cattle also correspond to the clouds that Sun Father must retrieve in the story poems throughout the story (Tayo is living all the stories in his own way).

Bellies- Bellies are considered the holders of stories in the novel. When Tayo vomits a lot, he is symbolically purging his belly of the bad stories and grief. When T'seh sleeps with him, not only is she helping him re-fertilize the Earth, she's also re-fertilizing him, making his belly pregnant with better stories.

Cardinal Directions- I am super confused on this one, because I am hearing so many different ideas for what each direction represents, and I don't know which ones to focus on. If anyone has further insight on this, please let me know.

Colors- The color white is often associated with the Sun Father, and subsequently Tayo. Blue is associated with Corn Mother, who represents fertility, compassion, and abundance. Several female characters in the novel are associated with blue, thus associating them with Corn Mother. Yellow is also used a lot, especially when light is mentioned, which happens more when Tayo is at his prime. Brown seems to be associated with the land, and the different shades portray different conditions of the land.

Mine shaft/atomic bomb/uranium- The uranium symbolizes the witches' destructive, artificial version of pollen, which Tayo uses to help refertilize the land. The atomic bomb gives off artificial, destructive light, contrasting the natural light of Tayo, the Sun Father. The mine shaft symbolizes the Witches' evil version of the emergence place, because it's associated with so much destruction.

Theme:
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony shows that personal and natural balance can only be achieved by being adaptable and open to balancing your own cultural traditions with different ideas.

 On the surface, this novel might seem like an attack on white culture and white treatment of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and Native Americans in general. Looking deeper, it becomes apparent that this novel advocates hybrididty and balance among different cultures. This is supported by the fact that the main antagonist is not a white person (or white people in general), but an evil Laguna witch. Also, when Tayo retrieves the spotted cattle (which symbolizes him embracing hybridity because the cows=hybridity), natural balance is restored as the rain and fertility come back to the land, and personal balance is restored in Tayo as he is able to move on from his grief over Josiah and Rocky and resist the urge to kill Emo and let the witches win and complete their evil ceremony. Also, Betonie, the man who gives Tayo the Ceremony that changes his life, has mixed heritage and embraces different cultures (as seen in the description of his house, containing Laguna objects and herb medicines, as well as white objects, such as coke bottles and calendars). He adjusts his Ceremony for Tayo, supporting the theme that it's important to be adaptable and open to new ideas.