Ceremony Summary and Analysis

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

-         She is part Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and Anglo American, which are the three cultures she mentions in her novel.

-         She says she identifies with her Native American culture the most, as does the main character in her novel.

Setting:

-         Jungles in the Philippines

-         Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico

Plot:

            -Tayo returns home to the reservation from WWII and has PTSD like many of his friends who also served. He feels guilty because he cursed the rains in the Philippines and now there is a drought in Laguna.  

            -His cousin Rocky had died in the war, and his uncle Josiah had died while he was away. Those were the two people he was closest to, so he’s struggling to get over that. (Josiah has a Mexican girlfriend, Night Swan, which was also disapproved of.)

            -He lives with his Auntie, Uncle Robert, and Grandmother. Tayo is half white, which is a disgrace in the community, so he has a hard time fitting in anywhere because he is unwanted by the Indian community and the white community.

            -He tries to get over his disorder and the deaths by turning to alcoholism.

            -Grandmother calls in the medicine man Ku’oosh, to help him return back to normal.

            -Ku’oosh does an ancient ceremony for him, for those soldiers coming back from the war and who have killed others and it helps Tayo, but he isn’t completely cured. Ku’oosh thinks it’s time for change, and that the old ceremony isn’t enough for Tayo.

            -Ku’oosh sends him to another medicine man, Betonie, who has more to do with the blending of Native American and white cultures. Betonie decides they have to invent and complete a new ceremony for Tayo to be healed. He tells Tayo a story about his Grandfather and the beginning of the ceremony to stop the destruction the whites are doing to the world.

            -Betonie tells him to look for Josiah’s cattle that were lost since Josiah died, and that will be the start of the new ceremony.

            -Tayo starts his journey by following the stars as Betonie had said, and finds a woman, Ts’eh. They spend the night together, and then Tayo leaves.

            -Tayo finds the cattle fenced in on a white man’s ranch. Tayo breaks the fence and frees the cattle, but then is caught by the patrolmen. However, a mountain lion’s tracks distract them and they free Tayo.

            -Tayo then runs into a hunter, who takes him back to his house. It turns out, the hunter lives with Ts’eh. Ts’eh has caught all the cattle for Tayo and had them waiting there for him.

            -Tayo leaves and comes back with Robert, to bring the cattle home, but the house is empty and Ts’eh and the Hunter are gone.

            -Tayo now feels cured, but there is still a drought so he knows the ceremony isn’t done. 

            -Tayo goes to the family ranch, to look after the cattle. He meets Ts’eh there and they spend the summer together. However, at the end of the summer she tells him that Emo and the white police are coming to get him. She leaves.

            -He follows her advice and escapes the police. He’s still running from Emo, when his friends Harley and Leroy find him. He realizes that they have joined Emo and he escapes. He ends up hiding in a uranium mine.

            -Emo arrives and tortures Harley to death in front of Tayo’s hiding spot. Hiding in the mine was the last part of the ceremony because it joins white culture and Indian culture.

            -Tayo returns to Ku’oosh and tells him the story of his ceremony. Ku;oosh says that Ks’eh was A’moo’ooh who is a sacred person in Native American culture, Yellow Woman. Since she appeared, she has given her blessing to Tayo and the ceremony.

            -Tayo spends the night at Ku’oosh’s and then leaves. The ceremony is complete.

Significant Characters:

-         Tayo: Half Laguna, half white main character who comes home from the war with PTSD

-         Rocky: Tayo’s cousin, who is as close a brother, dies in the war, star student

-         Josiah: Tayo’s uncle whom Tayo really looked up to, died while Tayo was away

-         Auntie: Tayo’s mother’s sister, who raised him, but made clear that she did not approve of his half-breed status

-         Robert: Auntie’s husband

-         Grandmother: wise character, refers Tayo to the medicine man

-         Emo: Tayo’s enemy, “witch”

-         Ts’eh: Yellow Woman

-         Hunter: shape shifter, Ka’tsina

-         Harley and Leroy: Tayo’s old friends

-         Night Swan: Josiah’s Mexican girlfriend

Author Style:

            -Written with long sentences and lots of imagery and description.

- Supposed to be in the form of the Native American oral tradition.

- There is a lot of use of figurative language and color words.

- There is also a big emphasis on where, and not when.

- The story has a 3^rd person narrator that follows Tayo around, but occasionally it shifts perspective and follows another character’s events.

-There are poems about Native American culture that are dispersed throughout the story that provide a parallel story that goes along with the main story.  

Quotes: 

1.)    “Nothing was all good or all bad either; it all depended.” This quote is a realization that Tayo comes to. It’s something Josiah said to him. Nothing is simple enough to immediately put in one category of “good” or “bad.” There are different sides to everything, so we need to look at all sides of something before we classify it.

2.)   “Old Grandma shook her head slowly, and closed her cloudy eyes again.  ‘I guess I must be getting old, ‘ she said, ‘because these goings-on around Laguna don't get me excited anymore.’ She sighed, and laid her head back on the chair. ‘It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different.’”  This quote makes reference to the fact that Laguna people believe that the world progresses in a loop, that future events are similar to old ones, so nothing is new. Everything goes back to something that’s happened.

Theme:

            -No matter where you go and what you do, it’s always important to remember who you are and where you come from.

            -In the novel, Tayo went off to war and forgot all about Laguna culture. He came back home with PTSD, it took getting back to his culture to cure him.

            -The title is called Ceremony, and that refers to the ceremony Tayo has to go through in order to be cured, and in that ceremony, he gives up his “white” ways and goes back to the way he grew up, with the Indian culture.

            -The constant use of figurative language, imagery, and the style the story is written in, the oral tradition way of the Native Americans, all are reaffirming the Native American culture.