Ceremony (Silko novel)


Ceremony is a novel by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, first published by Penguin in March 1977. The title Ceremony is based upon the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and Pueblo people.

Plot

The main plot line of Ceremony follows the trials of a half-Pueblo, half-white Laguna Pueblo man named Tayo upon returning from World War II. His white doctors say he is suffering from "battle fatigue," or what would today be called post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the novel interweaves several different timelines around Tayo, from both before and after the war, as well as a spiritual timeline where the Thought Woman, Corn Woman and Reed Woman, the three main Pueblo spiritual entities, create the world and then Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly must go down to the Fourth World to retrieve Reed Woman to stop a drought. Also in this spiritual timeline is the introduction of the "witchery" and the "destroyers," who are like anti-medicine men, sowing evil and destruction, which the medicine men work to fight against through Ceremony. By the end of the novel, all of these timelines converge in the ceremony of Tayo.
The Tayo we find at the beginning of the novel is struggling with the death of his cousin, Rocky, whom he saw die during the Bataan Death March of 1942, and the death of his uncle Josiah, whom he believes he saw in the face of a Japanese soldier killed by firing squad during the war. While Josiah did die during the war, his death occurred back on the Pueblo, not in the jungles of the Pacific. Rather, Tayo's hallucination and guilt come from two promises he made to Josiah—the first, before he signed up for the war, was to help him wrangle the spotted cattle that Josiah had purchased before the war. The second, made after signing up for the war, was that he would protect Rocky. He believes that he let down Josiah, and that's why he died. Tayo has spent several years at a mental health facility and has gotten no better, but is being released by his doctors. After vomiting from the light at the train station, he returns home to the pueblo to stay with his Auntie, Grandma, and Robert, where he can barely move or get out of bed, and any hint of light makes him vomit.
As a result of his mental health struggles, Tayo turns to alcohol as a way of self-remedying. A fellow WWII veteran on the reservation, Harley, comes to find him, and they ride a burro and a blind mule for miles in the hot sun over the dry earth. The pueblo is in a deep drought that began when, just after Rocky's death all the way back in Japan, Tayo cursed the green bottle fly and the rain because they wouldn't leave him alone, and on the journey to the bar Tayo nearly passes out from heat stroke. But Harley keeps on dragging him to the bar and they eventually make it. They meet up with some other WWII veterans from the pueblo there—Leroy, Pinkie, and Emo. Tayo and Emo, it turns out, have a history. Once, when they were all drinking together at a bar, Tayo stabbed Emo with a broken bottle after Emo brought out his war trophy—the teeth of a Japanese officer that he'd killed. But despite the tension, they share stories about the times they slept with white women, and about how they got nothing for fighting in the white man's war.
Looking to help Tayo, his grandmother brings a medicine man named Ku'oosh. He takes Tayo through a ceremony, but is ineffective against Tayo's battle fatigue, likely because Ku'oosh can't understand modern warfare: "Even if he could have taken the old man to see the target areas, even if he could have led him through the fallen jungle trees and muddy craters of torn earth to show him the dead, the old man would not have believed anything so monstrous."
Tayo is sent to another medicine man named Betonie, who is a slightly different type of medicine man, because he incorporates elements of the modern world into his ceremonies. He tells Tayo about the witchery, people who are bent on destabilizing the world, and the Destroyers, who will stop at nothing to destroy the world and its inhabitants. Betonie tells Tayo that he must complete the ceremony, and that the need to complete the ceremony is far bigger than he is. In fact, the fate of the Pueblo people themselves depends upon him. In order to complete the ceremony that Betonie has appointed him, Tayo sets out to get back Josiah's spotted cattle that were stolen when Tayo left.
Tayo remembers that the cattle were heading south, so he begins by riding that way. Along the way, he meets a woman named Ts'eh, whom he sleeps with and who gives him a warm place to sleep and a hot meal during a particularly trying time of his journey. He eventually finds where the cattle must be, caged in by a giant fence on the property of a wealthy white rancher. Tayo cuts the fence and is leading the cattle out when he is found by some of the man's employees. In the chase, he falls off his horse and is knocked unconscious. When Tayo awakens, he's been picked up by the white men, who ask him where he was "going so goddamn fast?" However, the tracks of a huge cougar distract them, and Tayo is let go.
He soon meets a hunter carrying a large buck across his back, singing a Pueblo song. They leave the ranch together and return to the house of Ts'eh, who has trapped Tayo's cattle in the arroyo using a couple of branches and calmed his horse before they arrived. The next day, Tayo departs with the cattle, driving them back to the pueblo.
Early the next year, Tayo decides that he has to go back to the ranch to tend the cattle, but really he wants to go back to see Ts'eh. They spend lots of time together picking flowers and herbs, until she tells him that there will be people coming after him. And shortly thereafter, Harley and Leroy show up and ask him to go drink with them again. They go out drinking, but the next morning Tayo comes to his senses, abandoning them with the truck and tearing out the truck's wiring so they can't come after him.
Later that night, near the site of the Trinity nuclear test, Tayo hears screaming. Emo has Harley tied up, and is skinning him alive, trying to lure Tayo out to fight. Tayo strongly considers it, but in contrast to their past confrontation where Tayo stabbed Emo, he abstains and does nothing, letting Emo and Pinkie kill Harley and Leroy.
Tayo goes back home to the pueblo and inside a kiva he tells the elders, including Ku'oosh, that he has seen Ts'eh, whom they take as a spirit woman, possibly Reed Woman, and expect that the rain will return and the pueblo will thrive again. It turns out to be true. The spotted cattle thrive, the pueblo becomes green again, and after Pinkie dies of a mysterious gunshot, Emo is banned from the reservation. Tayo has completed the ceremony, and the pueblo is safe again.

Characters

Peter G. Beidler and Robert M. Nelson of University of Richmond argue that the novel is composed of six timelines:
  1. The main timeline
  2. Tayo and Rocky's boyhood
  3. Tayo and Rocky's early manhood
  4. Tayo and Rocky's enlistment and deployment in WWII
  5. Tayo's return to the pueblo
  6. The mythic action of Spider Woman, Hummingbird, Green Bottle Fly, and Reed Woman, as well as the witchery and the Destroyers.

    Main Timeline

Storytelling

In Ceremony, there are no conventional chapters and a part of the novel is written in prose, whereas other parts are written in a poetic form. The novel wevaes together a number of different timelines and stories throughout. Apart from the function of storytelling words are very important for the Laguna oral tradition. The responsibility of humans is to tell stories, because words do not exist alone, they need a story.. Betonie and Tayo's grandmother tell various stories and therefore fulfill this responsibility. The significance and the power of words are emphasized by Tayo cursing the rain with words and by the following appearance of the drought.  Based on the Spiderwoman one can also see how powerful words and thoughts are. The Spiderwoman is a mystical creature who set the world and whatever she says or thinks appears. When she vocalizes her thoughts and by doing so names things, they become reality. Through storytelling myths are handed down and they teach the history of the Laguna people and how they live. They also connect the past with the present, because myths are old and when they are being told, they become a part of the present.

Ceremony and healing

The purpose of ceremonies is the transformation of someone from one condition to another as in Tayo's case the transformation from diseased to healing. Ceremonies are ritual enactments of myths which incorporate the art of storytelling and the myths and rituals of the Native Americans. They are important for Tayo's identity construction as one can see through his mental development after his experience with Betonie and the ceremony.
In the novel “healing” means the recovery of the self and the return to the roots and one important part of the process of healing is rejecting witchery. Tayo rejects witchery when he refuses to drink alcohol his friends offer him. He does not only refuse to drink alcohol, he also distances himself from his old friends and a life full of violence. The search for the Laguna culture and its rituals also helps him to deal with turning away from witchery. He respects the rituals of his culture by being open for the ceremonies which is another important aspect for his healing. Tayo is being taught spirituality by Betonie, this way he internalizes the Laguna culture. It is important that the Laguna community, e.g. his aunt, who tells Tayo to go to Betonie, helps Tayo with his healing, because that way Tayo can overcome the alienation he feels caused by him being half-breed. Betonie also helps Tayo to recover through ceremonies which relates Tayo's American identity to his Laguna identity and therefore combines his past with his present. The fact that Tayo learns more about and experiences ceremonies is another important aspect which leads him to healing, because he learns about his culture.
The appreciation of the Laguna culture is essential for his healing. He still needs a spiritual ceremony after the white man's medicine, which indicates that he needs to experience his old and his new culture. When Tayo covers the deer's dead body at the deer-hunting, which is a gesture performed out of respect, he shows that he initiated Laguna myths, because Laguna mythology connects all living creatures. After the ceremony Tayo's dreams no longer haunt him, because he learns to deal with his past and he is able to link the American to the Laguna culture. The cattle function as spirit guides, which leads him to healing, because through them he learns to forgive himself for the drought.

Native/Ethnic Identity

The identity of the protagonist Tayo is influenced by his ethnicity. Tayo is described as “half-breed” because, in contrast to his mother, who is a Native American woman, his father is white and does not belong to the Laguna community. His father left the family and Tayo and his mother were supported by his aunt and her husband. The Laguna community in which he has grown up segregates him and he experiences despair for not being fully Native American. That he is not trained or educated in the Laguna way of life supports this fact. Therefore, Tayo struggles between white and Native American culture and he feels like not belonging to any culture at all. The Laguna people believe that every place, object, landscape or animal relates to stories of their ancestors. To develop this cultural identity it is important to take care of the land and the animals. By taking care of the cattle Tayo begins to take a more active and creative role in relations to nature and to his people which supports development of his cultural identity. On top of that the cattle function as a symbol for being alienated and different, because they are a mix of different breeds, as well. This is described as positive because the “half-breed” cattle are, like Tayo, strong, robust, and can survive hard times. Therefore, they can be seen as a leitmotif for surviving.
Moreover, the city of Gallup represents the struggle of American and Native identity. As being a former Native American city, which was built on Native American territory, Gallup changed into a city that relies on the “Indian” tourism industry. The white Americans suppress the real presence of Native Americans and push them to the borders of the city. The Native Americans who lived in the city of Gallup and felt related to the land were pushed back to a specific zoning place under the bridge to divide them from the white civilization. They use the former image of the city to attract tourists and make profit. Now only ethnically mixed outcasts live there. As Tayo states: “I saw Navajos in torn jackets, standing outside the bar. There were Zunis and Hopis there, too, even a few Lagunas.”.

Military Service and Trauma

Serving in the war as an American soldier also enhances Tayo's identity struggle. When he was in the war, he represented the United States, but by returning to his hometown he feels invisible as an American and drifts in time and space. By laying down the uniform of an American soldier, Tayo, and also the other Native American veterans, are not recognized as Americans anymore. This is underlined by the funeral of Tayo's friends Harley and Leroy. Tayo and his friends struggle to shape their identity between two different sorts of signifying realms, one the "official" American identity and the other, that of the erased Native American . Furthermore, he has a trauma from war and feels responsible for the death of his cousin Rocky.

Development

Silko began early work on Ceremony while living in Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1973 after moving there with her children, Robert and Kazimir, from Chinle, Arizona. The family relocated so her then-husband John Silko could assume a position in the Ketchikan legal services office.
Silko held a contract with Viking Press to produce a collection of short stories or a novel under editor Richard Seaver. Having no interest in creating a novel, Silko began work on a short story set in the American Southwest revolving around the character Harley and the comical exploits of his alcoholism. During this early work, the character Tayo appeared as a minor character suffering from "battle fatigue" upon his return from World War II. The character fascinated Silko enough to remake the story with Tayo as the narrative's protagonist. The papers from this early work are held at the Yale University library.
In February 1974, Silko took a break from writing Ceremony to assume the role of a visiting writer at a middle school in Bethel, Alaska. It was during this time Silko penned the early work on her witchery poetry featured in Ceremony, wherein she asserts that all things European were created by the words of an anonymous Tribal witch. This writing plays a formidable role in the novel's theme of healing. An expanded version of this work is featured in Storyteller.
The poetic works found in Ceremony were inspired by the Laguna oral tradition and the work of poet James Wright, with whom Silko developed a friendship after they met at a writer's conference at Grand Valley State University in June 1974, and years of written correspondence. These letters would be featured in the work The Delicacy and Strength of Lace edited by Ann Wright, wife of James Wright, and published in November 1985 after the poet's death.
Silko completed the manuscript to Ceremony in July 1975 shortly before returning to New Mexico.

Reception

Ceremony has been well received by readers, and received significant attention from academics, scholars, and critics. It is widely taught in university courses, as part of American Indian studies, American studies, history, religious studies, and literature courses.
Poet Simon J. Ortiz has lauded Ceremony as a "special and most complete example of affirmation and what it means in terms of Indian resistance."
Denise Cummings, Critical Media & Cultural Studies professor at Rollins College, has described Ceremony as a novel which "immediately challenges readers with a new epistemological orientation while altering previously established understandings of the relationship between reader and text."
Silko received the American Book Award for Ceremony in 1980.