WHCS Senior Work

The Theme of Mixed Race in Ceremony

Brittney Baca

One of the strongest themes of Leslie Marmon Silko’s award- winning novel, Ceremony, is the difficulty, but ultimate strength of being of mixed-ancestry.   Silko is of mixed-blood herself, like her protagonist, the psychologically-wounded WWII veteran, Tayo. She is Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and white.

Tayo is treated differently because of his mixed-blood. Tayo’s mom was a Native but Tayo’s dad was a white man. Early on in the book, Tayo claims:

“I’m a half-breed. I’ll be the first to say it. I’ll speak for both sides.”

Because Tayo is of these two races he is treated differently than others. He is treated unequally because of his racial heritage, by another veteran from Laguna named Emo.

 “Tayo got quiet. He looked across at Emo, and he saw how much Emo hated him. Because he had spoiled it for them. They spent all their checks trying to get back the good times, and a skinny light-skinned bastard ruined it.”

When Tayo was growing up, Emo always tried to get Tayo really angry and always made fun of him.

 Tayo’s auntie also didn’t accept him, when he was a child. Auntie made Tayo pay for his mother’s sins and wrongdoings.

“She was careful that Rocky did not share these things with Tayo, that they kept a distance between themselves and him…she wanted him close enough to feel exclude, to be aware of the distance between them.”

The Night Swan character was part Mexican herself and she had kept her eyes on Tayo for quite a while. It seems significant that Tayo is initiated into manhood by a woman of mixed-blood.

“She whispered in Spanish and touched him gently, rubbing his back and neck first, then brushing his ear and neck with her lips. She pressed against his chest and belly, and he clenched himself tight until he felt the warmth and softness of her legs and belly. Her sounds were gentle and the storm outside was loud. He could hear the rain rattling the roof and the sound of the old cottonwood tree straining in the wind. He moved his mouth over her face and slowly opened his eyes; she was smiling. He felt her shiver, and when he held her closer, he realized he was shaking too. Something was coiling tight. She breathed harder and he breathed with that same rhythm. She slid beneath him then, like a cat squeezing under a gate. She moved under him, her rhythm merging into the sound of the wind shaking the rafters and the sound of the rain in the tree.  And he was lost somewhere, deep beneath the surface of his own body and consciousness, swimming away from all his life before that hour.”

The Night Swan suggests to Tayo’s uncle, Josiah, who is madly in love with her, that he buy some Mexican cattle at a cheap price. But Josiah insists on not buying them because he thinks they aren’t good enough, until he realizes:

“They would breed these cattle, special cattle, not the weak, soft Herefords that grew thin and died from eating thistle and burned-off cactus during the drought. The cattle Ulibarri sold them were exactly what they had been thinking about. These cattle were descendents of generations of desert cattle, born in dry sand and scrubby mesquite, where they hunted water the way desert antelope did. Cattle are like any living thing. If you separate them from the land for too long, keep them in barns and corrals, they lose something. Their stomachs get to where they can only eat rolled oats and dry alfalfa. When you turn them loose again, they go running all over. They are scared because the land is unfamiliar, and they are lost. They don’t stop being scared either, even when they look quiet and they quit running. Scared animals die easily.” Josiah says that these cattle will eat cactus and find water, unlike the Hereford cattle that will die of thirst if they’re not given water, because the indigenous cattle will survive longer on their own compared to Herefords. “When a windmill broke down or a pool went dry, Tayo had seen them standing and waiting patiently for the truck or wagon loaded with water, or for riders to herd them to water. If nobody came and there was no snow or rain, then they died there, still waiting. But these Mexican cattle were different.”  These cattle are half fat and white, and half strong, indigenous survivors.

Tayo is sent off to be cured in a ceremony given by Betonie, a medicine man with green eyes, who is half Mexican and half Navajo and who helps give Tayo the ceremonial keys to healing. His Mexican eyes are a passed down generation from his grandmother.

“The Medicine man nodded. My grandmother was a remarkable Mexican with green eyes, he said.”

Mixed-race Betonie sends mixed-race Tayo off to capture the mixed-race cattle. In capturing the strong and wiley cattle, Tayo makes himself whole again. Whole from the shame of his upbringing, whole from killing Japanese who looked like his relatives, and finally, whole from a realization of the strength of who he is.  

This theme intrigued me because I’m a mixed blood and I have experienced what Tayo went through. I’m Navajo and Jemez and yes I have been ridiculed and teased, and treated differently, sometimes. I find strength in being a mixed-blood because it makes me feel special and proud that I am of two different races. It makes me unique and honored.

The Process of Healing in the Novel Ceremony

Dominic Toya

         One of the central themes in the novel Ceremony is how traditional beliefs can bring about the process of healing. In the novel, the main character is Tayo, who went off to World War II and came back to his reservation in Laguna suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He tried medication but it did not work.

“Their medicine drained memory out of his thin arms and replaced it with a twilight cloud behind his eyes.”    

        So Tayo’s last chance is to try healing in the native way. Tayo’s quest for healing takes him back to the Indian past and traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people in the pueblo.                                            

    One day, old man Ku’oosh goes to Tayo’s house and tells his grandma that the old men are thinking he should get help soon. So he sends Tayo to a medicine man in Gallup named Betonie. Betonie sends Tayo to find his uncle Josiah’s lost speckled cattle as part of his ceremony. The search becomes a ceremonial journey of healing to cure the root of Tayo’s illness-despair.

On his journey, Tayo meets a woman named Ts’eh. When Tayo meets her she is standing under apricot tree. They go to her house and she tells him to eat. That night she tells him the sky is clear, so he goes outside and looks up and saw Betonie’s stars. There are seven stars that the medicine man Betonie told him to find on his journey. After Tayo sees the stars, he and Ts’eh fall in love.

             “In the room Ts’eh moved out of her clothes and undressed him, he could feel the warmth of the two pulsing between the legs. He smiled at her as she held his hips and pulled him closer. He dreamed about the cattle it was a continuous dream that was not interrupted when she pulled him on top of her he went on dreaming while he moved inside her and when he heard her whisper, he saw the cattle scatter over the crest of a round bare hill, running away from him, scattering out around him like ripples in still water.’’ 

      Ts’eh is a big part of Tayo’s healing because he loves her and she helps him. Tayo risks his life to catch the cattle because there are other white cattlemen riding in the same direction he is going, and they might suspect he is a cattle rustler. Tayo drives the cattle in Ts’eh’s direction and she goes out and catches the cattle and takes care of them while Tayo goes on doing his healing ceremony.

       Tayo’s final challenge, and proof of his healing, is when he resists evil by not killing another, violent war veteran named Emo.

                        “Emo had a brown paper bag and was holding a wine bottle, in the bag was human skin which was bloody. Emo shoved the wine bottle in Harley’s mouth Tayo heard Harley groan. Tayo held the screw driver in his hand and could not take anymore. The night was cold and made his fingers numb he rubbed his hands for warmth. Emo was laughing at the body that was hanging and than pointed at Leroy kneeling on Pinkies throat. The witchery had almost ended Tayo almost jammed the screw driver in Emo’s skull the way witchery wanted it to happen but he didn’t do anything, the healing gave him strength not to kill Emo.”

In the end, Silko writes that evil has been defeated—for now.

               “Whirling darkness started its journey with its witchery and its witchery has returned upon it. Its witchery has returned into its own belly its own witchery has returned all around it whirling darkness has come back on itself. It keeps all witchery to itself. It doesn’t open its eyes with its witchery. It has stiffened with the effects of its own witchery its dead for now sunrise accept this offering sunrise”. 

The Process of Healing in Ceremony

Ashley Seonia

            In the novel Ceremony, one of the major themes is healing. The main character, Tayo, is a young man of mixed-blood who has just arrived home from the Bataan Death March and is having a really rough time dealing with “shell shock.”

            “He tossed in the old iron bed, and the coiled springs kept squeaking even after he lay still gain, calling up humid dreams of black night and loud voices rolling him over and over again…”

            Shell shock was a military term used to categorize a range of behaviors resulting from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD) which is a major theme of Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel.

            Symptoms that may occur are fatigue, slower reaction times, disconnection from ones surroundings.  Silko writes of Tayo’s mental state:

            “For a long he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke.”

            Along with psychological scars from battle, Tayo must also heal from childhood wounds, of being treated as inferior to full-blooded Laguna people.  His aunt says:

            “…You know how they are. You know what people will say if we ask for a medicine man to help him. Someone will say it’s not right. They’ll say, ‘Don’t do it. He’s not full blood anyway.’” She hung up her coat and draped the scarf on top of it.

            Tayo’s full-blooded grandfather, Ku’oosh is a medicine man. But traditional, pure Laguna medicine can’t cure Tayo.

            He is then sent to Betonie, a Navajo/Mexican medicine man who keeps in touch with the modern world.  Betonie tells Tayo:

            “But long ago when the people were given these ceremonies, the changing began, if only in the aging of the yellow gourd rattle or the shrinking of the skin around the eagle’s claw, if only in the different voices from generation to generation, singing the chants. You see, in many ways, the ceremonies have always been changing.”

            Tayo receives a traditional healing ceremony. Then he is sent on a modern quest. On his quest he is sent to find the speckled cattle which represent Tayo’s strong indigenous side and his beloved uncle’s dream. He also finds love and connection with Laguna tradition in the form of the beautiful Ts’eh.

             “The voices came from the yard. She was standing under an apricot tree, partially hidden by a bushy canopy of gnarled limbs sweeping so close to the earth the slender leaves touched the ground in the wind. The shadows made her skin and hair look dark.”

To find these things, Tayo is told to look for special stars in the sky. Stars are important to Pueblo cosmology.

                 “He had watched the sky every night, looking for the pattern of stars the old man drew on the ground that night. Late in September he saw them in the North.”

            Finally, Tayo must confront the evil set loose in the world by witches, evil represented by WWII and the atom bomb, evil that resides in the heart of every human.

            “He had arrived at a convergence of patterns; he could see them clearly now.”

Traditional Pueblo Viewpoints Expressed in Ceremony

Audrianna Sandia

The novel Ceremony is based on a Native American Indians culture, which the author herself said no white person would completely understand. 

In our pueblo, extended family it is traditional to care for children who have lost their parents.   In the story of “Ceremony,” Tayo’s mother abandoned him. She left him behind with his auntie to be taken care of when she was gone.  Silko wrote, “She held him all the way, kept him bundle tight and close to her.” Tayo’s mother didn’t return. She had left Tayo a couple of times before. Tayo already knew she wasn’t going to be back, “he cried and fought Josiah, trying to follow her, but his uncle held him firmly and told him not to cry.” He was told that he will have a new family.

After time passed, Tayo knew his auntie didn’t want to be responsible for him. “Auntie raised her voice and sounds of pots and pans slamming together on the stove. And years later, he learned she did that whenever she was angry.” Tayo and his auntie got to understand each other very well. Tayo would ask auntie questions about his mother. “Auntie,” he said softly, “what did she look like before I was born?”  But she never told him.

            In our pueblo culture, important moral lessons are communicated through stories and passed down to the younger kids to be passed on to other young ones in the future. Ms. Silko puts old legends throughout the novel for instance:

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,

[He said]

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.

You don’t have anything

If you don’t have the stories.

Their evil is might

But it can’t stand up to our stories.

So they try to destroy the stories

Let the stories be confused or forgotten.

They would be happy

Because we would be defenseless then.

He rubbed his belly.

I keep them here

[he said]

Here, put your hand on it

See, it is moving.

There is life here

For the people.

and in the belly of this story

 The rituals and the ceremony

Are still growing.

What she said:

The only cure

I know

Is a good ceremony,

That’s what she said.

Sunrise.

Human Evil in the Novel Ceremony is Called Witchcraft

Byron Tafoya

              In Leslie Marmon Silko’s ground-breaking novel Ceremony, witchery is very often talked about. The novel talks about how witchery is affecting monsoons during the summer, how it is destroying the world, and making it out of balance, and also how it is hurting everyone.

          The main character of evil is Emo. He is very evil and a dangerous person. He was always criticizing Tayo of his mixed race. When Tayo met Ts’eh, she warned him that the government people will be looking for him to take him back to the V.A. hospital but they will give up easily.  Ts’eh also told Tayo that Emo won’t give up easily.

     When Tayo was being cured by the medicine man named Ku’oosh, he told Tayo that the old ways of healing won’t work in the modern world.  Then he sent Tayo to Gallup to another medicine man, and his name was Betonie. Betonie lived on the edge of the Navajo Reservation on a cliff overlooking the town of Gallup. Betonie was half-Mexican and came from a long line of medicine men and women. Betonie tells Tayo that he needs to do a ceremony to stop the destruction the whites, an invention of Native American witchery, are wreaking the on the world.

        Here the author tells a Laguna Witch Legend which has ties to the modern world, because everything the witches mention are now true.

“White skin people like the belly of a fish covered with hair”

     To the modern world today, they’re talking about white people; there were no white people until the witches made them.

“They see no life, they fear, they fear the world. They destroy what they fear.

They fear themselves.”

    What it means in the modern life is they’re talking about all the wars nations have fought, how white people are destroying the planet earth with their weapons of mass destruction, and how people have killed one another.

“They will carry objects which can shoot death faster than the eye can see”

That means they will bring guns and kill.

“Stolen rivers and mountains, the stolen land will eat their hearts”

    This means, white people have taken control of all lands possible, everywhere you go, it’s all owned by government.

“They will bring terrible diseases they people have never known. Entire tribes will die out covered with festered sore, shitting blood, vomiting blood, corpses for our work.”

    This talks about diseases such as smallpox, diabetes, cancer, polio, STDs and many others.

“Up here in these hills, they will find the rocks, rocks with veins of green, yellow, and black. They will lay the final pattern with these rocks; they will lay it across the world and explode everything.”

    Uranium, it is used to make weapons of mass destructions and any explosives made to kill.

      So yup, it’s all the witches fault for creating the white people.  Just imagine, if there had been no white people, look at how beautiful we Native Americans would’ve been living, but instead we’re living on tiny reservations.

The Motif of World War Two in the Novel Ceremony

Daryl Baca

 Leslie Marmon Silko’s award-winning novel deals with a young World War Two veteran from Laguna Pueblo trying to recover from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  He must complete a ceremonial journey for his soul and the world to become balanced again.

The protagonist Tayo and his half brother Rocky joined the military hoping to travel and see the world. Tayo’s mother abandoned him when he was a kid, leaving him with his aunt and uncle to care for him. Tayo was expected to stay at home and help his uncle Josiah herd sheep and cattle. Rocky was Tayo’s half brother, a sports star in his high school whose mom expects more from him than Tayo.  But Rocky would not return home.  The jungle climate of the Bataan Death March causes his wounds to become gangrenous. 

“Tayo hated this unending rain as if it were the jungle green rain and not the miles of marching or the Japanese grenade that was killing Rocky.”

The story starts with Tayo in a spring coiled bed in an isolated motel room, dealing with flashbacks.  He can’t live in the present because he is too haunted with the past. Tayo slips in and out of nightmares, as he hears voices of Spanish singing, then the voices of Japanese soldiers yelling and screaming, and his uncle Josiah calling him and remembering how he was bringing him medicine for his fever.  Tayo is now thinking about the last time he was with Rocky in the Pacific islands, oiling their guns and talking about a deer they had hunted. He remembers the corporal saying he had a dream that the Japs were going to get them that day. 

 He was looking at the corpses lying on the ground, thinking of the similarities, but only saw flesh and how they looked the same lying there motionless.   They all looked too familiar even to his skin.  The sergeant had told the troops to fire, all the Japs lined up with their hands above their head.  The fever had been making him shiver and Tayo could not pull the trigger. He saw Josiah standing there as shots went off.  Rocky was shaking him as Tayo was crying trying to get him to snap him out of it, saying it was Japs they were shooting, not his uncle.  Medics made Tayo swallow some medicine for the fever he had, which was making him hallucinate and see things that weren’t there.  They said he had “battle fatigue” and that was common with malaria fever.  

Tayo returns home after spending time in a veteran’s hospital with what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, a common psychological side-affect from being in the war.  When he’s at home, Tayo has friends that were in the war as well. They abuse alcohol as a way of comfort to ease the pain of memories from the war.  They all drink until they are wasted and tell old war stories of how many women they got wearing uniforms. Tayo remembers first wearing the uniform, he remembers how the white women would stare at him and tell him how handsome hey looked.  The uniform gave him respect he never got in a white man’s world. Emo, one of Tayo’s friends, always bragged about how many Japs he killed and had the enemy’s teeth to prove it.

Tayo’s tribe knows that they will lose him to that darkness if something isn’t done.  His grandfather Ku’oosh’s traditional medicine can’t heal the pain of a modern world war, so Tayo is sent to Betonie, a medicine man who understands the modern world. 

Betonie does a ceremony and sends Tayo on a quest—that climaxes in a uranium mine where material was gathered to make the Hiroshima bomb. Here, Tayo battles the evil within his own soul to complete the ceremony.

“Whirling darkness has come back on itself. It keeps all its witchery to itself.”

Tayo’s healing is complete.  The elders ask him to tell of his journey and what he has seen.  Based on what he tells them, they are assured that balance has been restored-to their drought-plagued pueblo and a war-torn world.

The World Out-of-Balance: Good vs. Evil in Ceremony

Justin Fragua

The theme of the world being ‘out-of-balance,’ a variation on the common and more simplistic Western theme of ‘good vs. evil,’ plays a major role in Ceremony, an outstanding novel in Native American literature. World War II, the concept of evil, witchery, and the healing process all play a part in Ceremony.

The novel is about a mixed blood, Native American man named Tayo from Laguna pueblo, growing up with no father or mother, going to World War II, and coming back with shell shock, with the witchery of evil around him. He’s in need of a ceremony, and more than that, he is chosen to get the healing process that could bring the world into balance.

One example of the concept of the world out of balance is World War II, warfare which has chanced for Native American. Instead of seeing and fighting your enemies in hand to hand combat, war has changed to bombs and machines, and never even seeing your enemy up close to fight. When Tayo goes to war, he gets shell shock from the intense war fare and death all around him. The jungles of the Pacific had a dark side in war and what it did to people, like killing POW’s and the environment, which made people break from the darkness of what a war made a jungle dark side, full of rain, mud and humidity. Tayo cursed at the rain and caused a drought in Laguna and the surrounding areas. The demand for the United States to win the war caused the mining of uranium in sacred land of Tayo’s homeland and for the war to end with an atomic bomb, which caused an unbalance to the world.

Out of balance, the witchery of evil and events of World War II made Tayo lose his mind in confusion. He had flashbacks from his shell shock. The evil knew Tayo was the key to make the world come into balance and evil at work made Tayo to do things like try to drink his problems away. The evil has been trying to unbalance the world since before Tayo and the evil from witches cause:

Set in motion now

set in motion by our witchery

 to work for us.

Caves across the ocean

caves of dark hills

 white skin people

 like the belly of a fish

 covered with hair.

 Then they grow away from the earth

 then they grow away from the sun

 then they grow away from the plants and animals.

 They see no life

 when they look they see only objects.

 The world is a dead thing for them

 the tree and river are not alive

 the mountains and stones are not alive.

 The deer and bear are not objects.

 They see no life.

 They fear

 they fear the world.

 They destroy what they fear.

 They fear themselves.

 The wind will blow them across the ocean

 thousands of them in giant boats

 swarming like larva

 out of a crushed ant hill.

 They will carry objects

 which can shoot death

 faster the eye can see.

 They will kill thing they fear

 all the animals

 the people will starve.

They will poison the water

 they will spin the water away

 and there will be drought

 the people will starve.

 The will fear what they find

 they will fear the people

 they kill what they fear.

Entire villages will be wiped out

 they will slaughter whole tribes.

Corpses for us

 blood for us

 killing killing killing killing.

 And those they do not kill

will die anyway

 at the destruction they see

 at the loss

 at the loss of the children

 the loss will destroy the rest.

 Stolen rivers and mountains

the stolen land will eat their hearts

 and jerk their mouths from the mother.

 The people will starve.

They will bring terrible diseases

 the people have never known.

 Entire tribes will die out

 covered with festered sores

 shitting blood

 vomiting blood.

 Corpses for our work

 set in motion now

 set in motion by our witchery

 to work for us.

 They will take this world ocean to ocean

 they will turn on each other

 they will destroy each other

 up here

 in these hills

 they will find in the rock,

rocks with veins of green and yellow and blacks.

They will lay the final pattern with these rocks

 they will it across the world

 and explode everything.

set in motion now

set in motion

 to destroy

 to kill

 objects to work for us

 objects to act of us

 performing the witchery

 for suffering

 for torment

for the still- born

 the deformed

the sterile the dead.

Whirling

Whirling

 whirling

whirling

set in motion

 now set into motion.

All this happens to unbalance the world from peace and to increase the evil power of witches by an evil story from a witch.

 The only way to bring the world back to balance is a ceremony. At first, Tayo’s family tries to have a ceremony the Laguna way, with a medicine man, but he was of little help. So Tayo is sent by the old Laguna medicine man to a Navajo medicine man for a ceremony, a new ceremony created by the Navajo medicine man to bring Tayo back to balance and the world back to balance.

In this ceremony Tayo is sent on a journey to find the cattle that are symbolic, representing his strong, indigenous side . He finds a beautiful woman on the way and falls in love. The woman is a sprit in human form, in the world to help Tayo find the cattle and himself. Evil is around, even with the ceremony going on—that’s why the Laguna medicine man can’t do much to help Tayo.  Emo, Tayo’s former friend, kills for the joy of it and not for his people in the war. He is also a drinking buddy, causing confusion for Tayo. Also, the doctors who tried to help Tayo recover told him that his ceremony will not help.

But the doctors were wrong. After his journey in life and up to the ceremony, Tayo is restored in body, mind, soul, and in sprit, by a ceremony created to bring balance to himself and the world. It shows that a ceremony of the Native Americans is more powerful then evil. 

The Theme of Psychological Healing in Ceremony

Kenneth Toya

A major theme in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony is the process of psychological healing. We first meet Tayo, a shell shocked veteran of the WWII Bataan Death March, while he is having flash backs in a seedy motel room.

“He could get no rest as long as the memories were tangled with the present, tangled up like colored threads from Old Grandma’s wicker sewing basket when he was a child.”

            Today, Tayo would be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD doesn’t only happen to soldiers after war. It can also happen to a child if they are experiencing violence, sexual abuse, rape, or something to affect their life. When something like that has happened, you may not want to remember or not want that image to come back, but it will come back to you. It will have an affect on your unconscious mind.

               In the novel, Tayo has flashbacks from his childhood, war, and about his family, his brother Rocky, uncle Josiah, and his alcoholic mother who abandoned him.

“For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital.” What Tayo means by feeling he is white smoke, is that he feels disconnected from the world.

During the time Tayo is at the VA Hospital, he cries and vomits when he thinks about his brother and uncle who have died.

The elders send Tayo to a medicine man in Gallup.  His name is Betonie and he is half Navajo. “The old man was tall and his chest was wide; at one time he had been heavier, but old age was consuming everything but the bones. He kept his hair tied back neatly with red yarn in a chongo knot, like the old timers wore.”

They left on horseback before dawn. They left the red sandstone and the valley; they rode into the lava rock foothills and pine of the Chuska Mountains “We’ll have the second night here,” Betonie was talking about a stone Hogan set back from the edge of the rimrock. Tayo was standing by the horses, looking the way they had come.

“The mountain wind was cool; it smelled like spring hidden deep in mossy black stone. He could see no signs of what had been lose upon the earth; the highway, the towns, even the fences were gone. This was the highest point on the earth: he could feel it. It had nothing to do with measurements or height. It was a special place. He was smiling. He felt strong.”

Tayo and the medicine man were sitting outside. Tayo was thinking about the ritual that had been done, he was testing it against his old feelings, “the sick hollow in his belly formed by the memories of Rocky and Josiah, and all the years of Auntie’s eyes and her teeth set hard on edge. He could feel the ceremony like the rawhide thongs of the medicine pouch, straining to hold back the voices, the dreams, faces in the jungle in the L.A. depot, the smoky silence of solid white walls.”

“One night or nine day won’t do it any more.” The medicine man told Tayo “the ceremony isn’t finished yet.”  The medicine man was sitting on the ground and he was drawing in the dirt with his finger. He told Tayo remember these stars, “I’ve seen them and I’ve seen the spotted cattle; I’ve seen a mountain and a I’ve seen a women.”  

“The wind blew and caught Tayo by his shirt. Tayo smelled wood smoke and sage in the old man’s clothes. He reached in his pocket for the billfold, “I want to pay you for the ceremony you did tonight.”  Betonie shook his head and told Tayo, “it has been going on for a long tome now, it’s up to you. Don’t let them stop you. Don’t let them finish off the world.”

Betonie sent Tayo on a journey, to find the stars, the spotted cattle, and the women of the mountain. When Tayo went on his journey he met a woman, Ts’eh. She was the woman of the mountain and an herbalist. When Tayo was at the girl’s house he saw the stars that Betonie told him to look for. The next morning, Tayo went to look for his uncle Josiah’s cattle and he found them in a fenced in area that was electrified and he couldn’t get the cattle out. But he managed to find an opening where the fence was torn down by a tree branch that had fallen on top of the fence, so he took the spotted cattle which was the sign of his uncle’s love. He then was healed by the love of his girl Ts’eh and the spotted cattle.                                                                                                                     

The Importance of Animal Motifs in the Novel Ceremony

Lyle Vigil

The author Leslie Marmon Silko grew up on the Laguna Pueblo and her novel Ceremony incorporates many animal motifs that are part of our pueblo culture—motifs such as the deer, the bear, and the mountain lion. Many of our stories and dances still reflect how the animal the animals are tied into our beliefs and way of life.

THE DEER    Deer hunting is traditional on all Pueblos. We all respect the deer in our own way, like Tayo putting a jacket on a deer’s face before gutting it.

“A hunter singing a hunting song that they sung in late October while they waited for the deer and elk to come down the mountain because of the cold wind and snow…”

 This means there will be more food sources in lower elevation because of the amount of snow fall.  The hunter that sang the hunting songs was interesting, too, because Tayo said that the song sounded like a Jemez song.

THE BEAR    Another traditional theme arises when Tayo deals with Betonie’s helper. The bear theme was interesting because a child took off to a place which belonged to only bears.  The child wouldn’t come back, so they sent word to the medicine man to bring the child back from the place of only bears, which he does by becoming a bear.     

“The medicine man was scratching the floor in front and was grunting loudly making a low noise like a mother bear did. He grunted a little more and the bear cubs started to come out of the cave after a moment the child came out and was already crawling and walking like a bear they knew that they couldn’t just take the boy away because he would be stuck in between and would probably die.”

THE MOUNTAIN LION   When Tayo is searching for the spotted cattle, he encounters a mountain lion. This is a good sign.

“Tayo puts pinches of yellow pollen into the four footprints. The Mountain Lion, the Hunter. Mountain Lion is the hunter’s helper.”

The Bear and the Mountain Lion are both like mountain kings to Jemez people.

WATER CREATURES   In the end, the rains will return because Tayo gives tobacco the water creatures. Hummingbird and the dragonfly said they will send food and rain to the people but the buzzard had to purify the town first so they will get storm clouds. They had to give tobacco to the buzzard to purify the town first.

All these animal motifs Tayo faced in the novel Ceromony.  Despite his mixed blood and wartime experience, Tayo believed in the traditions and culture of the Laguna Pueblo.  This is why the ceremony heals him.

The Theme of Mixed- Race in Ceremony

Lynnora Sabaquie

            Tayo, the protagonist of Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony, was a half-blood Laguna Indian. Ms Silko, also a mixed-blood Indian, shows us how this made Tayo’s life different from others. As Tayo was growing up, his auntie was very mean to him. Silko writes,

“That auntie always looked at him in the same way, she always reached inside him with her eyes and talk about the past and say that is your future.”

 Tayo’s brother was being treated differently than Tayo because he was a full-blood Laguna Indian. Tayo’s Grandma and Auntie thought Tayo would never succeed in life.

 “It was the first time in all years that Tayo had lived with him that Rocky ever   called him “brother”. Auntie had always been careful that Rocky didn’t call Tayo “brother,” and when other people mistakenly called them brother, she quick to correct the error. “They’re not brothers,” she’d say, “that’s Laura’s boy. You know the one.” She had a way of saying it, a tone of voice which bitterly told the story, and the disgrace she and the family had suffered.”

Tayo’s grandma and auntie were very disappointed about what Tayo’s mother had done and they were taking it out on Tayo.

            The person who really cared for Tayo was Josiah. Josiah was Tayo’s uncle. When Josiah was there with Tayo, Auntie and Grandma didn’t bother Tayo.

            The Laguna boys, Tayo, Rocky, and Emo, enlist in the army because they think this is the way they will get to travel the world and finally have access to the white world. The question of race comes up when Tayo and Rocky go to war, and they notice that the Japanese no different from the people back at home.

 “When the sergeant told them to kill all the Japanese soldiers lined up in front of the cave with their hands in their heads, Tayo could not pull the trigger. The fever made him shiver, and the sweat was stringing his eyes and he couldn’t see clearly; in that instant he saw Josiah standing there; the face was dark from the sun, and the eyes were squinting as though he were about the smile at Tayo.” 

Tayo felt like he was killing his own people, he had a nervous breakdown because one of them looked like his uncle, Josiah. When the soldiers were done shooting he thought about his family back home.

            The book also talks about how Japanese-Americans were taken to jail because of the Japanese that attack on Pearl Harbor. When Tayo was at the train station, he was in a bad condition. There were a lot of Japanese people around him. The depot men were trying to help him up and Tayo asked the depot men, 

“I thought the Japanese were still locked up” and he said “no, that was a few years back right after Pearl Harbor and now they are loose and treated the same.”

            Throughout his whole life, Tayo was treated less than others because he was not a full-blood Laguna Indian. His grandma and auntie thought that he would not succeed in life. They all thought Rocky; his half brother would do everything good and reach all his goals. The only person that ever cared about Tayo was his uncle Josiah. His uncle believed that Tayo was going to do well with his life.

            As Tayo got out of the war, he was having a hard time with shell shock. So he went to a medicine man to help him with it. He went on his journey and on his journey he met so many different people. Ku’oosh’s was a pure medicine that could not cure Tayo of what the modern would have done. But there is another medicine men called Betonie. Like Tayo, Betonie was of mixed-blood. Betonie was a Navajo and Mexican. The only thing that could cure Tayo was a mixed-race spiritual leader to do to cure on him.

 Betonie sends Tayo off on a quest to look for his uncle’s speckled cattle. Symbolically, Tayo was like the speckled cattle. Because they were a mixed breed and stronger for it.

“They would breed these cattle, special cattle, not the weak, soft Herefords that grew thin and died from eating thistle and burned-off cactus during the drought.” “Herefords would not look for water. When a windmill broke down or a pool went dry, Tayo had seen them standing and waiting patiently for truck or wagon loaded with water, or for riders to herd them to water. If nobody came and there was no snow or rain, then they died there, still waiting. But these Mexican cattle were different.”

In the end, when Tayo captures the Speckled cattle, with the help of Ts’eh, the women he loves, it is like he is re-capturing the best and strongest part of himself.

“He watched the cattle grazing in the tall yellow rice grass that grew above the arroyo just to the edge of the juniper trees. They had stopped moving south. They had worked the direction out of their systems and had settled into the place. Josiah would have said that it was because they were so smart, and they could tell a good place when they found it: springs and good grazing.” 

            So it does not matter what the color of your skin is, because what does matter is the person you are deep down inside. Nobody should judge people by their skin color.

The World Out of Balance (Good vs. Evil) in the Novel Ceremony

Maverick Romero

     In the novel Ceremony, Tayo is a World War II veteran who has no parents and was raised by his relatives. He and his half-brother Rocky went to war and Tayo was captured by the Japanese and was a prisoner for a long time. During this time, he saw the worst of evil-killing and torture. His return to Laguna Pueblo only increases his feelings of more fear and he searches for another kind of comfort and resolution.                                                                

     Tayo’s quest leads him back to the Indian past and tradition to beliefs about witchcraft, evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The antagonist of the story is a guy named Emo, a man who didn’t go to war for his people; he went to war because he likes to kill and throughout the novel, Silko refers to evil as “witchery”

Long time ago

in the beginning

there were no white people in this world

There was nothing European.

And this world might have gone on like that

except for one thing:

witchery.

then it happened.

these witch people got together. (p.133)

They will carry objects

which can shoot death

faster than the eye can see.

They will kill the things they fear

all the animals

the people will starve.

They will fear what they find

they will fear the people

they kill what they fear.

Entire villages will be wiped out

they will slaughter whole tribes.

Corpses for us

blood for us

Killing killing killing killing 

And those they do not kill

Will die anyway at the destruction they see

At the loss

At the loss of the children

The loss will destroy the rest.

They will bring terrible diseases

The people have never known.

Entire tribes will die out

Covered with festered sores

Shitting blood

Vomiting blood.

Corpses for our work

Set in the motion now

Set in the motion by our witchery

Set in the motion

To work for us. (p. 136-137)

     Tayo is sent on a journey to complete his ceremony by a medicine man named Old Betonie. He lives on the edge of the Navajo reservation on a cliff overlooking the town of Gallup. Old Betonie comes from a long line of medicine men and women who struggle to create a new ceremony that will answer to the needs of the world. He his stories make Tayo scared because he isn’t just going to have to save himself, he had to save the whole world, in a struggle between good and evil.

     The goodness Tayo finds is love in the form of a beautiful, mysterious woman named Ts’eh. He finds her while he is walking on a wagon trail. The mysterious woman helps Tayo find his uncles cattle.

     As Tayo begins his journey home, he passes through the uranium mines, the ultimimate symbol of “evil” because uranium was used to create the atomic bombs that killed so many Japanese at Hiroshima   Tayo resists killing Emo with a screwdriver because, he thought if he killed him, he would feel the evil that was in Emo.

    “It took a long time for Tayo to tell his story to the elders. They stopped him frequently with questions about the location and the time of day. It was how he was sitting there, facing southeast, that he noticed how four windows along the south wall of the kiva had a particular relationship to this late autumn position of the sun. when the sun was dropping near the center of the west window, they stood up. The were going home to rest and eat supper; they would be back later, after dark, old man Ku’oosh told him. He could water but no food, he was not to leave the kiva.”

   In the end it is clear that Tayo has saved himself, his pueblo, and perhaps the world.

A’moo’ooh, you say you have seen her

Last winter

Up north

With mountain lion

The hunter

All summer

She was south

Near Acu

They started crying

The old men started crying

A’moo’ooh! A’moo’ooh!

You have seen her we will be blessed

Again.

The Meaning of Female Avatars in the Novel Ceremony

Valene Gachupin 

             In mythology, an avatar is ‘the incarnation of a higher being onto planet earth.  In the book Ceremony, certain female characters play a strong, mythical role.

      Spider Grandmother is a lady who people can come to for help. She alone knows how to outsmart the malicious mountain ka’t’sina who imprisoned the rain clouds in the northwest room of his magical house. Spider Woman even told Sun Man how to win the storm clouds back from the Gambler.  Grandmother Spider’s appearance and knowledge suggests the help Tayo will get from Tse-pi’na’, the avatar of the place which we call Mount Taylor.  This avatar re-enacts the story Tayo is remembering prior to World War II.   Spider Grandmother, and Tayo’s later encounter with the Night Swan, turns into a vision of a single spirit helper—the life of the land itself.

      The Night Swan is a strong, smart, sexy, and self-aware woman. “They call me the Night Swan, I remember every time I danced”. She is an old cantina dancer with the eyes like a cat. The Night Swan claims to remember only her dancing and not the sequences of towns in which she danced prior to her arrival and settlement in Cubero. The Night Swan is Josiah’s girlfriend, but she also seduces Tayo in order to teach him his first lesson about miscegenation and change. The Night Swan counseled Josiah to buy the speckled cattle.

      The ‘Women of Tse-pi’na’ are women who appear at three moments in Tayo’s journey.  Her third incarnation, a beautiful young woman ‘with eyes like an antelope,’ helps him with the cattle and teaches him about the wild herbs, love, and evading his pursuers. Also, since she has been encountered where she is, and because she seems so “at home” in this place, she could be probably taken as the mountain avatar of the life-giving spirit. The woman doesn’t have a name at first, but later on in the novel she calls herself Ts’eh, a short name for Ts’its’tsi’nako or Tse-pi’na. She isn’t much older than Tayo, though she wears her hair long like the old woman did, pinned back.

       So, all the female avatars in the book play a strong role. And it’s the female characters that help Tayo back to wholeness. Like Spider grandmother and the Night Swan, they are best understood as a sort of single encounter that brackets and blesses Tayo’s otherwise solo journey to healing.