Storytelling and Representation in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (original) (raw)
Related papers
Revele Revista Virtual dos Estudantes de Letras, 2014
This article's aim is to analyze the space, place and gender relations in Native American culture in the novel Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko, and the concepts discussed by Doreen Massey, Jody Berland, Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose. The novel, whose focus is on the healing process of a Native American young man, a World War II veteran, shows how the space, place and gender relations in the Native American culture differ from the ones we see in the patriarchal family structure common to the western culture. In this way, I intend to discuss this difference between the spaces and places occupied by women and man in both cultures.
2019
The article deals with the representation of post-traumatic stress disorder in Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony (1977), and with the complex psychological and cultural procedures of identity reconstruction its protagonist, half-blood Tayo, must follow in order to find some sort of inner balancing. Tayo's traumatic experience of war seems to schizophrenically split his identity, turning his "real" self into a Lacanian absence (the symptom of the "Real"), a void that denounces the source of the trauma (not the war in itself, which is mainly a metaphorical projection of Tayo's inner conflict, but his being neither Indian nor white) by erasing it from Tayo's consciousness and substituting it with a mythical plot that constructs him as a scapegoat-like figure responsible for the drought afflicting the Reservation. Both the novel and its main character at the end manage to reach some sort of coherence by accepting the unrepresentable Real and turnin...
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony: Tayo's Healing Quest
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2022
Leslie Marmon Silko is one of the most prodigious Native American writers of the 1970s. She is distinguished for her engagement with folklore traditions, religious inspirations, and quest narratives. In her novel Ceremony (1977), Silko introduces a man on a journey that is full of hardships and frustrations. Accordingly, the present paper explores Tayo's journey, through which he quests to heal his psychological distress and physical illness caused by the atrocities of World War II. The paper also investigates the different kinds of journeys the protagonist, as a war veteran, takes up and the various motives behind them. Finally, the paper tries to answer questions such as "What is the significance of the people the protagonist meets during his healing quest? Is he healed physically and psychologically at the end of the novel? How? Why? How do all healing processes contribute to affirming his identity and restoring his humanity?"
Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2018
The dominant white culture in the United States of America has always assumed the role of supremacy that victimizes other ethnicities and minorities and looked upon them as inferiors and unworthy of the privileges white people enjoy. Although the maltreatment of the Other-the non-white- differs from one ethnicity or minority to the other, it has always had sheer negative impacts on individuals as well as communities. This paper aims to show the victimization of African Americans as a community in America represented by the atrocity of Bigger and the victimization of Native Americans represented by trauma of Tayo. This paper will tackle the issue of victimization of the two communities-African American and native American-in general through the tough life journeys of the two protagonists of Richard Wright’s Native Son and Leslie Silko’s Ceremony and will try to show two different faces of maltreatment by the mainstream culture, but eventually same negative effects on both communities...
Re-reading Silko’s Ceremonies and American History
Global Regional Review, 2019
This article retrieves the history of Native American ceremonies to highlight the aboriginal ways of being. Using Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony to retrieve the reality of the ceremonies, I argue how the myths inscribed in Native American contemporary writings are the social and cultural embedment of the ceremonies in which they were written and thus the knowledge of prehistoric times. I focus on Silko’s modern techniques to revive the myths of oral tradition to understand and publicize the truths of Native American ceremonial world. She explains the ceremony of 1955 with reference to the ceremonies incorporated in Laguna myths, thereby juxtaposing two different time periods: the pre-Columbian timelessness and the post-second World War fragmented tribal community in Laguna in 1955. To understand the overlapping of poetic-prose stories I explain the function of ceremony in the prosperity of the Pueblo and assimilate the present in the past and the future.
MISSIONS FOR AWAKENING: HEALING CEREMONY AND STORYTELLING
Studiul de faţă se concentrează în jurul protagonistului Tayo al romanului american Ceremony, personaj principal, care, aparţinând culturii Pueblo, va trece printr-un proces al recuperării spirituale sub forma unui ceremonial de restabi-lire a relaţiei cu natura şi spiritul acesteia. Aşa cum se va demonstra în acest studiu, scriitoarea americană Leslie Mar-mon Silko în romanul său depăşeşte însă sfera limitată a existenţei umane intrând în cadrul mai amplu al problematicii culturale, unde ceremonialul prin care trece Tayo oferă conştientizarea necesităţii naraţiunii prin legătura cu natura în cadrul culturii căreia îi aparţine, autoarea punând astfel accentul pe importanţa valorilor culturale ale băştinaşilor ameri-cani, pierdute şi, în acelaşi timp, recuperate prin prisma narării propriei istorii culturale. Introduction Silko's Ceremony is about Tayo, a half-breed Laguna veteran of World War II, who leaves hospital and returns to his aunt and her family. Before he joins the war, he has been treated as an outsider and a half-breed. Having lost his uncle and cousin in the war, Tayo loses balance and unity between his personality and his native land. Tayo's illness worsens including chronic nausea and vomiting, hallucinations, and weeping. Finally Tayo starts on an intense journey of inner healing and reconnection with his painful but rich past. As a part of the healing ceremony that begins before his birth according to his native traditions and his spiritual illness caused by the war, Tayo must close the gap between the " isolate human beings and lonely landscape. " This gap is brought about through old witchery that has led not only to Tayo's illness but also to a drought-plagued land. Witchery has set a loveless, fearful, mechanistic force loose in the world: war. It signifies an ideal for bravery and glory. However, the attempt to find peace through war is the central paradox placed in the novel. Therefore, a ceremony is required, for Tayo, to escape from the effects of witchery that bring violence. Silko introduces the importance of storytelling with the healing aspect of ceremony. The aim of this article is to show how Tayo's ceremony-spiritual awakening-becomes his own story that gives the message that as a member of Native American society, Tayo learns to possess the power to keep the culture and people alive through stories. It further explores the issues of losing sense of belongingness and death to point out that for Native American people, cultural identity depends on keeping the stories alive. My focus will be on the process of healing during which Tayo finds peace through nature, animals, colors and a supernatural character named T'seh. From a closer perspective, I will examine Tayo's story as ceremony in the native Ameri-can storytelling tradition as a means of leading a lost individual towards the right path he seeks for. Moreover, exploring the interaction between Tayo and nature (represented by the regenerative spirit, Ts'eh) as a ceremony that contributes greatly to Tayo's healing and survival in his culture, the ceremony thus becomes a spiritual understanding of the world. In order to gain psychological wholeness, Tayo needs to struggle in this mystic journey during which he meets and interacts different characters. Some characters created by Silko are all parts of nature, which represent the notion that love is needed to reach a spiritual balance, e.g. T'seh and Night Swan who through their love lead Tayo into finding his interior awakening. Some others are associated with evil and witchcraft, such as Rocky, Emo and Leroy who lead him into witchery.
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, 2022
This paper examines the decolonizing methods used by Leslie Marmon Silko in her novel Ceremony (1977) to heal the indigenous people from the patriarchal traditions of the white hegemony. This study aims to emphasize the vulnerable responses of the Pueblo people to the memories of the clan and to highlight Silko's methods to sustain the history and lifestyle of the indigenous people. Therefore, Silko's novel can be situated historically and culturally within memory-studies. To analyze the contrasting behaviors of characters, this paper projects the relationship between the collective patriarchal doctrines and that of the individual within the framework of memory studies. Theories of Jan and Aleida Assmann are used here to explore the chronicle struggle of the indigenous people and to maintain the memory and tradition of the clan. Memory studies can best describe this novel since Silko believes there is a systematic shift in dislocating the memories of the place. This cultural displacement, the Pueblo people are specifically facing, happens when the young people lose their memories of the tribe and forget their traditions. The memory-studies then establish an intersection not only between the collective and the individual but also between the white hegemony and the Indigenous culture. The paper concludes that memories of the clan can be regained through specific forms of ceremonies, narratives, or any institutional formation. Therefore, Silko's novel has entertained the possibility of cultural and historical communication-within memory studies-that may succeed in stimulating the attention of the young generation.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2019
Missionaries were an important part of the colonizing mission. While the colonial armies committed massacres and subdued the militarily inferior Natives, the missionaries did a long lasting damage to the Native societies by obliterating their cultures. They not only converted the people, but also changed their worldview that was so important to them and the lands they lived in. The de-culturation of Natives is not only responsible for environmental problems, but also social problems like domestic violence and drinking. Recent studies have indicated that de-culturation of Natives is also responsible for endemic psycho-somatic problems of the Natives. The Native writers have understood that improvement in mental health of the Natives is directly associated with the resuscitation and restoration of Native culture. The literature written by the Natives works like an antidote against the atrocities committed by the whites. Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony is an important work of lite...
Tribalography: The Power of Native Stories
The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 1999
What is the power of native stories? Did they create our people, our tribes, ourselves? Are our stories "a living theater" that connects everything to everything, as we say they do? If you attended the conference, "A Celebration of Native Women Playwrights" held March 18-20, 1999 at the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio you might agree that native stories have the power to create conflict, pain, discord, but ultimately understanding and enlightenment a sacred third act. The women's conference began innocuously enough. There was a warm welcome by faculty, staff and dramaturgists at Miami University. Mimi Gisolfi D'Aponte, Professor of Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Baruch College gave a keynote address which highhghted, among other things, a new publication, Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays. Excellent papers were given by native and non-native scholars; Rebecca Howard, Ann Haugo, ViBrina Coronado (Tus...