Book Review: The Ceremony

According to Leslie Marmon Silko, the Ceremony is the sharing of stories through knowledge and experience. In her works she blends such western literary forms as the novel and the short story with the oral traditions of her Laguna Pueblo heritage to communicate Native American concepts concerning time, nature, and spirituality and their relevance in the contemporary world (CLC, vol. 74). She combines ancestor's free-verse poetry and contemporary story or narrative prose to tell what's happening in the story of a young adult and his growth in the present in different way. We learn that the Pueblo community's ancient ceremonies are not merely rituals, but a means of achieving a proper place in the universe. Her protagonists must draw upon moral strength of their native community and its traditions in order to overcome the often repressive, alienating effects of white society. Silko incorporates Laguna myths and historical incidents to reflect the Pueblo's abiding connection to the natural world, which counteracts the despair and alienation engendered by much of white society (CLC, vol. 74).

The stories main characters are: Harley, Leroy, and Emo-all Purple Hearts from Wake Island-who sit in Dixie Tavern, bragging of the white women they had had; telling themselves that they had been the best soldiers in the US Army, they curse the Anglos whose war they had fought and who had taken everything, while acting out this rage in violence among themselves. Along with them are Tayo and Pinkie, cousins who tend to their uncle's sheep. The summary of the story involves a timeline from before WWII to the present. Before WWII, we see flashbacks of when Tayo lived with his mom in his early childhood, and then later in his teen years with his Auntie. We also are told about Josiah and the Mexican cattle as well as the Night Swan. During WWII, we learn about Corregidor, Bataan Death March, Rocky dies, and the Japanese prison camp. After WWII, we hear about Tayo in the VA hospital and then at home with Auntie later on. We also are introduced to the Scalp Ceremony and when Tayo stabs Emo. In the present we see Harley and Tayo riding burros, and the curing of Tayo in Betonie's ceremony. We also meet Ts'eh and spend the summer with her, find Josiah's cattle, and learn of the last witchery with Emo and the telling of the story to the elders.

Ceremony is explained through seven different approaches. The first approach is Contemporary Issues: the role of rituals, the role of mixed-bloods, sources of evil, and integrating old with new or change. Young adults take old traditions and raising habits by combing them with their own and learning more about themselves. For a time they had been in a way integrated into the main society, the veterans who had been praised as patriotic Americans, only to be demoted to their previous status. Trying to drown their bitterness, they use their disability checks to get drunk in the bars just outside the reservation line on route 66. Betonie, having traveled and gone to school in the white world, adjusts to the changes around him and keeps samples of white culture in his Hogan alongside the traditional paraphernalia. Tayo also talks about the fact of his origin, which Betonie can sympathize with since he is a mixed breed himself (Per Seyersted, 1980).

The second approach is Literary Concerns: style, devices used, prototypes, and character development. Tayo's Post-Traumatic-Stress Syndrome is recovered by trying to forget (Per Seyersted, 1980). While ceremony is ostensibly a tale about a man, Tayo, it is as much and more a tale of two forces: the feminine life force of the universe and the mechanistic death force of witchery. We are the land, and the land is mother to us all. There is not a symbol in the tale that is not in some way connecting with woman ness, that doesn't in some way relate back to Ts'eh and through her to the universal feminine principle of creation: Ts'its'tsi'nako, Thought Woman, Grandmother Spider, Old Spider Woman (Paula Gunn Allen, 1983).

The third approach is Sources of Power: names, stories, words both spoken and written, knowledge, and witchery. Betonie also says that in order to achieve a balance the Indians shouldn't look upon themselves as helpless, blaming all witchery--the destructive forces-on the whites. And to bring home to him the idea that they can master their own fates and deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. If witches are defined as destroyers and witchery as DE-structive rather than CON-structive forces, then the whites certainly demonstrate such powers, to the point that they can now destroy the world. Some blame the Anglos for their ills, and others blame themselves for not being whites and in both instances, it leads to dissatisfaction and isolation, also among Indians themselves. In other words, they should return to the balanced views they have always had, and in general remember all their old wisdom, which also included the knowledge that as things grow, they also change. The old stories contain truth, the old verities about universal emotions and experiences. In other words, the message to all of us is that there are no boundaries, in the sense that life is repetition of what has gone before. Furthermore, you should treasure the store of traditional material handed down to you, partly because it is an integral element of your identity, partly because it ties you more intimately to the land that is yours. In this sense, stories insure survival (Per Seyersted, 1980).

The fourth approach is Religious Issues: conflicts with Christianity, and aspects of traditional beliefs such as healing and ceremony. When the Laguna medicine man Ku'oosh, called in by old Grandma, unsuccessfully has given him the Scalp Ceremony, he is sent on to another medicine man, the Navajo Betonie who lives near Gallup. While Betonie does give Tayo traditional ceremonies, he wins his confidence by encouraging him to speak of his Pacific experiences, suggesting that the reason he saw Josiah in one of the Japanese was that 30,000 years ago they were no strangers. What he is giving Tayo is less a cure than a recipe for a self-cure: while the white doctors' medicine had drained memory out of him, Betonie tells him to accept the fact that things are complicated and look into himself and remember everything. This approach to healing doesn't imply a modern emphasis on the individual, however. He begins to grasp what Betonie is suggesting to him: that he is part of an unending history, of a pueblo community now influenced by another, greater community, of a set of constructive and destructive forces, and that in order to achieve wholeness, he has to accept the fact that things are complex and not static.

The opposition between traditional Pueblo ways and beliefs and those of Christianity, or the influence of the new on the old. Whereas their emphasis had been on cultivation and conservation, on making things grow, the whites-ruled by their ideas of progress and development-carried out an exploitation of the land and its resources, leaving dumps behind them when other places became more profitable (Per Seyersted, 1980). Tayo is healed when he understands, in magical and loving ways, that his being is within and outside him, that it includes his mother, Night Swan, Ts'eh, Josiah, the spotted cattle, winter, hope, love, and the starry universe of Betonie's ceremony. This understanding occurs slowly as Tayo lives the stories-those ancient and those new. He understands through the process of making the stories manifest in his actions and in his understanding, for the stories and the land are about the same thing; perhaps we can best characterize this relation by saying that the stories are the communication device of the land and the people. Through the stories, the ceremony, the gap between isolate human being and lonely landscape is closed. And through them Tayo understands in mind and in bone the truth of his and our situation (Paula Gunn Allen, 1983).

The fifth approach is Cultural and Social Issues: community influence, group and tribal identity, effects of the war, and effects of racism. When Tayo is filled with despair, the reason is not so much that he hates the whites as that he cannot accept himself. Born of an unknown white father and a mother with whom he had lived for some years among the Gallup prostitutes, he had been given by her to her sister in Laguna, and she had made it clear to him that his mother's light-footedness was a disgrace to the family and that he is inferior to her son Rocky. Auntie encourages Rocky's plans to become a football star in the white world, whereas Tayo's duty is to help his uncle Josiah with his cattle. However, flattered when Rocky calls him "brother" and wants him with him in the Army, he enlists, too, whereupon Auntie gives him the task of looking after his cousin.

But he cannot prevent Rocky from being killed beside him in the Pacific, and when they are ordered to fire on some Japanese prisoners, he believes that one of them is Josiah and that he is responsible for his death as well, even though he didn't pull the trigger. This extreme self-condemnation causes him to break down, and during a long stay in a veterans' hospital he survived by withdrawing from himself into what he believes is invisibility. Finally returning to his Pueblo after six years, he blames himself for having survived, and also for the drought which has plagued Laguna since his uncle died and for the loss of the cattle which had run away. No longer caring whether he lives or dies, he one day nearly kills Emo (Per Seyersted, 1980).

The sixth approach is Cultural Substance: use of language, connections to oral traditions, and authenticity of perspective and voice. He presents Tayo with a seriocomic story or chant relating how the Indians had invented the whites. When his friends have taken him to an abandoned uranium mine, he manages to hide behind some boulders, but when they torture the one he thought was his real friend, he is tempted to come forward and attack them. Just in time he recalls Ts'eh's warning that they want to end his story, and he has the strength not to join in this Indian self-destruction. He has reached the end of his ceremony, and he can tell the holy men in the kiva what he has learned (Per Seyersted, 1980).

The seventh and final approach is Relationship with Environment: land and water, seasons as well as celestial, and animals. Tayo's search for the cattle is a way of showing his worth by repaying Josiah, and the encounters it leads him to with a woman and a mountain both mark steps in his cure. The meeting with Ts'eh is meaningful not only because she loves him, but especially because he is able to love her. He who had been kept at a distance by Auntie and who believed it had to be that way, now experiences a warm, almost wordless closeness which opens him emotionally and makes him realize that he was indeed loved by his mother and uncle, just as he loves them. When Tayo later meets Ts'eh at the spring, she leads him further towards the natural when she shows him the marvels of things that grow. Tayo's encounters with Ts'eh are both real and unreal.

There is a dreamlike quality about their tender meetings: she seems to know about him without asking; she ahs the paraphernalia of a medicine woman; and in short, she has many of the qualities of Spiderwoman, the Mother who also created the land. When they make love at the spring she seems to be merged with it. This reopening of Tayo's lifeline to nature is further advanced on Pa'to'ch, the highest mesa where he finally finds the cattle. After the final encounter with Ts'eh, Tayo knows he has to enter the normal world. He is aware that his friends are after him, and he realizes he has to face them. Before doing so, he watches the sunrise at Enchanted Mesa, the famous landmark between Acoma and Laguna (Per Seyersted, 1980). Tayo's illness is a result of separation from the ancient unity of person, ceremony, and land, and his healing is a result of his recognition of this unity. The land is dry because earth is suffering from the alienation of part of herself; her children have been torn from her in their minds; their possession of unified awareness of and with her has been destroyed, partially or totally; that destruction characterizes the lives of Tayo and his mother, Auntie and Rocky, Pinky and Harley, and all those who are tricked into believing that the land is beyond an separate from themselves. The healing of Tayo and the land results from the reunification of land and person.

It is loving her that heals Tayo, that and his willingness to take up her tasks of nurturing the plant and beast people she loves. And he had loved her from time immemorial unconsciously. Before he knew her name, he had given her his pledge of love, and she had answered him with rain. This is not an ordinary coupling, for nothing about Tayo's life is ordinary while the counter ceremony moves toward resolution. Silko explains how the witchery could be responsible for sickness in individuals, societies, and landscapes simultaneously. After Tayo completes the first steps of the ceremony, he is ready to enter into the central rituals connected with a ceremony of cosmic significance, for only a cosmic ceremony can simultaneously heal a wounded man, a stricken landscape, and a disorganized, discouraged society. After Tayo walks through Betonie's ceremony, finds the cattle, and puts them in a safe pasture, after he has confronted the witchery and abandoned all thought of retaliating against it, after he has been transformed by these efforts and his meeting with Ts'eh from isolated warrior to spiritually integrated person, after he has taken on the aspect of unity in Laguna, he is free to understand the whole thing.

The story that is capable of healing his mind is the story that the land has always signified. Tayo has bridged the distance between his isolated consciousness and the universe of being, because he has loved the spirit woman who brings all things into being and because he is at last conscious that she has always loved them, his people, and himself. He is able at last to take his normal place in the life of the Laguna, a place that is to be characterized by nurturing, caring for life, behaving like a good mother. Auntie can now treat him as she treats the other men, not as a stranger, but as a friend whom it is safe to complain about, to nag, and to care for. Even Grandmother knows that he is no longer special after he returns from the Paguate hills, where he became simply a part of the pattern of Laguna life and the enduring story within the land. She is implying that ordinariness can replace the extraordinary nature of life while the ceremony is being played out. Tayo has come home, ordinary in his being, and they can get on with serious business, the day-to-day life of a village, which is what the land, the ceremony, the story and time immemorial are all about (Paula Gunn Allen, 1983).

Through the seven approaches and the summary we have a better understanding of Silko's Ceremony, we also have learned more about the Laguna Pueblo and Indian Culture.