Spider Webs and Attitudes: Leslie Marmon Silko Speaks of Pueblo Expression

"Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider web - with many little threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing each other," Leslie Marmon Silko writes in "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective" (287). But what does she mean? How does she tell the reader how this differs from anything they are used to? Simply put, she says that the reader is used to being taken from "point A to point B to point C" (287) and that it will be difficult to follow. Silko then takes the "high road", if you will, and speaks to her reader as though they were children needing to be instructed in the Pueblo way. That is, she explains how the Pueblo experience in relating everything from the Pueblo Creation story (298) to a tale of woe and lost possessions in an arroyo (290) have ways of being told, retold and wrapping themselves around again in intricately spiraling patterns of life.

Silko relates the Pueblo Creation story and explains that it allows that "far away there were other human beings, also part of this word" (288). In doing this the Pueblo's story takes in these people and, as they retell the Creation story, weave their web even more elaborately, allowing the story to grow and radiate, and come back to them.

In relating an incident with George Day, a young Pueblo, Silko tells how he drove his new Volkswagen to a bar and, forgetting to set the parking brake, allowed it to roll "back into an arroyo and [the car] was all smashed up" (290). From the telling of this story, she shows how the tale is told and retold, with others adding how they had lost "cars and family members to that arroyo" (290). And the new telling ends with admonitions that at least there been no family members in the car when it had happened. And so, George Day's tale of his beloved Volkswagen then gets wrapped up in all the other stories of the arroyo. And in this manner, spin a more intricate web pattern in its telling.

For Pueblo people, the "language is [the] story" (289). She explains why that Pueblo disdain written or spoken speeches, as they keep the "true meaning of the speaker remains hidden" (287). Therefore, the Native tribe's method of telling stories is superior, as it includes much more than other forms. Especially the written or spoken speeches. In telling the stories, the emotion and expression and all other details, including new ones, can be experienced.

As there are many tribes, there are many versions of a story. But the meaning behind the story remains because it is the expression of the story that matters. And the listener. For it is from the listener, Silko tells us, comes "a great deal of the story" (289). From her elders, Silko learns the most valuable lesson about stories. "If you can remember the stories, you will be alright" (291).

Silko then concludes her explanations by relating to the reader the tale of her aunt who speaks of going on a journey. Silko soon realizes that her aunt is talking about death, and she marvels at how the "boundless capacity of language . . . brings us together, despite great differences between cultures, despite great distances in time" (291). In this way, Silko allows the reader to have hope, that someday their experiences and stories will also loop around and grow in an intricate pattern with "many threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing each other."

Works Cited

Silko, Leslie Marmon. "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective." The Arlington Reader. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. 2nd ed. Boston; Bedford/St. Martin, 2008. 287-291. Print.