Ceremony Summary and Analysis

Ceremony is a novel by Leslie Marmon Silko which takes place in the American Southwest on the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Tayo, the main character, is a half-white half-Laguna young man who fought in the Pacific during World War II along with many other young Laguna Pueblo men. The novel is the story of Tayo's return to health following a PTSD-like state after the war, but it is also much more than that.
Tayo goes to WWII with Rocky and returns to find Josiah dead. He is in an army hospital at first, later comes home and tries to get better there. Has trouble when he goes out and drinks with the other veterans, almost kills Emo in a bar fight. Eventually seeks help from elders, first one from his tribe (Ku'oosh) and then one from another tribe (Apache?) in Betonie. Betonie tries to mix modern western culture with native culture, to mix it in with the healing ceremonies, because the Native Americans must learn to live with this culture or else theirs will be destroyed. Eventually takes Tayo to a mountain and performs a ceremony with/on Tayo to heal him, which he must complete by stealing some cattle Josiah had once bought back from a white man.
Tayo goes to steal the cattle back and meets a strange (spirit?) woman in a lodge in the woods, and he "shacks up" with her before going up to the mountain to try and break the cattle out. He finds a mountain lion there who eventually helps distract guards of the rich white man's land while the cattle escape, and Tayo successfully rescues them.
After this, he lives with the cattle on the family's ranch, and the spirit woman (Ts'eh) returns to live with him and teach him for a while as he waits. Eventually Emo comes searching for him to try and kill him, and Tayo leaves but is picked up by Harvey and Leroy and taken to Emo (betrayed by his friends; like a Christ figure?). Eventually he escapes and hides, but he watches Emo kill Harvey. Eventually all of this group dies except Emo, who leaves to go to California.


Culture notes

Rocky: Tayo's cousin, was seen as having a lot more potential and ability than Tayo
Josiah: Tayo's uncle. Taught him to feel the traditional native culture as he was growing up (his "spirit teacher")
Night Swan: Josiah's girlfriend who lives in a village, is very mysterious and spirit-like.
Auntie: Tayo's aunt, who takes him in and takes care of him from when he is a kid. She makes it clear that she intends to treat Rocky better than Tayo and they have a very odd relationship because of this.
Laura: Tayo's mom. She runs around with a bunch of white men, being drunk and in general just an irresponsible person, and eventually dies while Tayo is still young. Possibly committed suicide.
Grandma: Lives with Tayo and tells stories of Laguna culture. Compares him to the sun god in the story of the gambler.
Harvey: Tayo's friend since childhood.
Emo: Another one of the Laguna around Tayo's age from his social circle, but someone Tayo never liked. Epitomizes "witchery" and tries to kill Tayo.

QUOTES:

“You don't have anything 
if you don't have the stories.” 

"They fear.
They fear the world.
They destroy what they fear.
They fear themselves."

“You damn your own soul better than I ever could.” 
“I will tell you something about stories . . . 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.” 


THEME
Ceremony is about the web of stories that make up the world and the cultural divide that exists in the Laguna Pueblo world.

The stories idea is huge, and there are a ton of examples to support it. The traditional stories like the Gambler and the Fly, as well as stories that people make up like Betonie's story about witchery. To me, the most important idea is how the stories of everyones' lives intersect, like the bear boy's story coming to play a part in Tayo's story which comes to play a part in the story of the preservation of the Laguna culture which includes the stories of all of Betonie's predecessors as well as all the stories of the Laguna Pueblo oral tradition that tie into this....

Open Prompt Revision #4

Revision from Sunday, September 16, 2012

2010, Form B. “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you.” —Sonsyrea Tate

Sonsyrea Tate’s statement suggests that “home” may be conceived of as a dwelling, a place, or a state of mind. It may have positive or negative associations, but in either case, it may have a considerable influence on an individual. Choose a novel or play in which a central character leaves home yet finds that home remains significant. Write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the importance of “home” to this character and the reasons for its continuing influence. Explain how the character’s idea of home illuminates the larger meaning of the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a novel in which the characters may leave their homes, but their homes never truly leave them. Tom Joad is forced by the circumstances to become the major provider for his family, a major contrast to his position as an inmate while they still lived in Oklahoma. The family consisted of self-providing farmers who got by well enough on their own, but when they were unable to grow enough to survive, they were uprooted and it seemed like their whole lives changed. However, they still retained a few qualities that had been central to them at their home. This sense of home is used by Steinbeck to create the sense of family's importance and power as a central meaning in Grapes of Wrath.

Family is very important when you are a farmer; when there are very few other people around, the bonds that are formed between family members are amazingly strong. An agricultural family works as a social unit to support each other against the face of a seemingly all-powerful force: nature. The Joad family tries to stick together throughout the story, but they are eventually split up as Tom again becomes a fugitive from the law, and the quality of home in the form of their family seems to be gone. It seems that their family is broken up, they have lost what held them together, and they are away from home in a hostile land where they can't survive like they used to. One could take away from this that they did indeed lose everything that had been theirs in their home. If all the details are accounted for, it would appear to be that while Tom may have lost almost all of what his "home" was, but there was still some with him. He refused to let the circumstances dictate his actions, and began to lead an effort to organize the farm labor of poor migrants with similar circumstances.

After losing his physical home, Tom found his home away from home in the form of his family. After being forced away from his family, Tom once again found a home in the form of the burgeoning organized labor movement that he became a part of. United once again with a group of people working to support one another against a seemingly all-powerful force, Tom retains an aspect of what his home was to him even though he has lost the most precious part of his home: his family, his farm, his livelihood. Home is not something that you can take away from somebody; it is a part of a person as much as their hands or their mind.

Through the development of home as an important part of the work and the connection of home to family, Steinbeck creates the feeling that family has the power to help lift people up from the terrible disasters we may face in life.

(I would add better textual evidence, as I'm sure there is some, but I haven't read this book for like 2 years and I only read it once, I hardly remember the specifics except the ending...)

 

Response to Course Materials 8 (LAST ONE!!!)

We have just finished annotating Ceremony, and I have to say it was really really long. I hope we don't have to do the same for Fifth Business, because I think my time would be better spent studying for APs at that point, but we'll see.
I actually really liked reading Ceremony and it was good to go back and spend more time thinking about it, as I definitely would have had major gaps in my understanding of it if I hadn't done so. The differences between this book and more traditional Western literature is intriguing to me and the themes of the book are also very interesting (trying to reconcile the differences in cultures, restoration of Laguna culture, web of stories, etc.) although I know I don't understand them as well as I would like.
I don't remember everything that we did before spring break but I hope that we work a lot on our writing in timed situations before the exam. I don't really have any idea of how well I'll do on the exam, MC or writing, but I'm sure if I study hard enough for it I'll be well prepared.

One more month until we're done!