Ceremony Summary/Analysis

Author – Leslie Marmon Silko

Setting – Many different Laguna reservations after World War II

Point of View – Third person, and the narrator/ author shows bias towards Tayo

Characters

1.       Tayo – He’s the main character who has just come back from the war and is sick, throughout the book readers find out he’s not physically ill but mentally ill.  Tayo has to deal with being half Laguna and half white, and in the end the Ceremony that makes him feel better is the fact that he’s able to establish his identity and blend his two cultures together.

2.       Betonie – He’s the medicine man that kicks off Tayo’s journey, and he was able to connect with the spiritual world.  Betonie’s visions and his star pattern are what helped Tayo get better.

3.       Auntie – Tayo’s mom’s sister who is very concerns about her image since her sister had an affair with a white man, because of this Auntie makes a point of keeping Tayo distant.  Auntie is ready to assimilate to the white culture just like her son Rocky.

4.       Josiah – Tayo’s uncle who acted as a father figure for him.  Josiah is the one that kept Tayo close and made him feel like part of the family.  Tayo herded cattle with him, and met the Night Swan through Josiah.  One of Tayo’s problems throughout the book is coping with Josiah’s death.

Plot Summary – Tayo starts out at Auntie’s house and throughout the story readers are taken along for the ride with Tayo as he pieces together his memories.  Grandma suggests that Tayo should go to a medicine man to get better so Tayo first sees Ku’oosh, and then sees Betonie who helps him even more.  Betonie tells Tayo his future and when those things have happened Tayo’s ceremony will be completed.  Inspired by Betonie Tayo goes to chase the cattle that Josiah and he raised, and while looking for them Tayo met Ts’eh who is the yellow woman and part of Tayo’s ceremony.  After spending time together Ts’eh can see that Emo is coming to kill Tayo.  Tayo spends the night trying to hide from Emo (death) and does so successfully.  In the end Tayo is cured and readers learn that this story is one that’s told over and over again, but there are just different names.

Themes

1.       Storytelling – At the end readers realize this is just a story and Tayo and the characters just fit into the character slots.  The many poems also add to this theme because they act as a backbone for the story because the ideas in the poem parallel and foreshadows Tayo’s journey.

2.       Integration of Culture – Tayo’s whole journey/ceremony happens due to the root issue of Tayo’s mixed culture, because he’s stuck between the white and Laguna culture.  In the end when Tayo is finally cured it’s because he found a good balance and as a result found his identity.

3.       Tradition – This is evident throughout the story because the people who tried to stray away from culture ended up dead, for example Rocky and Helen Jean.  This is also a lesson to be learned, and Tayo ends up surviving because he still sticks to some traditional ways.

Quotes

1.       She sighed, and laid her head back on the chair. "It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different."

Ø  This quote is important because backs up the theme of storytelling and how everybody’s story is the same, and the character roles are just filled with different people

2.       Only Humans had to endure anything because only humans resisted what they saw outside of themselves.

Ø  This quote is important because when Tayo took Josiah’s advice and took charge of his “animal” side Tayo succeeded in life and met fewer obstacles

3.       He could feel it inside his skull- the tension of little thread being pulled and how it was with tangled things, things tied together, and as he tried to pull them apart and rewind them into their places, they snagged and tangled even more.

Ø  This quote showed readers how confused Tayo is and the quote uses symbolism to help that point across because the tangles thread represented Tayo.