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4.2/5 Barnes & Noble Language English Pages 262 OCLC 12554441 Genre Fiction Awards American Book Awards | 3.7/5 Goodreads Country United States Media type Paperback ISBN 0-14-008683-8 Originally published 1977 Page count 262 Cover artist Lee Marmon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ceremony is a novel by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, first published by Penguin in March 1977. The title Ceremony is based upon the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and pueblo people.
Contents
Plot
The main plot line of Ceremony follows the trials of a half-Pueblo, half-white Laguna Pueblo man named Tayo upon returning from World War II. His white doctors say he is suffering from "battle fatigue," or what would today be called post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the novel interweaves several different timelines around Tayo, from both before and after the war, as well as a spiritual timeline where the Thought Woman (also known as Spider Woman), Corn Woman and Reed Woman, the three main Pueblo spiritual entities, create the world and then Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly must go down to the Fourth World to retrieve Reed Woman to stop a drought. Also in this spiritual timeline is the introduction of the "witchery" and the "destroyers," who are like anti-medicine men, sewing evil and destruction which the medicine men work to fight against through Ceremony. By the end of the novel, all of these timelines converge in the ceremony of Tayo.
The Tayo we find at the beginning of the novel is struggling with the death of his cousin, Rocky, whom he saw die during the Bataan Death March of 1942, and the death of his uncle Josiah, whom he believes he saw in the face of a Japanese soldier killed by firing squad during the war. While Josiah did die during the war, his death occurred back on the Pueblo, not in the jungles of the Pacific. Rather, Tayo's hallucination and guilt comes from two promises he made to Josiah—the first, before he signed up for the war, was to help him wrangle the spotted cattle that Josiah had purchased before the war. The second, made after signing up for the war, was that he would he'd protect Rocky. He believes that he let down Josiah, and that's why he died. Tayo has spent several years at a mental health facility, and has gotten no better, but is being released by his doctors. After vomiting from the light at the train station, he returns home to the pueblo to stay with his Auntie, Grandma, and Robert, where he can barely move or get out of bed, and any hint of light makes him vomit.
As a result of his mental health struggles, Tayo turns to alcohol as a way of self-remedying. A fellow WWII veteran on the reservation, Harley, comes to find him, and they ride a Burro for miles in the hot sun over the dry earth. The pueblo is in a deep drought that began when, just after Rocky's death all the way back in Japan, Tayo cursed the green bottle fly and the rain because they wouldn't leave him alone, and on the journey to the bar Tayo nearly passes out from heat stroke. But Harley keeps on dragging him to the bar and they eventually make it. They meet up with some other WWII veterans from the pueblo there- Leroy, Pinkie, and Emo. Tayo and Emo, it turns out, have a history. Once, when they were all drinking together at a bar, Tayo stabbed Emo with a broken bottle after Emo brought out his war trophy—the teeth of a Japanese officer that he'd killed. But despite the tension, they share stories about the times they slept with white women, and about how they got nothing for fighting in the white man's war.
Looking to help Tayo, his grandmother brings a medicine man named Ku'oosh. He takes Tayo through a ceremony, but is ineffective against Tayo's battle fatigue, likely because Ku'oosh can't understand modern warfare: "Even if he could have taken if he could have taken the old man to see the target areas, even if he could have led him through the fallen jungle trees and muddy craters of torn earth to show him the dead, the old man would not have believed anything so monstrous." `1
Tayo is sent to another medicine man named Betonie, who is a slightly different type of medicine man because he incorporates elements of the modern world into his ceremonies. He tells Tayo about the witchery, people who are bent on destabilizing the world, and the Destroyers, who will stop at nothing to destroy the world and its inhabitants. Betonie tells him that he must complete the ceremony, and that the need to complete the ceremony is far bigger than him. In fact, the fate of the Pueblo people themselves depends upon him. In order to complete the ceremony that Betonie has set out for him, Tayo sets out to get back Josiah's spotted cattle that were stolen when Tayo left.
Tayo remembers that the cattle were heading south, so he begins by riding that way. Along the way, he meets a woman named Ts'eh, whom he sleeps with and who gives him a warm place to sleep and a hot meal during a particularly trying time of his journey. He eventually finds where the cattle must be, caged in by a giant fence on the property of a wealth white rancher. Tayo cuts the fence and is leading the cattle out when he is found by some of the man's employees. In the chase, he falls off his horse and is knocked unconscious. When Tayo awakens, he's been picked up by the white men, who ask him where he was "going so goddamn fast?" However, the tracks of a huge cougar distract them, and Tayo is let go.
He soon meets a hunter carrying a large buck across his back, singing a Pueblo song. They leave the ranch together and head back to the house of Ts'eh, who has trapped Tayo's cattle in the arroyo using a couple branches and calmed his horse before they arrived. The next day, Tayo takes the cattle and leaves, driving them back to the pueblo.
Early the next year, Tayo decides that he has to go back to the ranch to tend the cattle, but really he wants to go back to see Ts'eh. They spend lots of time together picking flowers and herbs, until she tells him that there will be people coming after him. And shortly thereafter, Harley and Leroy show up and ask him to go drink with them again. They go out drinking, but the next morning Tayo comes to his senses, abandoning them with the truck and tearing out the truck's wiring so they can't come after him.
Later that night, near the site of the Trinity nuclear test, Tayo hears screaming. Emo has Harley tied up, and is skinning him alive, trying to lure Tayo out to fight. Tayo strongly considers it, but in contrast to their past confrontation where Tayo stabbed Emo, he abstains and does nothing, letting Emo and Pinkie kill Harley and Leroy.
Tayo goes back home to the pueblo and inside a kiva he tells the elders, including Ku'oosh, that he has seen Ts'eh, whom they take as a spirit woman, possibly Reed Woman, and expect that the rain will return and the pueblo will thrive again. It turns out to be true. The spotted cattle thrive, the pueblo becomes green again, and after Pinkie dies of a mysterious gunshot, Emo is banned from the reservation. Tayo has completed the ceremony, and the pueblo is safe again.
Timelines
According to Peter G. Beidler and Robert M. Nelson of Richmond University, the novel is composed of six timelines: The main timeline, Tayo and Rocky's boyhood, Tayo and Rocky's early manhood, Tayo and Rocky's enlistment and deployment in WWII, Tayo's return to the pueblo, and the mythic action of Spider Woman, Hummingbird, Green Bottle Fly, and Reed Woman, as well as the witchery and the Destroyers.
Main Timeline
May 1948: Tayo is lying in bed, sick at his Auntie's house. Harley arrives on a Burro and convinces him to go and get a beer.
May 1948: Ceremony with Ku'oosh fails.
Late July 1948: Tayo says he is better, but the old men believe that he needs a stronger ceremony, so they refer him to Betonie. Tayo leaves for a while and meets Harley, Leroy and Helen Jean, who go as far away as San Fidel. He wakes up in the morning and vomits, and finally sees the horrible truth about his friends' drunkenness.
Late September 1948: Tayo goes to Mt. Taylor on his ceremony, trying to retrieve the spotted cattle. He meets Ts'eh, sleeps with her, cuts the fence and retrieves the cattle from the white rancher, meets the hunter, and brings the cattle home.
Winter 1948-1949 Tayo lives with Auntie, Grandma, and Robert before going back to the ranch to look after the cattle
Summer 1949: Tayo meets Ts'eh, they pick flowers and herbs, Tayo gets a yellow bull to breed with his cattle, and Ts'eh warns him that "they" will be coming for him at the end of the summer.
Late September 1949: During the fall equinox, Tayo gets drunk with Harley and Leroy before coming to his senses and disabling their truck. He and Emo have their final confrontation near Jackpile Uranium mine and Trinity Site, and opts not to stab Emo with the screwdriver, letting him kill Harley and Leroy. The next day, Tayo tells Ku'oosh and the elders in a kiva at old Laguna everything that he has seen.
Tayo and Rocky's Boyhood
C. 1922: Tayo is born.
-Drought— animals sold
-Tayo's childhood in the slums at Gallup
-Laura (Tayo's mother) takes Tayo to Aunt Thelma
-Tayo spills grandma's wicker basket
-Tayo, eight, tries to ride the pinto
-Tayo takes colts to the mountain with Josiah
-Tayo and Rocky learn they cannot control the black gelding
-Josiah brings fever medicine to Tayo
-Tayo helps Josiah siphon water from the spring
-Tayo and Rocky climb Bone Mesa
-Josiah tells Tayo the story of green bottle fly
-Laura dies
-Tayo learns to dissect frogs in school
-Tayo and Rocky drink Benny's wine
Tayo and Rocky's Early Manhood
-Tayo goes to Indian school
-White teachers make fun of "superstitions" of Indian children
-Tayo, Rocky, Josiah and Robert go hunting and kill a deer, place corn meal on its nose
-Josiah tells Tayo that only humans resist
-Auntie tells Tayo about his mother's naked escapades
-Rocky excels at football
-Josiah has affair with Night Swan
-Josiah buys spotted cattle, Tayo promises to stay and help with them
-Tayo has sex with Night Swan
Tayo and Rocky in the Army
-Tayo and Rocky enlist as "brothers" and Tayo promises to bring Rocky back
-Tayo and Rocky are blessed by old white woman in Oakland before they ship out
1941: Harley, Emo, and Leroy are at Wake Island
-Tayo sees Josiah in the faces of Japanese prisoners killed by firing squad
-Josiah dies on the pueblo, and the Night Swan leaves town
-Tayo and Rocky taken prisoner
April–May 1942: Rocky is wounded, and dies on Bataan Death March; Tayo curses the rain and the flies
-Drought begins in New Mexico
-Tayo in POW camp
1945: Iwo Jima
July 16, 1945: Trinity Site Test in New Mexico, first atomic bomb test ever
Tayo Returns From War
1945-1948: Tayo in veterans hospital mental ward
-Tayo is sent home; train station where Tayo vomits and people stare
-Tayo takes train home to pueblo
-Harley abandons sheep at Montano
-Emo tells Matucci story
-Tayo goes drinking in Dixie bar with Harley, Leroy, Pinkie and Emo, and attacks Emo with a beer bottle
-Grandma contacts Ku'oosh
-Ku'oosh's ceremony fails
-Grandma gets new kerosene heater
Mythic Action
Creation: Ts'its'tsi'nako (Thought Woman or Spider Woman) and her daughter/sisters Nau'ts'ity'i (Corn Woman) and I'cts'ity'i (Reed Woman) set life in motion
Recovery/Transformation: The Kurean prayer for sunrise
Departure: Corn Woman scolds Reed Woman for being lazy, and she departs; Drought begins
Departure and Recovery: Pa'caya'nyi introduces Ck'o'yo medicine, and the People forget their obligation to Nau'ts'ity'i
The People must send someone to ask for forgiveness. They see that Hummingbird does not look starved like the rest of them, and he tells them he has seen her in the Fourth World, the one below this one. Hummingbird teaches the People to have Green Bottle Fly be their messenger Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly travel to the Fourth World to ask forgiveness Nau'ts'ity'i tells Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly that Buzzard needs to purify the town Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly take gifts to Buzzard, who asks for tobacco Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly return to Nau'ts'ity'i to ask her what tobacco is; She tells them to see Caterpillar Caterpillar gives tobacco to Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly, and they take it back to Buzzard Buzzard purifies the town, Nau'ts'ity'i returns, and the storm clouds returnDevelopment
Silko began early work on Ceremony while living in Ketchikan, Alaska in 1973 after moving there with her children Robert and Kazimir from Chinle, Arizona. The family relocated so her then-husband John Silko could assume a position in the Ketchikan legal services office. Ketchikan was John Silko's hometown.
Silko held a contract with Viking Press to produce a collection of short stories or a novel under editor Richard Seaver. Having no interest in creating a novel, Silko began work on a short story set in the American Southwest revolving around the character Harley and the comical exploits of his alcoholism. During this early work, the character Tayo appeared as a minor character suffering from "battle fatigue" upon his return from World War II. The character fascinated Silko enough to remake the story with Tayo as the narrative's protagonist. The papers from this early work are held at the Yale University library.
In February 1974, Silko took a break from writing Ceremony to assume the role of a visiting writer at a middle school in Bethel, Alaska. It was during this time Silko penned the early work on her witchery poetry featured in Ceremony wherein she asserts that all things European were created by the words of an anonymous Tribal witch. This writing plays a formidable role in the novel's theme of healing. An expanded version of this work is featured in Storyteller.
The poetic works found in Ceremony were inspired by the Laguna oral tradition and the work of poet James Wright whom Silko developed a friendship with after meeting at a writer's conference at Grand Valley State University in June 1974 and years of written correspondence. These letters would be featured in the work The Delicacy and Strength of Lace edited by Ann Wright, wife of James Wright, and published in November 1985 after the poet's death.
Silko completed the manuscript to Ceremony in July 1975 shortly before returning to New Mexico.