"Ceremony"

Book Review # 112990

Native-American Studies
Sociology > Multiculturalism

"Ceremony"

A review of Leslie Marmon Silko's book "Ceremony".

1,258 words () | 0 sources | 2009 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes Leslie Marmon Silko's book, "Ceremony", and shows how it is primarily about Silko's search for ways to deal with violence, rigidity of life, and loss of meaning and identity in America, as experienced by Native-Americans. The paper details the struggles experienced by Tayo, the main character, and relates that reading the novel is a confusing experience because it is difficult to understand one's own role in these processes. The paper then posits, however, that stories like this are an important tool for exposing the awkward stance many take towards Native-American issues.

From the Paper:

"Ceremony consists of the search of the radical voice of author Leslie Marmon Silko for ways to deal with violence, rigidity of life, loss of meaning and identity in America, which carry to great extremes the themes of heterogeneity, fragmentariness and meaninglessness in an experimental form. Tayo, the main character, returns from the Second World War with post-traumatic stress syndrome and struggles to assimilate into a society foreign to him. Meanwhile, as I read about Tayo's struggles I felt myself engaged in a parallel but opposite struggle to sympathize with a Native American narrative. As a white reader, I felt confused about my role in the healing narrative of Tayo; I felt alienated and other as well as responsible for Tayo's and the Native American population's alienation."