A Critical Analysis of Autobiographical Evidences in Ceremony - Book Report/Review Example

A Critical Analysis of Autobiographical Evidences in “Ceremony” Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel “Ceremony” deals with the story of a war veteran, Tayo’s struggle to acclimatize himself with his society. Tayo, a Native American who fought in the Second World War, fights back his personal as well as communal problems, that all the people of the Pueblo community commonly suffers from. A sense of communal altruism and philanthropy seems to pervade his existence throughout the whole novel. Ultimately Tayo’s altruistic pursuit, to rescue his community, his country and the Whites, renders him with an identity in the society, while saving him from the postwar angst and absurdity that a soldier suffers. Indeed Along with fighting the post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from the war, Tayo as well as his community have to “overcome obstacles such as war, death, drought and poverty” (Goldberg 1). A comparative analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s life and her novel, “Ceremony” will reveal that her real life experiences constitute the most part of the novel. In this regard, some critics claim that Silko’s novel is an unusual marginalization of autobiography with fiction. Though Silko’s novel has a male protagonist, Tayo, who suffers from PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder), the protagonist embodies a huge number of facts and figures from the author’s personal as well as community-life. Silko herself publicly has confessed that she had been suffering from depression and post-stress traumatic disorder while writing the “Ceremony”. Though Silko lacks the experiences of fighting in a war, her own experience with depression and her contact with the Native American veterans of the Laguna Pueblo community help her depicting “Tayo's struggle with mental illness even more realistic and sincere” (Goldberg 1). Her portrayal of Tayo’s absurd feelings, ennui and psychosis essentially appears to be the depiction of a severe case of psychological disorder. Even Silko claims that the novel is a “ceremony for staying sane” (Velie 34). Apart from these traces of the author’s psychological disorders, the novel reveals an abundance of Silko’s personal and community-life experiences. The “Ceremony” begins with Tayo, the protagonist, under the care of a sanitarium, bereaved by fear, guilt and psychotic disorder which have been induced by his traumatic experiences during the war. Most of the novel describes Tayo’s struggle “to overcome his awful psychological trauma and this struggle becomes intertwined with the journey of rounding up Josiah's cattle and stopping the drought” (Goldberg 1). While remaining under the care of the mental sanitarium, he also consults with two other Native American spiritual healers who endeavor to help him to overcome his psychological trauma. Tayo fights not only with his mental illness, but also with the obstacles, raised by the society, because of his mixed ancestry. He is not a pure Native American; he is an Anglo-American descent who inherits both the White and the Native blood as well as culture. The confluence of the Anglo-American heritage provokes Tayo to participate in the US Army during the War in order to save his country. Indeed the same mixed ancestry brings him back to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation for mental solace and comfort. He seeks salvation from his traumatic wartime experiences through the social contact with his community, culture and rituals. He wants to embrace the cultures and traditions of the community that refuses him because of his ancestry. He leads almost the life of an outcast who ultimately is healed with the help of Betonies who is also an outcast in Pueblo community. Referring to Tayo’s struggle with his outcast situation in the Pueblo community, critic Greg Sarris comments that Silko’s protagonist, Tayo, is: “a man who is displaced in World War II, taken away from his home, away from the stories, and about having to come home and reacquaint himself with, if you will, the landscape of who he is, his stories, what he knows from the landscape” (Nelson 314) Silko’s protagonist suffers from an identity conundrum. It is quite possible that Silko herself has suffered from the same identity-maze that her protagonist suffers from. But a close scrutiny of Tayo’s character will necessarily evoke the question why Silko chooses a male protagonist to represent her in the novel. Obviously the answer lies in Silko as well as her hero, Tayo’s outcast condition in the Pueblo community. Silko might feel more comfortable with the idea of aligning herself with the absurdity and angst of a war veteran like Tayo who lacks a confirmed social identity and social recognition and participates in the war being provoked by a vague sense of duty to fight for the country as well as an affinity for the white. Indeed he remains the same outsider in the Pueblo community as he was before leaving the Reservation for the war. Meanwhile his absence during the war rather widens the gap between him and his community. In a sense Tayo’s motivation to participate in the war is vague that he is not well-aware of his identity which he truly belongs to, as it is evident in his speech: “ ‘Anyone can fight for America,’ he began, giving special emphasis to ‘America,’ ‘even you boys. In a time of need, anyone can fight for her’” (Silko 64) He goes to the war being provoked by the symbolic ‘white smoke’ which itself is induced by his white heritage. The ‘white smoke’ metaphorically refers to Tayo’s white linage as the narrator of the novel describes his situation: “For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself” (Silko 13). But as the distance between grew because of the war, Tayo feels the least connected with the community and completely becomes an outsider in it. Like Tayo, Silko also has suffered from a sense of alienation and identity conundrum throughout her whole life. Silko has been inspired by her own outcast status to portray her protagonist, Tayo, as the representative of mixed Anglo-white ancestry. Having a white father, Leland Howard Marmon, and a pure tribal mother, Mary Virginia Leslie, she has always claimed herself as a Mexican American or an Anglo American. Both literally and figuratively, she lived on the edge of the Pueblo reservation. Though she inherits the tribal blood from her mother’s side, she was not “permitted to participate in various tribal rituals or join any of the pueblo's religious societies” (Nelson 313). Still she felt a strong affinity for her tribal identity considering herself as a Laguna. This mixed identity –a situation of being “neither white nor fully traditional Indian” is a painful reality for Silko, as Nafeesa Nichols notes, “Silko reveals that living in Laguna society as a mixed blood from a prominent family caused her a lot of pain. It meant being different from, and not fully accepted by either the full blooded Native Americans or white people.” (Nichols 1) This distance between Silko and the Pueblo Community was further engendered by her education in white-run school, collage and universities. Alan R. Velie comments that Silko’s divorces with her white husbands were the direct consequences of her failure to become a pure white. These divorces further deteriorated her mental depression during the years while she decided to write the “Ceremony”. (Velie 45-6) But Silko’s affinity for the tribal culture inspires her to make Tayo search for his identity and healing from the mental illness amid the traditions, rituals and other cultural practices of the Laguna Community. Like Tayo, Silko also had been “able to overcome the lack of acceptance and identify with the Laguna culture Despite her keen awareness of the equivocal position of mixed-bloods in Laguna society, she considers herself Laguna” (Nichols 1). Being born in 1948 three years after the Second World War Silko might have met war veterans among her maternal or paternal relatives. Also her readings of a wide rage of war-literature might inspire her to portray a male character like Tayo. Obviously this war-part of Tayo’s life does not form any parallel with Silko’s life. But Tayo’s struggle to overcome his post-war depression and obstacles of his community through tribal rituals and ceremonies is permeated with Silko’s real-life struggle to overcome her depression which was supposed to be induced by the distance her and her community. As a result, both Silko and Tayo share almost the same type of ancestry, family pattern and tribal community. Like Silko’s family pattern, Tayo also has been in a “status of being double-marginalized, as he is considered a minority in his own family, as well as a mix-blooded member within the Laguna community” (Wong 1). During her childhood, Silko, being prohibited from participating in the tribal rituals, learns about the Laguna culture and people from her Aunt Susie and Grandmother Lily, who were “passing down an entire culture by word of mouth” (Velie 106). Tayo’s grandmother and Auntie also teaches him about the Pueblo culture; but there prevails a marginalized refusal to accept Tayo as a member of the community, as the narrator says, “Auntie had always been careful that Rocky didn’t call Tayo ‘brother,’ and when other people mistakenly called them brothers, she was quick to correct the error” (Silko 65). Though Silko has not publicly admit any of such discrimination in her Aunt Susie’s behavior, her experience with these Pueblo relatives helped her to use them effectively, in the novel, to portray her own double marginalized identity through Tayo’s character. Both Silko and the protagonist in her novel commonly struggle hard to get into the embrace of the Pueblo and both of them become successful in their effort by immersing themselves into the cultural rituals and ceremonies of the Pueblo community. Like Silko, her protagonist also ultimately becomes successful. Works Cited Goldberg, Harrison. “Mental Illness and It's Treatments in Ceremony”, 14 November, 2012. Available at Read More