ceremony
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The novel Ceremony, written by Leslie Silko deals with the actions of a
Native American youth after fighting, and being held captive during World
War II. The young mans name is Tayo and upon returning to the U.S.,
and eventually reservation life he has many feelings of estrangement and
apathy towards society. The novel discusses many topics pertaining to
Native Americans, through the eyes of Tayo anda few female characters.
The novel is one that you must decide for yourself what you believe, and
why certain ideas or characters points of view are important. When
reading the novel Ceremony, you must decide what you actually believe,
and what situations were only figments of Tayo's stressed mind. Many of
these situations occur throughout the book, some are very clear and
others have hidden meanings. On a whole I believed what Tayo had to
say about the world from his shoes. There are certain instinces that I
know what Tayo is seeing is completely impossible aIn Ceremony one
must decide why and how the women's perspective is of importance. I
believe the reason the women's view is to put a different perspective
upon everything that goes on in the book, as compared with the
perspective of Tayo. There are two women in the book who put their
perspective into the story, one of them is the elderly mistress of Josiah
and the other one is Helen Jean who went on one of the many joyrides
that Harley and the others went on. These women are actually just a way
for the author to explain how the rest of society viewed Tayo. An example
of this is when Helen Jean describes Tayo "Too quiet, and not very
friendly(161)". Another thing this allows the author to do is to show how
the War affected the young women from the reservations. She is able to
show you how Helen Jeans life was in just a few pages. Silko was able to
show how the Native American war veterans looked to anyone who
happened to look upon them, but that wasn't one of them. The
perspective of the women also helped to debunk a lot of the stories the
men told about the war and their various conquests etc.Another item for
discussion that comes up in Ceremony is what did you as a reader
actually learn? Well I learned many things that I found to be interesting,
and that I had not known previously. One of these many things that I
learned was the fact that during World War II, white America actually
"accepted" Native Americans into its culture. White women slept with the
Native Americans, as if they were any other military personnel. Even the
elderly of society (who are often the most prejudiced) began to come
around and accept the Native Americans into society. But this was short
lived, once the war was over (and there usefulness to the army) they
were returned to the reservation and quickly forgotten by white society.
