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 and
a 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 a
In 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.
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