Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony Analysis

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Throughout many novels and films, authors have used the idea of ceremonies to show their character’s progression and healing be it from PTSD or loss of identity. Novels like ceremony and Films such as smoke signals, bury my heart at Wounded Knee as well as John Trundles poetry represent the Native American perspective on these issues.

In the novel ceremony the author Leslie Marmon Silko uses the Indian ceremonies to show the progress of an Indian (Tayo) who has returned from the war with PTSD and is sick. This is when Tayo our main character meets thought woman and his “ceremony begins”. A recurring character throughout the book that is shown as the wise, all-knowing person .“The only cure I know is a good ceremony, that’s what she said.” (PG.26)

The amalgamation between a “good ”ceremony and healing is implied from the beginning, so much so that even the title ceremony is an implication that the author is writing this ceremony as her own process of healing. When she began writing the novel, it was intended as a funny short story about an alcoholic man named Harvey. But as she began to work with the material … “the character Tayo came in and then I realized it wasn’t going to be funny ”(3:36) …show more content…
They show the ceremony of letting the world see them as they actually are. Much like in the culmination of Reel Injun when they bring multiple clips of real Indians in real Indian movies and explain the difference between a “Reel Injun ”And movie Indians. Charlie Hill: We’re creative natives. And we’re… and we’re like the Energizer Bunny. The mightiest nation in the world tried to exterminate us, anglicize us, Christianize us, Americanize us, but we just keep going and going.(RI) Crediting their refusal to surrender who they are. They have found who they are now nothing can take that from them. Tayo goes through much of the same thing he also must find himself and hold on to
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