In this reading synthesis in response to Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, I will attempt to understand Tayo’s character who is a product of two different cultures by relating back to his recognition of being excluded. I will use the process of applying the experience of Tayo to myself to gain a deeper insight. I will also address environmental issues and the ways it affected Tayo through his search for the ceremony to find healing and resolve the drought.

   

The exclusion of Tayo was described throughout the novel, as his mother who became an alcoholic, got pregnant with a child of a white man, and gave up on raising him when he was four years old. The separation of space and exclusion started early on, as Auntie was bitter and angry about the amount of disgrace that Laura has brought onto the family. Auntie already knew where she wanted Tayo to be in her family; “She wanted him (Tayo) close enough to feel excluded, to be aware of the distance between them” (Silko, p.60-62).

According to the novel, Tayo had a hard time understanding the conversations between Old Grandma and Ku’oosh, “He (Ku’oosh) spoke softly, using the old dialect full of sentences that were involuted with explanations of their own origins” and that “Tayo had to strain to catch the meaning, dense with place names he had never heard. His language was childish, interspersed with English words, and he could feel shame tightening in his throat” (p.31-32). The feeling of shame that Tayo felt can also be seen as a feeling of exclusion as the conversation was happening in his presence but much like a closed conversation. I feel a close connection to the experience he had as I grew up mostly in the United States under the care of Korean parents that inside the home was a separate world from school and work. I would go to Korea and visit family but when there were conversations that involved sophisticated vocabularies, I felt dumbfounded and ashamed at the fact that I couldn’t communicate fluently.

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The exclusion was reinforced by his friends as Emo would comment “There he is. He thinks he’s something all right. Because he’s part white. Don’t you half-breed?” (p.52). The defensiveness of Emo was something that has been recognized by Tayo since grade school and the only reason for it was that Tayo was part white (p.52). He was aware that Emo was not the only one who had problems with this as he felt Auntie feeling shameful of what his mother has done and him being the product of her actions (p.53). There is a problem of intersectionality here, as being white was viewed as beneficial and privileged but he was a symbol of shame to Auntie. This frustration brings me back to my grade school experience as a ‘foreigner’ that looked exactly like everyone else. There was admiration between parents about the English speaking quality I had while I was an odd outsider between my peers. The microaggressive nature of the comments may have caused long-lasting discouragement to Tayo, which is why I believe that meeting Betonie a big leap towards Tayo’s healing.

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The first encounter Tayo had with Betonie, he noticed his eyes and how they were hazel like his own (p.109). Tayo mentions to him how the place that he was sent to after the war was all white, except for him but yet, he was invisible and there were no voices or dreams. He wonders if that’s where he belongs (p.113) as this is the opposite of what it is like at home where there are rumors and stories about him, Laura, and Rocky. Betonie brings the idea that neither white or Indian are all good or bad (p.118), giving perspective to Tayo where he had to stand on one side or another for his whole life. Betonie opened up a new perspective for Tayo to see, that there is no one extreme to another. I believe that this was an experience of healing for Tayo as he has found someone that he sees a resemblance with and opened up to.

   

The initial mention of the issue of the drought was brought up by Josiah when he was telling Tayo while they’re out in the field, “This is where we come from, see. This sand, this stone, these trees, the vines, all the wildflowers. This earth keeps us going” and he goes onto explain the importance of the dry seasons, “These dry years you hear some people complaining, you know, about the dust, they are part of life too, like the sun and the sky. You don’t swear at them. It’s people, see. They’re the ones. The old people use to say that droughts happen when people forget when people misbehave” (p.42). I believe that this interaction becomes extremely relevant when Tayo’s feelings of himself as unworthy caused by his upbringing intensified when he believed that he had failed to bring Rocky back home (p.121). Tayo stopped feeling anything and stopped caring (p.36-37) which symbolized the forgetfulness and misbehavior of people that initially caused the drought.

   

The perseverance of Tayo when he gained momentum in performing the ceremonies relates back to Radical Joy for Hard Times by Trebbe Johnson as she states “Acceptance -yes- is the first step toward freedom ⋯ once I’ve done it, I recognize, as Susumu Sugawara did, that I am alive and that the reality of the emergency and my aliveness in the midst of it now compels me to act” (Johnson, p.85). The moment of realization was important to both even though it created fear and stress, it was what was needed to start acting to change and find the solution.

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Works Cited

 

Johnson, Trebbe. "Acceptance Does Not Mean Surrender." Radical Joy for Hard Times, North Atlantic Books, 2018, pp. 83-85.

 

Silko, Leslie M. Ceremony. Penguin, 2016.