Ceremony By Leslie Marmon Silko

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Many factors, such as culture, traits, and experiences, account for a person’s identity. In the novel Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko depicts the struggle of discovering identity through a young veteran named Tayo. Tayo, after experiencing trauma and loss from World War II, struggles to identify with his cultures and finds it difficult to fit into societal standards. In society, white people treat Tayo as an outcast and look down upon him. As Tayo passes a highway, a group of Caucasian construction workers poke fun at him. Tayo describes the vivid memory, “He remembered how the white men who were building the new highway through Laguna had pointed at him. They elbowed each other and winked” (p. 53). Tayo struggles to embrace the caucasian part of …show more content…

Auntie does not fully accept Tayo as her nephew and holds prejudice towards him because of his mixed heritage. A memory from Auntie illustrates this, “She remembered what that old fool Josiah had done; it wasn’t any different from Little Sister and that white man. She had fiercely protected them from the gossip in the village. But she never let them forget what she had endured, all because of what they had done” (p. 27). Auntie feels ashamed of Laura, Tayo’s mother, for having relations with a white man and piles this shame onto Tayo as well. Tayo, being both white and Native-American, brings controversy to his family and their village, which causes Auntie to resent him. This criticism adds to Tayo’s struggle and makes it harder for him to embrace Native American culture. People’s disapproval of Tayo also affects his self-image and leads to him feeling worthless. Tayo views himself as invisible to the outside world. He makes an analogy between himself and white smoke, making the point that both are unnoticed and his feelings are expressed in the following quote, “He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of

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