Ceremony Short Story

Ceremony is about a Native American Tayo who fought in world war two. When he comes home from the war, he is committed to the VA hospital for essentially having post-traumatic stress disorder. Throughout the novel, we observe Tayo battling with his inner peace because he feels guilty for Josiah and Rocky’s death. Tayo’s family sends him to two medicine men to try to heal him and figure out what is the matter. The first medicine man was not able to reach through to Tayo; the second medicine Betonie was successful. Betonie told Tayo that he would need to complete a ceremony in order to find his inner peace. During, this ceremony Betonie told Tayo that he had seen stars and cattle, mountains and a woman. He then warned Tayo that people would

Betonie warned him that they would try to destroy the world. There is one person in this novel that Tayo always has to be concerned with, and that is Emo. In the previous paragraph, I mentioned about Emo spreading lies about Tayo. Emo is always trying to make Tayo life miserable. At the end of the novel Emo gets Tayo’s friends Leroy and Harley to turn against Tayo. When Tayo is trying to escape from Emo, he sees Leroy and Harley driving down the road. He asks them for a lift, they let him in, and get him drunk. Tayo falls asleep, but when he wakes up, he does not see Leroy or Harvey. After waking up, he goes to find his friends and he hears them talking to Emo and Pinky. He realizes that his childhood friends had betrayed him and that they now follow Emo. Once reality hits Tayo, he runs and hides in an abandoned uranium mine. Not soon after Tayo spots Emo’s car coming up to the mine. Tayo happens to notice Emo, Pinky, and Leroy, but he does not notice Harley. Emo starts a fire while Leroy and pinky sat on a rock and drank. Next, Tayo witnessed Emo Taking Harley out of the trunk of his car. Emo Tied Harley to a fence and started to torture him because he was supposed to watch Tayo and he failed to do his job. Even though Harley had betrayed Tayo, he still wanted to kill Emo for torturing Harley. Emo had sensed that Tayo was nearby, because he started to taunt him, call him names, and tell him that what was happing to Harley was his entire fault. Tayo wanted to stab Emo with the screwdriver he had in his hand and even had the perfect opportunity but he did not give in to anger. By not giving in to his anger and stabbing Emo, Tayo beat the witchcraft and completed his