Final Project Essay: Silko's Ceremony

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FINAL PROJECT ESSAY Ceremony is very much a story about stories, with Tayo’s story interspersed with Silko’s poetic re-telling of Pueblo myths, and the side by side of the two, emphasizes many of the novel’s themes. It reveals the connection between all things, the healing power of storytelling, and the circular nature in history. You cannot help but to root for Tayo throughout the story, from a little boy struggling to prove is worth to his dismissive and prejudiced Auntie, through constant obedience and love, to the traumatized army veteran of mixed ancestry who returns to the reservation of the Laguna Pueblo Indians, in the New Mexico desert. Scarred and physically sick by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese, his only redemption is to immerse himself in the Indian traditions of his past ancestors. His journey of redemption is the driving plot that depends on Tayo’s interaction with the land, the soil, wind, weather, and the scared topography of the northern New Mexico desert, which is charged with a peculiar, bittersweet magic. Silko’s novel is a beautiful reflection on the ways in which we are interconnected as humans and all of nature. This highly charged physical setting plays a crucial role in the book, almost as if the land is a character in the story. The land takes on …show more content…

Like that in the book “Out of Africa,” when Blixen mixes an aura of magic and fairy tale quality in her storytelling about the land in /Africa: “In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects, and created a great Fata Morgana.: Blixen weaved real life stories into myths and history, just like Silko in “Ceremony,” Her slightly antiquated prose is sprinkled with enchanting dream-like

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