The Struggle Between Tayo, Emo, And Betonie

The constant struggle present in the novel is the conflict between the native world and the white world. It is a struggle between community and isolation, between the natural and material. Silko uses the characters in the novel to show the positive and negative influences of the contact of cultures. Specifically, the characters Tayo, Emo, and Betonie are prime examples of the manifestation of the two worlds and the effects it has on each characters actions, dispositions and beliefs.

Tayo’s mixed identity is an interaction between native culture and white culture as ethnically he is half laguna pueblo, half white. His own identity is a conflict within himself personally. The community ostracizes his family for his mother’s choice to fraternize

with a white man and for him not being “full-blooded”.

In addition to his internal struggle with identity, Tayo faces struggles with his mental health in his return home after world war two. In his journey to cure himself he is hospitalized in an institution that disregards the traditions of the natives and uses medicine of the white world. When he goes back home he is still suffering and he constantly feels like running away. His Grandma in response says “I’ve been thinking, all this time, while I was sitting in my chair. Those white doctors haven’t helped you at all. Maybe we had better send for someone else”(30). Tayo’s reaction to the white medicine is negative and is a rejection of white culture. On the other hand, the scalp ceremony performed on him by Old Man Ku’oosh does’ny help to solve his problems either. He has not yet made peace with either culture nor can he turn to either one for comfort and healing. One way Tayo yearns for the comfort of the white world is in his critique of the resources they have. In examining Betonie’s hogan he says “all of it

seemed suddenly so pitiful and small compared to the world he knew white people had-a world of comfort in the sprawling houses he’d seen in California, a world of plenty in the food he had carried from the officer’s mess to dump into garbage cans.”(117) He expresses resentment to the progress and technology of the white world in comparison to the native world. Through finding a way to accept both sides of himself, Tayo finds a way to get to the process of healing later on in the book.
Emo is fully laguna pueblo, but turns his back on his laguna pueblo roots in favor of the allure of the white world.

He chastises Tayo for his mixed heritage, something that stems from jealousy at Tayo’s white half. A veteran of world war two, Emo thrived in the war, an environment of constant destruction ended by an atomic bomb. He is victim to the whims of white warfare, which Tayo defines as “killing across great distances without knowing who or how many had died”(33). This way of white warfare is not compatible with the traditional ways of warfare and is said to make natives sick. In Emo’s contact with the white world he fully embraces the position of power he receives from participating in white warfare. When he and the other vets talk about the war, he relishes in the teeth he collected from high-ranking japanese officers. Tayo can see how killing affects Emo. “...Emo grew from each killing. Emo fed off each man he killed, and the higher the rank of the dead man, the higher it made Emo”(56). In reality what Emo gains is being in approximation to social power, but never fully obtaining a better social status. This reality which Emo chooses to ignore through his alcoholism, another white creation, exposes a vulnerability. Emo believes all value lies in the white world so, natives must take from the material world in order to own something of value. However he can never truly be of the white world. In a drunken rant he says “You know, us Indians deserve something

better that his goddamn dried-up country around here…..What we need is what they got.”(50-51). In reality the “power” Emo gains is an idea of power not a grasp of it. In their interactions with white people their so called similarities are made stark. This is highlighted in a recounting of Emo’s tryst with a white woman who knows he is a U.S soldier but recoils in disgust when she figures out that he is a native. The influence of the white world on Emo’s life causes him to have destructive hate for his native identity and thusly the turmoil and contradictions within himself cause him to be harmful in his actions.
Both worlds find a place to coexist harmoniously in the practices and beliefs of Betonie. Betonie is a medicine man who lives in Gallup, on the hills of a junkyard town, and is quite unconventional by the traditional laguna standards. He uses unorthodox ceremonies and is not trusted by natives because of his light eyes. A trait which indicates mixed heritage, something he shares with Tayo. Betonie believes in a mixed tradition where interaction with the white world is apart of the ceremony. He explains to Tayo that the issue is not determinative, “Nothing is that simple, you don’t write off all the white people, just like you don’t trust all the Indians”(118).
In the novel choosing to highlight Betonie’s narrative, which is unconventional to the perceived traditions surrounding native medicine, the novel places weight on the necessity of hybridity. The need to alter the ceremonies in response to the changing world around them. It is evident that Betonie’s belief is the hallmark of the two cultures coexisting as his ceremony helps to finally heal Tayo.