The Theme Of Loss Of Identity In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

Throughout many novels and films, authors have used the idea of ceremonies to show their characters progression and healing be it from PTSD or loss of identity. Novels like ceremony and Films such as smoke signals, bury my heart at Wounded Knee as well as john trundles poetry represent Native American perspective on these issues.

In the novel ceremony the author Leslie Marmon Silko uses the Indian ceremonies to show the progress of an Indian (taco) who has returned from the war with PTSD and is very sick .this is first shown when Tayo our main character meets thought woman. A recurring character throughout the book that is shown as the wise all-knowing person .”The only cure I know is a good ceremony, that's what she said.” (pg)

The amalgamation

between a “good “ceremony and healing is implied from the very beginning so much so that even the title ceremony is an implication that the author is writing this ceremony as her own process of healing. When she first began writing the novel it was intended as a funny short story about an alcoholic man named Harvey. But as she began to work with the material ... “the character Tayo came in and then I realized it wasn't going to be funny “(3:36) (ison). Mrs. Silko realized that the novel itself was her cure.
Illustrated in her phrase: “A novel a day keeps the doctor away.”
This thought was continued through the novel in the form of the main character Tayo progresses he is told "You've been doing something all along. All this time, and now you are at an important place in this story." (pg47)
Further showing the author's involvement in the novel through her main character. So when Tayo realizes that everything he has been doing has been part of an unknown it was very similar to Mrs.silko's realization that the novel she was writing was her ceremony.She also comes to the realization that if she had not been flexible and let the novel take her where it wanted she would not have written the novel the way it was. Again shown through the main character Tayo when he is told by a companion character “things which don't shift and grow are dead things... Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth." (pg62) Explaining what the characters already know that without change you cannot hope to survive.

The director of smoke signals created the movie to try and explain the ceremonies that we will subconsciously go through and while he was not affected by the ceremony he used it as a way to show the effect it would have on the average Indian .The story is of two Indians victor and Thomas who go on a journey to find victor's father .Who left victor after a fight over his alcoholism with victor's mother .This story is not an uncommon one for Indians on the reservation unfortunately .This event affects many of the Indians in the same way it affects victor .It makes them bitter and angry .It make you focus more on the bad things than the good .So when Thomas the accompanying character says “You know, you got it all wrong; maybe you don't know who you are.(ss) “When Thomas says this he is trying to say that you have become so focused on our fathers on your father's mistakes you never thought about what kind of person you would be without the bitterness.

So as victor proceeds through the movie he learns more and more about who he and the he meets Suzy a friend of his father who provides evidence that his father loved him .When victor continues to find evidence of his his father's love in the form of a picture found in his wallet .Victor then cuts of his hair .This is symbolic because earlier in the movie he told that a Indian is not a man without his hair .So this essential victor symbolically cutting of his old Indian and bitter self and starting from scratch and this plus some other acts throughout the movie allow him to complete his ceremony .
After the completion of his ceremony .Thomas again asks him” Hey Victor, do you know why your dad really left? This time he replies:” Yeah. He didn't mean to Thomas. (ss)Implying that victor realizes that his father did not intend to leave him .Thereby allowing him to complete the ceremony began at the beginning of the movie.

This is the part in the story that victor realizes that his dad did not mean to leave it is essentially the end of his ceremony and the realization that he now has to complete his journey. “Victor I am going to make one more trip to the river and I am going to toss these in and your Dad's ashes will rise and rise into the heavens, just like the salmon.
Victor Joseph: (laughing) Funny I was thinking about doing the same thing myself. I mean I never thought of my dad like a salmon but it would be just like cleaning out the attic, like throwing things away when they have no more use.(ss)
Analysis: This is the ceremony that Victor will complete. It is different than Thomas because he is not the same person so they both dealt with the passing of vectors father differently.
For Thomas, he is going to the river so that he can idolize victor's father and essentially throw the ashes into the river so that he can see victor's father be free and ….

Rise like a salmon. Whereas victor goes to the river to throw the ashes into the river to finally get rid of the anger and bitterness that has infected him since he was young. So when he goes it is more of a cleaning out the attic because he is releasing all the bad juju from his father and trying to figure out who he is. But without the journey of traveling to find his father and the ceremony of letting go, he would not have been able to move on.

The final ceremony that I must address is the ceremony that every Indian performs .The ceremony of recognition. Many author have tried to explain this ceremony but I think the authors of “when Columbus got off the boat hit the dot on the head.

Citation: When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People.

Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that it was beyond their conceptual reality. ...its five hundred years later and they still can’t see us.(s) This is relatable to authors like Mrs. Silko.

In her novel ceremony she has Tayo the main character be the ceremony performer of the

story.
Tayo deals with this is the beginning of the novel when the white doctors try to explain his problem “They called it battle fatigue, and they said hallucinations were common with malarial fever. (pg 24)”.
This is where the authors opinion shows through that this explanation is not good enough and that is why in the novel Tayo is left feeling invisible wanting to melt into the walls of the hospital .If you unwrap what that scene is trying to say Tayo is depressed stressed and traumatized and the doctors trying to help him can't .He is so depressed that even existing is becoming a difficulty .It took a great deal of energy to be a human being, and the more the wind blew and the sun moved southwest, the less energy Tayo had. (pg 78)”.
This feeling of depression and hopelessness can be related to by most Indians stuck on their desolate reservations.
The realization that they will never be known or treated as simply people just like everyone else.
So they realized they had to change .Not to Christians not to warriors but to people .She taught me this above all else: things which don't shift and grow are dead things. They are things the witchery people want. Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth." (pg62)
If they change the concept of Indians just being the stereotypical warriors to actual people .They show the ceremony of letting the world see them as they actually are. Much like the in the end of Reel Injun when they bring multiple clips of actual Indians in actual Indian movies and explain the difference between a “reel indium “And movie Indians. Charlie Hill: We're creative natives. And we're... and we're like the Energizer Bunny. The mightiest nation in the world tried to exterminate us, anglicize us, Christianize us, Americanize us, but we just keep going and going.(RI) Crediting their refusal to give up who they are .They have found who they are now nothing can take that from them. Tayo goes through much of the same thing he also must find himself and hold on to it.
” He moved back into the boulders .It had been a close call. The witchery had almost ended the story .Emos skull the way the witchery had wanted ...Their deadly ritual for the autumn solstice would have been completed by him. “(pg. 240)
Tayo refused to kill emo even though he could have .He realized that it was close though ,he had almost become the very thing he had been running fro and now he knew that not only had he completed his ceremony but he had stood the test challenging his change.
We can see that throughout many novels and films, authors have used the idea of ceremonies to show their characters progression and healing be it from PTSD or loss of identity. From novels like ceremony where the author see not realize that they themselves were going through their own ceremony.
Or in the movie smoke signals where the characters themselves went thought the ceremony’s in an effort to show the audience change is possible. Continued through authors and directors like john trundle and the directors of Reel Injun. Their attempt to show us the ceremony all Indians have to go through is admirable .Showing us that ceremonies can be unintentional in the most common places like movies and can be found everywhere including in the very day Indians life. Just like thought woman said.
“The only cure
I know
is a good ceremony.”

Works Cited
IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.
Reel Injun (2009). N.d.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "Ceremony Warfare Quotes." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.
"Sign in - Google Accounts." Sign in - Google Accounts. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

“IMDB is smoke signals “(SS)
“Sign in is the schoology links “(S)
“Reel injun (RN)”