Comparison Of Ceremony And Invisible Man

Society’s Performance

In both Ceremony and Invisible Man, authors Leslie Marmon Silko and Ralph Ellison invent flat characters, Emo and Mary, as a tool to highlight turning points in the novels’ main characters' perspectives as they face systemic oppression and forced assimilation into a hierarchical society. Silko creates Emo to represent the harmful and ugly effects of racial oppression after returning from WWII, while Ellison introduces Mary as a maternal figure to Invisible Man’s Narrator in a time of need. Through the use of metaphors and diction, authors Silko and Ellison highlight the unique point of view of their flat characters, Emo and Mary. While Emo’s cynicism and Mary's optimism seem to spur the protagonists in divergent directions,

This is the first time the Narrator is treated with compassion, and it causes him to reconsider his role as an African American in an oppressive society, all due to Mary’s acts of kindness. Congruent to Invisible Man, throughout the novel Ceremony, Silko uses her antagonist, Emo, to illustrate the results of systematic oppression and assimilation of Native Americans into modern United States society. After returning from Vietnam, Tayo, Silko’s protagonist, finds himself repeatedly using alcohol to cope with the war and gets emotional while listening to his fellow veterans recall their time in Vietnam. Emo, on the other hand, confidently flaunts his war stories from Vietnam, and “Tayo could hear it in his voice when he talked about the killings — how 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) Silko describes Tayo’s disgust which can be heard through the tone of Emo's voice, and Emo’s storytelling is uniquely written from the third person perspective, although it typically is from Tayo’s perspective. This use of foreshadowing calls readers to pay attention to the effects Emo will have on

Mary, on the other hand, epitomizes a stereotypical southern black woman: a nurturer and source of strength and encouragement to the protagonist. Mary and the Narrator's relationship echoes that of a mother and son. Mary serves as a static maternal role in Invisible Man, lacking individual dimension and serving mostly to reassure and convince the Narrator that he can be whoever he wants to be. The Narrator puts Mary on a pedestal because he barely knows her; in reality, she is just a person who showed human compassion to the Narrator in a time of dire need, and he is blinded by her ability to give him the nurture he never had. In contrast to Emo, Mary is able to inspire the Narrator to be the change in an oppressive society, while Emo tries to contain Tayo within the boxes society has made for him. Both Mary and Emo are prime examples of oppressed minorities unable to be anything other than the stereotype society has forced upon them. Although Mary and Emo never break out of the stereotypes, they both inspire the protagonist to break out of destructive habits and suffocating lifestyles and spur them to find ones where they can be their authentic selves. Although the Narrator in Invisible Man stays with Mary for only a short period of time,