Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony Analysis

Introduction

Leslie Marmon Silko is considered the first female Native American novelist for publishing Ceremony in 1977. Because the platform for her message is a novel, a western form of literature, it reveals that her attitude towards the way that Native Americans deal with the occupation of their land is not her primary concern, which means that the audience must be people unfamiliar with Native American culture and affairs, and that her purpose is share a different perspective. Silko is ultimately comfortable with her identity, which is evident in her decision to craft the novel in a circular fashion and in the revered way that nature is illustrated. The fluidity of the novel reflects the way many Native Americans perceive time, and in

Certain words are used repetitively, and these include: “white,” “smoke,” “outline,” “gray,” “twilight,” and “invisible,” along with various other words relating to clouds or fog throughout the rest of the passage. There is a paragraph is abundant in syntax techniques, where the first half of a sentence, from “He stood outside the train depot…” to “…and the world was visible…” begins with positive imagery of the setting, like a gleam of hope; but the second half shifts into utilizing polysyndeton and climax, both of which serve to pace the reader in a way that escalates the anxiety. This sentence manages to unground Tayo before he can gain back his “density” and “visibility.” The passage resumes to using dreary words again, which heightens the palpably forlorn atmosphere; but is also further enhanced by the words used to describe Tayo’s hopeless state as he embodies fog, with: “faded,” scattered,” “hollow,” “drifted,” and later, “dissolved.” Tayo feels frail and spectral, and this is evident in the figurative way he chooses to describe his withdrawn disposition in, “He inhabited a gray winter fog on a distant elk mountain…” He expands on this metaphor in, “It was not possible

RA 3: P 219-220, “The gray mule was gone… blossoms as dark as the center of the sky.” Tayo has developed greatly since his days in the Veteran’s Hospital; no longer burdened with nightmares and his grief, he is finally on a path to acceptance and peace. The strong imagery exhibits how grounded Tayo is, this is evident in his observations of his surrounding and the admiration towards nature in great detail. He mentions a mountain, but this time is described as great and stable, as opposed the mountain that was referred to in the first passage. Clouds are also present in this passage, but Tayo no longer embodies them; every mention of them is relative to a solid object, such as with the sun and the mountain. Tayo even seems to allude to the “haze” he lived in before, but he is literally describing the changes in the sky since last summer. The diction used in this passage introduces his newfound stability and clarity of mind within the words, “locked,” “strong,” “endured,” and