Suicide In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

In Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony, the reader follows Tayo’s inner journey to heal the psychological damaged caused by his time in the war. In the beginning of the book, Tayo is introduced in the middle of a night terror. From here, Silko weaves together a story, relatable to the Native American World War II vets, where one must regain balance with the past, present, and future. This close reading is going to explain why Tayo life and Ceremony resemble spider webs. When Tayo return from the war, his ability to exist in reality is limited by his trauma. He exudes the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), such as nightmares, guilt, flashbacks, self-destructive behavior, and agitation. “He could feel it inside his skull- the tension of little threads being pulled and how it was with tangled throughs tied together, and as he tried to pill them part and rewind them into their place, they snagged and tangled

She weaved and overlapped Tayos life with pain. “The word he chose to express “fragile” was filled with the intricacies of a continuing process, and with a strength inherent in spider webs woven across paths through sand bills where early in the morning the sun becomes entangled in each filament of web.” (Pg 35) Silko did not sugar coat the weight of Tayo’s guilt and how nightmare continuously haunted him. She let his disjointed metal state direct the story and the path the reader must take to understand Tayo. Luckily, he is able to complete the Ceremony, the healing process instructed by Old Bentonie. “He had proved something about himself; it wasn’t as strong as it had once been. It was changing, unraveling like the yarn of a dark heavy blanket wrapped around a corpse, the dusty rotted strands of darkness unwinding, giving was to the air; its smothering pressure was lifting form the bones of his skull.” (Pg