A STRUCTURAL ANAYLASIS OF CEREMONY

             Upon opening the novel Ceremony, it is immediately evident that it is unlike any other traditional American or European style of writing. Leslie Marmon Silko, the author of Ceremony, describes Pueblo Indian stories or expressions as a kind of spider web, "with many little threads radiating from the center," in her paper titled 'Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective.' She states that as the listener or reader, you simply must trust that meaning will be made as each part of the story emerges. Ceremony is written in this same manner. It is a fragmented story of a young Laguna man whom after returning form war has found himself in great turmoil. He eventually discovers the only way to heal himself is to find out how he fits into the stories and ceremonies of his culture and community by making his own new path along a ceremony that no one before him has embarked upon. In this novel, there is no definite sense of time, but that is the Pueblo Indian perspective, that is how their stories are told, they are stories that "embrace the whole of creation and the whole of history and time," (Silko 'Language and ...' 159). Everything is held together much like our thoughts, just like we ourselves are never thinking of just one thing, we are instead always a jumble of thoughts and emotions, so is the novel. In this way the Pueblo Indian stories, although tough to follow sometimes, speak to the reader or listener on a much more personal level. It is this format of storytelling that is present in Ceremony, which I believe greatly contributes to the meaning and theme of the novel in a several distinct ways including a sense of authenticity, allowing the reader to become part of the story, making the structure of the novel symbolize Tayo, and finally to create a cyclical pattern throughout the book.
             Ceremony greatly contributes to the overall meaning of the novel through its authen...

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A STRUCTURAL ANAYLASIS OF CEREMONY. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 15:07, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/10843.html