Summary 3: Ceremony

In Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony, we follow Tayo in a non-linear telling of his life. He comes back to the Laguna reservation after treatment in a veteran’s hospital.  He comes home to his grandma, aunt, and uncle Robert. His friends from the war are also home: Harley, Leroy, and Emo. They also suffer from post-war trauma,  but are more easily comforted by alcohol and drinking than Tayo. They spend hours at the bar, trapped in the past as they reminisce about the glory days.  Despite being labeled healthy enough to come home, Tayo suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress disorder just like his war pals. One scene from the battlefield that especially haunts him is where he sees his uncle’s face in a crowd of Japanese soldiers he’s supposed to shoot.  He deals with not only his disorder, but the guilt from numerous other things including his cousin Rocky’s death, the belief that he caused the awful drought on his reservation, and also thinking he contributed to Uncle Josiah’s death by not helping out with Uncle Josiah’s special Mexican cattle. After realizing western medicine isn’t working, Tayo’s grandmother brings in a medicine man Ku-oosh. Ku-oosh’s traditional ceremonies do not work though, and so he refers Tayo to Betonie. Betonie helps Tayo realize the complexity of his situation, and insists that he must invent a whole new ceremony to cure himself. He spends some time alone in the mountains, where he meets Ts’eh. He also stumbles upon Uncle Josiah’s cattle entrapped in a white man’s fences. After Ts’eh helps him gather up all the cattle, he eventually brings them home with Robert. Eventually, Tayo finds out Emo has been spreading rumors about him and how the authorities are after him. He realizes he must escape from them,  and ends up in an abandoned uranium mine after a brief encounter with Harley and Leroy where he realizes they’ve joined Emo. In order to complete the ceremony, he must stay the night in the mine. He witnesses Emo and Pinkie torturing Harley to death for letting him go, and resists the urge to kill Emo.  After the ceremony, he goes home to Ku’oosh who tells him that Ts’eh was the one who have him blessings. He spends the night here to wrap up the ceremony then heads back home. 

Leslie Marmon Silko incorporates beautiful prose poetry throughout, which provides for some nice artistic contrast to the novel. Unlike regular novels though, Ceremony seems especially more like a story rather than just a novel. It follows the traditional Native American tradition of story telling and though it is a printed novel, it still sort of conveys the oral tradition through the poetry. Reaching back to her own roots, she uses traditions to write this novel land fills it with Native American customs.


There are many things that symbolize the mix of cultures, ranging from Tayo himself to the mixed cattle that Josiah had. These subtle symbols contribute to the motif of cross culture exchanges. The ultimate success of both Tayo and the mixed cattle show us how Silko thinks positively of cross cultural exchange. Additionally, there are other characters who do not really embrace both cultures, such as Auntie, who tries to force her son Rocky to shun his native culture. Her son Rocky ultimately dies in war, which maybe imply how Silko feels about people like Auntie who shun tradition.




Through Tayo's entire ceremony process, Silko really emphasizes the theme that tradition is everywhere. Silko, however, is extremely realistic in conveying that message in her novel. While Western medicine cannot heal Tayo, old traditional ceremonies performed by Ku'oosh do not succeed either. Indeed, it is the new ceremony that Tayo has to create himself that heals him. This integration of modern elements into old tradition show her realistic view of tradition in our world today. It's there, but in no way does it dominate.

Some quotes to pass along: 

"He had believed in the stories for a long time, until the teachers at Indian school taught him not to believe in that kind of "nonsense". This quote shows the contrast of white and Indian culture, and how much of the novel revolves around the mix of both cultures. 

"For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. " Here, Tayo realizes that he sort of has lost his Laguna identity. The "no consciousness of itself" implies that he's not comfortable with it, and goes along with the theme of holding onto tradition and old customs.