Summary Application

Summary/Application (Ceremony):

In her article, Bird confronts the issue of assimilation that has entangled itself in Indian culture. In doing so, Bird is promoting the undoing of the colonization of the native people which has led them to speak passively and adopt the stereotypes to which they are perpetually assigned. As someone who was raised in an Indian family but did not actually speak the native language, Bird highlights the significance of language as a tool that can be used both to denigrate and liberate a culture. She asserts that Ceremony achieves the status of “critical fiction,” defined by bell hooks as a work that urges readers to stretch beyond cultural boundaries through the means of language and imagination. By employing a fragmented story construction, interweaving myth and reality in Tayo’s world, and relating Ceremony from a native’s perspective, Bird asserts that Silko boldly contests the scope of colonization. Silko uses these elements of Ceremony to bolster the values and traditions of Indian culture while also underscoring the importance of understanding and abandoning the domineering effects of colonization. By referencing the central conflict in Ceremony¸ in which the assimilation and shame of an individual affects the welfare of the entire community, Bird highlights the crucial aspect of Tayo’s healing ceremony: identifying the source of oppression in order to move toward a place of empowerment and connection to one’s culture. This very issue is one that Bird herself addresses when she teaches Ceremony in an attempt to discourage her students from denying their identity through submissive language. Bird contends that by challenging the colonized patterns of thought, readers are able to imagine (and perhaps create) a future in which the inherent values of Indian culture will no longer be ostracized.


According to Bird, colonization is readily apparent in the Indian people’s acceptance of themselves as “vanishing” (1). She claims that “the image of [themselves] as ‘dying’ pervades not only the ways [they] have been taught to view [themselves] as Othered and vanishing from the outside in, but can also be viewed as the successful colonization of [their] minds” (1). This submission to the stereotypes and ideals of mainstream culture creates a perpetual image of the Indian people as inferior and rapidly fading from significance. By internalizing these “typifications,” Indians generate within themselves a self-hatred that prevents them from truly owning their cultural identity (Bird 5). This notion of self-destructive denial and rejection of one’s culture is represented in the character of Helen Jean in Ceremony. Helen Jean appears briefly in the novel as a drinking buddy of sorts for Harley and Leroy. Having left the Towac reservation in search of a better life and money to send home to her family, Helen Jean quickly falls prey to the dynamic force of assimilation. She alters her physical appearance to distance herself from the female Indians that she views with disdain: “She didn’t like the looks of the Indian women she saw in Gallup … their hair was dirty and straight. They’d shaved off their eyebrows, [but] they didn’t bother to pencil them anymore” (Silko 154). Contrastingly, Helen Jean hides behind her altered appearance, taking care to touch up her red lipstick, penciled-in eyebrows, and permanently curled hair. Her attitude towards the Indians in general is similarly scornful. When Harley boasts about “stealing” Leroy’s new pick-up truck from the white man, Helen Jean “[doesn’t] smile” and merely says: “Gypped you again! This thing isn’t even worth a half acre!” Here, Silko crafts Helen Jean to feel shame towards the supposed ignorance and foolishness of the Indian people, just as Tayo’s mother did. After seeing the things the “old Utes” claimed did not exist – such as elevators, neon signs, and juke boxes – Helen Jean feels “embarrassed for the old people at home” (Silko 151). She even allows herself to believe a version of the “big lie” that paints the White man as upstanding and blameless: “[The Indian war vets] had ribbons and medals … if the U.S. Government decorated them, they must be okay” (Silko 151). Ultimately, Helen Jean “[perpetuates the] notions of inferiority and domination” (Bird 6) by living in poverty, drinking and sleeping with men for money, and regarding her fellow Indians with pity and shame: “She didn’t need to be wasting her time there, in the middle of nowhere … If she hung around any longer, [that’s how she’d end up]. Like the rest of the Indians” (Silko 154).


Bird proposes in her article that Silko’s use of “mythic edge” is a narrative strategy which propels Ceremony to the ranks of critical fiction (Bird 3). Critical fiction, as defined by bell hooks, invokes the imagination of the reader in order to stretch beyond cultural boundaries. By employing a “textual terrain with the capacity of encompassing time and space in a simultaneous present, past, and future,” Silko creates a “human-to-human and human-to-land dynamic” that aids the reader in “[viewing] reality through the perceptions of the native Other” (Bird 3). This “mythic mirror” underscores the connection between mythic and realist worlds that is so significant in Indian culture and represents the “connectedness of all things, how each depends on something else” (Bird 3). This close relationship between reality and myth is exemplified in the characters of Ts’eh and the hunter. Both Ts’eh and the hunter act as guides for Tayo as he works to complete his healing ceremony. Ts’eh and the hunter are closely tied to spiritual acts; Ts’eh is not only a crucial aspect of Tayo’s ceremony, but she also possesses omniscient and magical qualities. After seeing the mountain lion, Tayo “sprinkled pinches of yellow pollen into the four footprints” and refers to the mountain lion as “the hunter’s helper” (Silko 182). Not long after doing so, Tayo encounters a hunter who leads him back to Ts’eh and Josiah’s cattle. There are various other mythical references throughout Ceremony, such as the parallel story lines about the hummingbird and the gambler, but by crafting such a close interaction between Tayo and these mythical characters, Silko invites readers to experience “the interconnectedness of all things – of people to land, of stories to people, of people to people” (Bird 4). This narrative strategy allows Ceremony to transcend typical Western notions of reality and thereby reject the “colonist endoctrination,” which according to Bird, is “one of the first steps towards … decolonization” (6).


WORKS CITED:

1. Bird, Gloria. “Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's ‘Ceremony’” Wicazo Sa Review, 9, 2 (Autumn, 1993) : 1-8.

2. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York:
Penguin Books, 1977.

Gloria Bird summary

Bird, Gloria. "Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's 'Ceremony'" Wicazo Sa Review 9 (1993): 1-8.


In her article, Bird utilizes the issues of language and “hegemonic discourse” found in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony in order to promote the undoing of the colonization of the native people which has lead them to speak passively and adopt the stereotypes that are perpetually assigned to them. As someone who was raised in an Indian family but did not actually speak the native language, Bird highlights the significance of language as a tool that can be used both to denigrate and liberate a culture. She asserts that in Silko’s fragmented construction of Ceremony and it’s assertive use of textual landscape, the scope of decolonization is confronted and contested. By referencing the central conflict in Ceremony¸ in which the assimilation and shame of an individual simultaneously affects the welfare of the entire community, Bird explains the importance of recognizing the source of oppression that comes forth in discourse in order to move toward a place of empowerment and pride.

Ceremony (p.58-142)

1). P. 62-63 covers the theme of Christianity as a coercive force of assimilation. By what means does this occur and what feelings does it evoke?

The values and beliefs of Christianity permeated the "old sensitivity" of the Indian people which had been passed down over thousands of years and had created a shared conciousness amongst generations. But the infiltration of Christianity worked against this unity by enforcing an individualistic existance: "...it tried to crush the single clan name, encouraging each person to stand alone, because Jesus Christ would save only the individual soul; Jesus Christ was not like the Mother who loved and cared for them as her children, as her family" (63). The world as the Indians knew it suddenly shared an identity with white culture. This assimilation was blatantly enforced in the school system; there was a heavy sense of shame associated with the "deplorable ways of the Indian people" (63). This created a tension between Indian culture and the new world of the white people that tried to establish itself as the dominant/correct way of life.



2). We are also introduced to Josiah’s Mexican lover, the Flamenco dancer, Night Swan. What do we find out about her? What significance attaches to her character? What’s with all the blue? How does what she tells Tayo connect with elements that come up in other parts of the novel?

Night Swan is a Mexican woman of mixed descent and a retired Flamenco dancer with whom Josiah has an affair. In her youth she would dance and seduce men; now, she is a grandmother who ended up Cubero after the small town she lived in fell victim to a severe drought. She is a mysterious topic of interest in her community and ignites a blaze of gossip amongst the women who are threatened by her commanding sexuality. When Tayo delivers Josiah's message to Night Swan, the color blue is heavily described in both setting and in her clothing. This could potentially reflect the rain that Tayo has prayed for and the ceremonious way the color blue has been mentioned earlier in the book (i.e., the turqoise rings placed on the antlers of the hunted deer). When she explains to Tayo that it is people's fear of change that leads them to blame "the ones who look different" it harkens to the struggle with race that is prominent throughout the story, as well as the concept of change. The change that the people so greatly fear seems to be pointing to the changes that have lead to the drought and difficulties of Tayo's community. When she tells him that he will soon recognize and understand what is happening, it implies that even more change (and perhaps a journey) are on Tayo's horizon.



3). We get poetic installments of the Hummingbird tale on p. 42-45, 49-50, 65-66, 76, 97, 104-105, 140 (to this point) How might you relate this story to Tayo’s?

The most obvious correlation between the Hummingbird tale and Tayo's story is the absence of rain. In both stories, the drought is causing unrest and desperation; in Tayo's case, he feels that he prayed the rain away during his time in the war and in the Hummingbird tale, the "magic" that enraptures the community causes Nau'ts'ity'i to take away their rain/sustenance. Beyond this similarity, both stories are setting up a journey of sorts. The hummingbird and the fly must continually travel between worlds with gifts in order to convince mother to grant them rain and food. In this same vein, Tayo begins on a journey to heal himself and the community, as well as bring back the rain.

Ceremony

1). Explain why Tayo blames himself for the six year drought.

After he returns home, Tayo learns that "the wind had blown since late february and it did not stop after April"; in the six years he has been gone, there has been a persistent drought that has yellowed the grass and dried up the earth. During his time in the war, Tayo and the rest of the soldiers had experienced rain that "had no beginning or end." The thick, humid jungle rain clouded the soldier's lungs and minds, seeped into their wounds, and created treacherous mud and trenches. Desperate for the rain to end so that his cousin Rocky's injury could heal, Tayo prayed "for dry air, dry as a hundred years squeezed out of yellow sand." After the blanket carrying wounded Rocky slipped from his and the Corporal's hands into the muddy flood, he began to damn the rain and pray against it by chanting a story about Corn Woman and Reed Woman. When he returns to his drought-stricken home, he believes he is responsible for praying the rain away and struggles with guilt, especially after his encounter with Ku'oosh: "The old man only made him certain of something he had feared all along ... it took only one person to tear away the delicate strands of the web."



2). Describe, as best as you can, Auntie’s attitudes about Tayo, mixed blood, and religion.

Auntie seems to adhere more to the standards of other people rather than the standards of her family. She had initially become Tayo's caretaker in order to atone for her sister's scandalous affair with a white man and to invite sympathy and respect from her peers by taking on the burden of raising her illegitimate, mixed-race nephew. She is extremely judgemental when it comes to her people having relationships with other races and ironically adheres to Native American social codes and Christian martyrdom. Rather than assume responsibility for Tayo because she loved him or out of familial ties, she instead dutifully cares for Tayo so that she can appear to be a true Christian woman. After he returns from the war, Tayo knows as well as Auntie does that she will take care of him now solely because "she needed a new struggle, another opportunity to show those who might gossip that she had still another unfortunate burden." She revels in in the satisfaction of being right and is constantly concerned with how the deeds of her family will affect how the community sees and treats them. By using the burden of Tayo and Rocky's death to her advantage with the people of the community, she attempts to cast herself as a martyr ("[measuring] life by counting the crosses") in a narrow-minded Christian sense.

She Had Some Horses

She Had Some Horses
by Joy Harjo

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with eyes of trains.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their

bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet

in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made

them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren't afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped

bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, "horse".

She had horses who called themselves, "spirit", and kept

their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who

carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her

bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.



Harjo's poem is a gorgeously depicted portrait of a life that has left a woman with an insurmountable pile of contradictory emotions and experiences. With both literal and metaphoric descriptions, Harjo uses the "horses" within the female speaker to relate these personal nuances. These feelings seem to revolve around a common struggle between fragility and strength, "destruction" and "resurrection," truth and lies, and love and hate.

The female speaker's persona is subtly evident throughout the poem but is broadly revealed in the lines that claim "She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her / bed at night and prayed as they raped her." However, while the voice of the poem is distinctly feminine, the horses she describes are not assigned to a specific gender. They seem to be spiritual relics of the speaker's soul and experiences and take on various meanings that are not necessarily male or female. They range from southwestern images, to liars, to shy introverts: "She had horses who were the blue air of sky," "She had horses who lied," "She had horses who were much too shy and kept quiet / in stalls of their own making." In this sense, the horses seem to be preserved emotions and memories that relate direct truths about the speaker. While the horses tend to be shrouded in metaphor, the ideas behind them are clear: the speaker is a woman who has perpetually struggled with her idea of self-worth, confidence, and identity. The contradictions she presents are evident in these back-to-back lines: the horses within her "spit at male queens who made / them afraid of themselves. /She had horses who said they weren't afraid." In nearly every stanza the speaker seems to bounce between the idea of being strong ("She had horses who thought they were the sun") and being weak ("She had horses who were much too shy"), being hidden ("She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak") and being revealed ("She had horses who called themselves, 'horse'").

The last lines of the poem condense this contradicting struggle into three short yet potent lines. By effectively labeling the horses as both loved and hated, the dichotomy between her emotions and experiences, and her reason for attempting to reconcile them, becomes clear. The speaker's life is steadfastly comprised of these various "horses" and by uniting them, a whole sense of self can be achieved. While these last lines do not provide a resolution in the typical sense, an answer can be found in the lack of resolve: both the loved and hated aspects of her life intertwine to create simply that: her life.