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.