Ceremony: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

I found this book to be difficult in many ways. Being in the hero's mind and re-experiencing the war events was painful to read. The jumping from reality to mythology slowed the pace of understanding. My book group had many who did not even finish the book despite the descriptions of nature that were very inspiring.

I had to order this book for class and since it wasn't assigned until later in the semester I hadn't really looked at the book. Now that we've started reading it I realized that the book I was shipped is missing the forward and pages 1-6. It's annoying since the first quiz covered a lot from the forward... Oh well, I suppose I should have looked more clearly when it was first delivered.

I can’t say anything yet for the book content, but the binding job is not great. The pages look like they were cut by fifteen year old dull rounded edge preschool scissors. Not happy based on the cost of this paperback book. Fully expecting the pages to fall out.

The book is a really difficult to understand. You have to love the Myth in order to understand the book and to like it. I'm more about science and that made it even harder to get the meaning of the book. It is about how the Myth plays an important role in your life and you don'teven realize it. Myth can be your land, or anythingthat relate to you since you were born. Once you refuse to beharmony with myth, bad thing will happen to you.

This story is hard to follow. It is written in a highly confusing stream-of-consciousness style.
It is unique, you at least say that. This is one of the few books I would never read for fun.
To be honest, I hated this book. I hated reading it. I will never willingly read it again.
So many hours of my life are gone forever, and I will never get them back.

I didn't like Ceremony at all. I found it confusing and very difficult to read. If it weren't a required text for a college course I would have never stayed with it to the end. I finally purchased a narrated version so I could listen and read at the same time for it to make any sense.

I know my professor of Native studies loves it, therefore I'm perplexed? I would never recommend this book to anyone.

This book was terrible. Not only was it uninteresting in my opinion, but it was very confusing, skipping from scenes in the distant past, the past, and the present, as well as random poems with myths. And some of the scenes are just "digressions" as my literature teacher calls them, not really having anything to do with the main story. Sometimes they give background, or a broad view of the Native America culture instead of just Tayo's story, but their purpose isn't really explained or very necessary.
Tayo is suffering from PTSD from his time serving in WWII and he is sent on a spiritual quest attempt to cure himself. Many parts of this quest include sleeping with beautiful, seductive women, who eventually give him advice about what to do next in his healing process.
What I am getting out of this novel is that the Indians see sex as everything. To them, sex is healing and life and it brings answers to their troubles. Ceremony is a story to expose readers to the culture of the Native Americans and hopefully sympathize with them, but having so many sex scenes and explaining how, in the Indians' eyes, tricking blonde, white women into sleeping with them is a sign of being great...I have no respect for the Native Americans at all.
Also, Tayo's friend Harley randomly betrays him to Emo at the end, and there is no explanation as to why or how he turned to be a supporter of Emo, which appears to be a flaw in the writing of the book.
When Harley is being tortured by Emo, Tayo refuses to help protect him, because apparently getting involved in violent situations is what "the witchery" wants, and Tayo "stands strong" to avoid temptation. BUT YOUR FRIEND IS GETTING TORTURED! SAVE HIM YOU IDIOT.
This novel has lots of swearing a vulgar language, as well as characters frequently getting drunk in the bar.
At the end of the novel, the theme is that evil may be escaped, but it can never be truly destroyed.
I don't see how cultural groups can demand respect and sympathy and yet they do all these terrible things and have horrible values. Maybe to them, their actions and values are good, but even they know that it goes directly against our values.

After reading a few Sherman Alexie books a few years ago, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony started popping up in my suggestions, and for some reason, I thought it was poetry rather than a novel. Once I read the description, I put it on my wishlist, where it languished for several months until I finally bought a copy last summer at The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles on a long lunch break from jury duty. I’ve pulled it off my bookshelf a few times when looking for my next read but never quite pulled the trigger until now.

Half-white Tayo has returned to New Mexico after surviving World War II but without his cousin and best friend, Rocky, whom Tayo carried until he died during the Bataan death march. Haunted by Rocky’s death and the other horrors of war, Tayo suffers from what they then called “shell shock” but what we now call PTSD. His life is kind of a mess, and it’s only getting worse. He can’t sleep, can’t keep anything down, has flashbacks to the war, and like many of his compatriots who went over as heroes and came back as nobodies, he drinks too much and gets himself into trouble, like stabbing another man in the gut with a broken beer bottle during a fight. Tayo’s family tells him he needs help or he’ll have to go back to the army hospital, so he relents and goes to see Old Betonie, who performs a ceremony for him and tells him what he needs to do to get himself well. No small task, since Tayo is burdened not only by his own circumstances and mixed heritage but also the history of his whole people.

Though it is a novel, it does contain a great deal of poetry, both in the form and language of small interludes of Native American legends, and in the prose itself, some of the most beautiful I’ve read, such as:

“. . . he waited to die the way smoke dies, drifting away in currents of air, twisting in thin swirls, fading until it exists no more.”

And:

“It took only one person to tear away the delicate strands of the web, spilling the rays of sun into the sand, and the fragile world would be injured.”

And:

“He wanted to fade until he was as flat as his own hand looked, flat like a drawing in the sand which did not speak or move, waiting for the wind to come swirling along the ground and blow the lines away.”

For a book published in the 1970’s, it’s remarkably (and sadly) relevant today. In a few brilliant paragraphs about three-quarters of the way through, Silko throws down a fireball of a critique of white people and their role in racial injustice that is one of the most insightful and scathing I’ve read. Even beyond that, the whole book just feels very modern. The storyline is non-linear and fluid and dreamlike, reflecting Tayo’s physical and psychological torment. It’s very dense, with thick paragraphs and no defined chapters, only extra line breaks and bits of poetic legend now and then. It’s not the easiest story to follow and took me quite awhile to read, given its relatively short length, but it was very much worth my time.

(This review was originally posted as part of Cannonball Read 10: Sticking It to Cancer, One Book at a Time.)

This book was a very interesting read and gave some insight into the realities of indigenous Americans, whose stories were previously absent from my knowledge of nuclear history (and it was neat to discuss as a piece of literature in a college class!).

I have had a lot of difficulty writing a review for this book just because I enjoyed reading it so much. This book has done a lot for me and helped enthuse my passion for reading. It was one of my favorites that I read this year and just a general all time favorite. I am really glad that I read this in the context of a classroom as it allowed me to discover and explore a lot more than I typically would in a novel. I really enjoyed the writing style of Leslie Marmon Silko, it gave significance to every phrase, word and punctuation. Even the page numbers became special. It is definitely hard to read all at once and it also has some hard topics for some people. But these topics are what need writing about. Leslie Marmon Silko shows the effect of the constant attack on Native Americans, their land and their culture. She shows this through Tayo who comes back from World War II haunted by his acts and by his inaction. Once he is back home he is forced to confront both the traditional and the modern cultures that pull him in two different directions. His story is told in various ways, through flashbacks, prose and through stories and myths. The plot is non-linear but just as every word is significant, every event and its special order has a meaning. I love the way that there is so much to discover from Silko's writing, her symbolism and metaphors are hidden in every page. I would highly recommend this as it creates a really good dialogue on the consequences and the treatment of Native Americans in our society.

I have had a lot of difficulty writing a review for this book just because I enjoyed reading it so much. This book has done a lot for me and helped enthuse my passion for reading. It was one of my favorites that I read this year and just a general all time favorite. I am really glad that I read this in the context of a classroom as it allowed me to discover and explore a lot more than I typically would in a novel. I really enjoyed the writing style of Leslie Marmon Silko, it gave significance to every phrase, word and punctuation. Even the page numbers became special. It is definitely hard to read all at once and it also has some hard topics for some people. But these topics are what need writing about. Leslie Marmon Silko shows the effect of the constant attack on Native Americans, their land and their culture. She shows this through Tayo who comes back from World War II haunted by his acts and by his inaction. Once he is back home he is forced to confront both the traditional and the modern cultures that pull him in two different directions. His story is told in various ways, through flashbacks, prose and through stories and myths. The plot is non-linear but just as every word is significant, every event and its special order has a meaning. I love the way that there is so much to discover from Silko's writing, her symbolism and metaphors are hidden in every page. I would highly recommend this as it creates a really good dialogue on the consequences and the treatment of Native Americans in our society.

Ceremony was hard to read; but I'm glad I did! It is the story of Native Americans from New Mexico and their experiences as they traveled through their lives. Participation in World War II; and how that changed people fighting as they were for a government that many certainly did not love and for a country that so many feel they had lost - and rightly, obviously so. And how hard it was when the war ended and many returned home, changed, to a situation that is as unchanging as the petrified forests of the southwest. It is also a little hard to read, because it doesn't follow the normal pattern of fiction, with a beginning, a plot and an end. It is almost a series of anecdotes and reflections that are not pegged in time but in the impressions of the main characters as they bounce around - thinking of their lives. It is very much the story of the Indians of America. The story of Native Americans is a hard one and a sad one - it goes without saying. We all recognize that in equal measure as the immigrants thrived in the United States, the Native American communities suffered. Not only military defeats as tribal armies lost against the superior numbers and weaponry of the newly arrived; but also as civilizations collapsed and spirits were broken. I say this, because this is what this novel is about. The struggles of a people who have had their spirits destroyed, and all the terrible social consequences this entails. Alcoholism, rape, stigmatization, violence. The "pure socialism" of the reservations denying any need or opportunity to overcome. Often times these days in the United States the progressives and their "social justice warriors" are focused on righting past wrongs, real and perceived. The case for the Native American communities is perhaps the most stark - and complicated, because the past is already written. Certainly, in the fight for control over the continent the European immigrants won and the tribes lost. History moves about in tidal waves of power and purpose and violence and loss. Tales of conquest, the advance of civilizations across the world and the building of empires juxtaposed against the travails of the vanquished. This is the nature of the world, whether we like it or not. That does not keep us from feeling sorrow and wondering what we can do; how we can work to improve the lot of people in a country that should be inclusive but remains a hard place for so many who very truly were defeated and sidelined. I am from Arizona, and have come and gone from the reservations; and I certainly mean no offense as I recognized that this is the hardest of topics. And I have no easy answers either. For all this reason I applaud Leslie Silko for writing this important novel - and I encourage you all to read it. Leslie does a great job of telling the story, with sadness and bitterness and a sense of loss which is natural and pure.

This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon.com. Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.

Tayo has survived his beginnings as an outcast of both white and Native American society, only to be sent off to fight a war that he can't hope to survive intact. As his childhood, war memories and ceremonial present come to the fore, Tayo must make a journey to bring the rain back to the land.

This is one of the novels I was assigned for American Literature. It's filled with figurative language (images & symbols) and a really heart rending story. The beginning is quite confusing and the time changes irritating, but eventually you get used to Silko's style.

I found it to be a really rich spiritual journey, one that is so nicely articulated and accessible even for me, a white Australian! I felt quite moved after I had finished reading it, and immediately had to write down some of my impressions for my essay writing.

One of the main things I took away from this novel is that we must all be responsible for our own actions. That's what Tayo must come to terms with (and does, with Harley's death) in order to deal with Rocky's death (which Tayo feels responsible for.

I only wish I felt the same sort of connection to the land and the family that Tayo does. I probably wouldn't reread this novel, but it certainly gave me some things to think about once I had finished reading it. Even if you're a bit nary of American Literature, if you need to choose something to read you should choose this one over Tender is the Night or Daisy Miller (both of which I also read for this unit).

It's readily evident that Marmon Silko is not a novel writer but a short story one. Oh, and a poet, as if that wasn't obvious from the bizarre insertions.

I honestly have no idea what the purpose of this novel was, and we're never given any indication as to what the ceremony was, which, in case you forgot, was the title of the book and supposedly what the whole thing ought to have been about.

And I still can't understand how the author and publisher justified one, long, chapter. Yep. That's all the division you get: one giant chapter/section/or whatever the hell you call it. Wait, I think it's called a short story that wasn't actually short.

I'd planned to read this book for over a decade and tried to read it twice before I finally finished it. I adored The Almanac of the Dead and expected to love this book, thinking my two false starts were due to my not being ready to read this one or in the mood to read something else. But I just didn't get into it. I wondered if the payoff would be amazing, but it wasn't--for me. I've heard the book described as amazing numerous times. For me, it never went deep enough. I felt like Tayo had something to teach me, but I never quite realized what it was. The story of his struggle to find peace while his friends fall to pieces got lost between ephemeral side stories and legends that didn't resonate for me. The story grabbed me when he went searching for his family's missing cattle, but that part didn't last long, and then his odd relationship with a woman who seemed like a hallucination sounds intriguing and symbolic as I describe it here, but in execution, I found it disjointed and confusing.

I'm bewildered.

Some of the writing was hauntingly beautiful, as in: "...he kept moving, his bones and skin staggering behind him." But passages like this were rare.

If you find yourself unable to get into this book, try Almanac of the Dead.

This book was a very interesting read and gave some insight into the realities of indigenous Americans, whose stories were previously absent from my knowledge of nuclear history (and it was neat to discuss as a piece of literature in a college class!).

In part because I want to make a trend of authors with three names and in part because I feel I missed out on a huge literary cultural reference in high school, I finally picked up Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. This is the powerful and heart-wrenching story of two wars: the war between the U.S. and Japan in the Pacific Theatre, and the war between white culture and Indian culture in the Arizona high desert. Tayo, a mixed race soldier, is the victim of both.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I'm big on war novels, but Ceremony is something different. This is the aftermath of war. It's messy and depressing. Even the disillusionment on the battlefield in books like All Quiet on the Western Front or A Farewell to Arms is readable compared to Tayo's long suffering afterwards. I wouldn't say this book is easy to read, but it's beautiful. Silko's novel reminds me a little of John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat-the story of men after war, especially marginalized men. Men of racial minorities who treated like heroes when they're in their uniforms, when the threat of alien invasion is imminent. When the threats of fascists and Nazis and Japanese Imperialists are removed, the Indians become the enemy again. We always have to have our enemy.

The full review is here: [...]

I had to read this book in my multicultural literature class. Although it was required reading, I very much enjoyed it. The story follows a man who is caught in an in between stage where he is trying to let go of the horrors of his past by reconnecting with his culture and the ceremonies his culture practices. This book conveys the power of native american ceremonies to influence the psyche and mind. The book is written very well with incredible imagery and a deep mythic journey. It is also a good representation of native americans and how they have been exploited by the U.S. government.

It is difficult to write about a culture without making it sound better than it is in real life. Leslie Marmon Silko, a Native American, takes the Native American culture and fairly evaluates it in her book Ceremony in a way that all can begin to understand the struggles that her culture has been experiencing for many years, from both outside and within, due to the great pressures of the surrounding white culture and society.
Tayo, a young Laguna Pueblo male, is forced to see some of the many horrors created by the whites when he is recruited to fight under the United States flag. During the war Tayo witnesses many sights and horrors that deeply affect him. He is not able to cope with the ruthless killings and wasteful behavior of the whites and his mental health quickly declines. Leslie Marmon, the author, portrays Tayo as a weak and helpless young man at the beginning of the story, but this vision soon changes due to the authors vivid descriptions and deep thinking, the reader begins to realize that there is much more to Tayo than a weak Indian. Within the first few days of fighting, Tayo's falls ill mentally and is sent to a mental hospital where he stays for the remainder of the war and some time afterward. It is here that readers begin to see that there is more to Tayo's unusual illness than just sickness. Silko begins description to the reader about how the Native American culture is influenced, for the worse, by white civilization.
Many of the difficulties faced by Native Americans people are described throughout Ceremony, including the intermixing of the White and Native American culture. Tayo is a half-breed, half Native American and half white American. His mother was a Laguna Pueblo, but his father was a white male from outside the reservation. IT was quite common at the time of Tayo's birth for the women of the reservation to be used as objects, rather than being treated as human equals with feeling and lives to live. Silko uses Tayo's mother to represent those who try to leave the ways of the Native American culture to find a better living elsewhere. She is unaware of the unwritten rules and is no longer accepted either on the reservation or by the white populations. Being a half-breed Tayo received the same treatment from both cultures. He was still an Indian as far as the whites were concerned, so he was not accepted or wanted anywhere. Silko uses many other characters throughout the story, not to just represent on individual, but to represent the struggles facing the Native American population as a whole.
Silko spends much of Ceremony, showing that everyone has a place in society, but they cannot necessarily choose their place of acceptance. She also demonstrates through the use of her characters that there is a home for everyone within the depths of a culture where the individual finds it to be comfortable.

Tayo, a 'half-breed' Native American and White American, returns from the war a broken man. His town is facing a severe drought and, according to Native American myth, is a result of 'witchery', or greed and 'misbehaving'. Tayo's quest is to recover from his shell-shock and purify himself, which also reconnects him again with ceremony and nature. The story follows Tayo as he discovers his illness and in using ceremony meets Ts'eh (a demi-god), mountain lion/hunter and discovers the importance of story which is intrinsically part of Native American mythology.

The story is hard to read. Silko interweaves story, poem, dreams and vision into the narrative. The current plot is interwoven with flashbacks, which does make it hard to follow, yet there is a flow to the flashbacks as they piece together his past. The poems parallel Native American myth with Tayo's quest - intrinsically linking human and spiritual journey. Silko understands that the narrative structure is hard to understand, but she says the web-like plot (threads interconnecting)is an important part of Native American storytelling.

Despite the hard work - the Ceremony is well worth it. It is rich and so vivid in imagery. Silko's descriptions are profoundly beautiful. The circumstances of the reservation and the returning Indian war veterans are so sad and their plight to try and fit into the white world which rejects them is heart breaking.

I would recommend this poignant novel, and say 'stick with it'.

Tayo is a half-white, half-Laguna man and former POW of the Japanese during WWII. After spending time in a military hospital in Los Angeles and being treated with "white man medicine," Tayo returns to his family on the Laguna Pueblo reservation to find himself even more alone and fearing his grip on reality. Tayo prayed away the rain while he was at war, and he returns to his home to find that a drought has nearly decimated the land and the livestock. Betonie is the medicine man who helps Tayo begin his healing. Along the way, we get to meet various characters who all in some way contribute to Tayo's journey.

The above is an oversimplification of this novel. There are so many elements at work here: one group's struggle to hold on to its culture; the historical oppression of Native American peoples; a man's search for healing and meaning; the role of tradition; and I could go on and on. Silko weaves in Laguna myths through her own poetry and through actual Laguna stories. She writes in a non-linear fashion so that events don't simply occur one after another; time is much more fluid, and all the events from past and present meld together.

It is rare that I read a book that does more than entertain me. This one took my breath away. There was no way I could put this book down until I found out how things turned out for Tayo. And then I read the book again because there are so many moving passages, that it is easy to miss some of the beautiful details of this story. Yes, this can be described as a book about cultural differences and issues. But it is so much more, and Silko does a wonderful job of painting these incredible characters. Her writing is intensely beautiful and lyrical. There aren't a lot of books that bring me to tears, but this one did. I'm very happy to add Ceremony to my book collection, and I can't wait to read more of Silko's works.

Leslie Marmon Silko, a Native American writer, talks in Ceremony about the survival of the people from her Pueblo, Laguna. In this novel Tayo, the main character, enlisted in the ARMY with his brother Rocky. Rocky died in the World War II. Tayo was very affected and came back to his home. Here Leslie Marmon Silko writes about the different reactions that the characters have to their suffering. Many of them take refuge in alcohol like Harley, one of Tayo's friend and Emo, the evil symbol of the novel; but Tayo lives with a guilty feeling. Ceremony is how they try to overcome World War II, it is how they try to overcome their social problems and how they found the balance in life. The novel talks about the different Indian traditions. For example, the ritual they do when a deer is killed (p.51-52). We can see too how important it was to Indians to be at the same social level of white people. This is one of the greatest polemics that Leslie Marmon Silko talks about, one of the biggest social problems that Indians are confronting. Indians have been always persecuted by prejudice and becoming part of World War II here in the novel made them feel popular and important. They feel that everyone treats them as Americans, as white people, it makes them feel that they (Indians) are just like white people. They even compare themselves with Americans; but Tayo found out by heart that this was a big lie, white people and Indians were really different (p.191). In the novel we will see how alcohol and the consequences of prejudice combine together to bring out a great theme that will get us thinking. Thinking in our own problems and how we have survived with prejudice, we should take Ceremony as an example to overcome today's society finding the balance like Tayo did. The most interesting part of Ceremony is the grate technique that the author Leslie Marmon Silko uses to take the reader on a travel through time. The characters in the novel are living in the present, but at the same time remembering and thinking of the past. Sometimes the reader will wonder of what he/she is reading is in the present or if the character is just remembering. But Silko integrated poems in the novel, the real Indian ceremonies. Many people think that the poems are only one more puzzle to figure out, and maybe they are right. However, I believe that even when they are puzzles they can help the reader, in some way, to comprehend the switching in time, so that they do not get lost, they help to keep track of time. The poems talk about many Indians traditions, droughts, witchery and stories that people do not know. As the people change the ceremonies change too. Here is where the puzzle comes in because the reader has to be very concentrated and into the novel to understand them, but at the same time the reader starts to comprehend the poems and the ceremonies; the reader will start to comprehend the novel too. People who like to analyze things and love analogies and the switching between the present and the past, between reality and fantasy and people who want to learn about Indians, their traditions and beliefs should buy this novel because it is very interesting. It will definitely get the money's worth.

Ceremony is a well written novel. Leslie Marmon Silko takes us through the life of an Indian veteran named Tayo. He goes to Second World War with his cousin Rocky were he losses him. There both of them were Japanese prisoners. Then during war his cousin dies at the hands of Japanese soldiers. When he comes back he had to struggle with the other Indians veterans and their attitudes, his family and his own life. His family sends him to two medicine men. The second, Betonie, is the one that begins the healing process for Tayo. This novel will reveal to you the power of self-identity, wisdom, family and love.
It is obvious that a person of mixed ancestry such as Silko writes such a story. Her ancestry consists of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and white. These three roots are inside the novel. Her place of birth, Albuquerque, is one the settings of the novel. She is a smart and intelligent writer, worth reading.
If you are of a mixed blood you may be uncomfortable reading thisnovel. In this novel they present the white side as mean or as Silko calls them the destroyers. But also the Indians that look for comfort in alcohol, like Emo, are criticized. It is not easy to hear someone talk bad about your people (Indian or white) even if they are right when they say Indian veterans got drunk and that white people mistreated them. Silko decided to write about her own suffering and the suffering she saw among Indians. This novel presents the unhappy life of an Indian veteran, who was also half-breed, and his search for self-identity and happiness. The suffering of the Laguna Pueblo Indians is seen through his eyes. The stories of veterans in bars drinking away their sorrows, Indian girls looking for money and white people a S.O.B. is almost a cliché. The suffering war causes is known to every one and is a bitter experience all soldiers have to handle. Blacks, blues, yellows, reds, purple, anyone that went to war knows these stories. A black writer will write about his experiences, a Chinese will write about his own memories and Silko writes about Indians being disgraced by white people, even though she is of mixed ancestry. Each writer will write about his/her own pain and experiences happening in the time span they are living.
If you have lived in a secluded area or experience the pain of being rejected because the color of your skin, you will understand this novel and its themes. It is clear that Silko identifies herself as an Indian. She writes about the pain white people caused them. A suffering that has not been forgiven, a suffering that is still in their hearts.
A person that has mixed-blood and him/herself with the whites will get uncomfortable because is hard to accept the past. It is not easy to face that-Yes -white people did some pretty dirty things, for example: taking away Indian cattle,their land and their life. But not every single white in America is like that; and in Ceremony this other perspective is not presented. Why if Silko is also white?
Although this novel is written looking only to the suffering Indians had caused by the whites, it is worth reading. The author uses techniques like retrospection, analogies and poems. These poems make the reader try to puzzle out what is happening. The reader will feel as if he/she were walking through a labyrinth. The poems are the little clues to come out in victory. The richness of the descriptions and the elements of nature presented are excellent. It is fascinating to see how Silko manages to make such amazing contrast between the tears and the joys, between the sorrows and the happiness. Ceremony is a novel worth reading if you want to have another point of view on things like: magic, witchery, interracial relationships and racism. A novel that is great if you are ready to face the past and probably the present.

The novel is very interesting because it helps the readers to understand better the Native American way of life. You can see the different problems that affect the Indian community. A good example is Tayo, he went to a war and now he is back home but he is not quite the same anymore, that is something very typical of veterans. The novel transport us to the World War II where many of the people who went there still suffering many traumas that wont heal up with the time. In this occasion Tayo is the one that reflects this action because he was the one that went to war with his cousin Rocky, who couldn't make it on the war. Now Tayo need to learn how to change in order to survive his experiences. Leslie Marmon Silko also helps the reader keep in touch with her special interpretation of the subtopics and her unique technique of narration. She looks deep inside her roots and her own experiences to create a real life mood in the novel. She identifies herself as part of the mixed-blood community to make the story of Ceremony one more real and more interesting to read. Silko as part of her style introduce poems trough the story. That helps the reader to be more interested on the story. The poems also keep in touch with the narration in the story so you can keep in track with it so you won't miss a thing. Poems help the reader to understand the reading while it shows a different point of view the mythical one.

"Nothing was all good or al bad either; it all depended"(11). Through Betonie's ceremony and the Laguna myths, Tayo comes to realize that the evil which has caused him so much loss, so much grief, began with his own people. Indian witchcraft harnessed evil in the form of the whites through the words of a story, and only by accepting responsibility for this can one truly live in harmony with his past and present. He sees that to simply get drunk and blame the "whites," like his veteran buddies do, is to play the victim. Tayo's journey may be confusing and lapsing to some, yet it strikes me as being an authentic search for truth and healing. With the help of Betonie and Ts'eh, Tayo realizes the lie that has been perpetrated upon the Indians by white society- that they are second-class citizens, and Tayo sees beyond that lie. He breaks the cycle of violence by not retaliating against Emo, and he restores balance to his life. Evil still exists, yet his awareness of it helps him "stay out of trouble"(256). The uniqueness of Silko's proposal, that Native Americans accept responsibility for their participation in the violence and dissolution, makes CEREMONY an honest and affecting work. Seen in this light, sensitivity to the plight of Native Americans becomes something for readers to accept and appreciate, rather than to reject without consideration.

Right up front, I've got to say that Ceremony is one of the best novels I've ever read. I don't read much fiction any more--especially contemporary fiction--because I'm so often disappointed by novels. But Ceremony is extraordinary. I had the novel on my bookshelves for a long time (I don't even know where I got it, it's been so long), and I finally picked it up for vacation reading because it's a slender paperback and easy to carry. Ceremony is not your typical "beach read." It's demanding, but confidently and beautifully written, and rewarding.

The novel recounts the story of Tayo, a young Native American, who was held prisoner by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II, and the horrors of captivity that almost crushed his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation west of Albuquerque only increases his feelings of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution.

Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats Tayo's most virulent affliction: despair.

The novel is set in the Laguna Pueblo Reservation and in Gallup, New Mexico. Silko includes beautiful, memorable descriptions of the Southwestern landscape and its effect on her characters. It's not "nature writing," but parts come damn close.

"Ceremony" Leslie Marmon Silko Publication-1977 262 pages $12.95 October 18, 1999 The novel "Ceremony" by Leslie Marmon Silko is a well written novel of a young Laguna Pueblo Indian named Tayo. This book is for readers who love to read a different kind of novel, since it will take the reader from past to present and has Indians stories in between readings to help the reader understand a little more abount the Indian culture. After Tayo goes to World War II, he comes back home mentally depressed, confused because of his war experience:the death of his cousin Rocky, he was confused as to why he himself was killing and his guilt of leaving his uncle back home to raise the cattle. This novel will take the reader on a journey through Tayo's rough life. Because he is half white, half Indian, he is stereotyped by some of his own race and even treated with indifference by his own family. Another difficulty was one shared by Indian veterans who felt accepted by society when they gave their life up to the war, then they came back to find no job and nothing to do but to drink. After being hospitalized Tayo tries to find another way to heal himself: through a Ceremony. Through this Ceremony we (the readers) learn about Indian cultures, stories, beliefs and traditions. I highly recommend this novel because it is about suffering, confusion, loneliness, the war experience of Native Americans, stereotypes, racism, self healing and how Tayo found the answer to his confusion within his own culture.

The author is an excellent storyteller, and is able to describe details and paint pictures wonderfully. What held me back from truly enjoying this book more, was how it is not written in chronological order and jumps to different periods of the main character's life without explaining where we are in his life at the beginning of the jump. I spent too much time trying to figure out how everything fits together, than I was just enjoying the story. At one point I wanted to rip the book apart to reorganize it in chronological order!

I recommend this book to someone who enjoys excellent storytelling and does not mind the non-linear nature of the story.

It is difficult to find novels about the Southwest that are not too romantic, but are still interesting and that tie the ancient stories and legends to present day problems and event. Leslie Marmon Silko seems to do that quite well in her novel "Ceremony." The interwoven Native American story and the story of Tayo's recovery help make the book easy to understand, despite the disjointedness of it. Tayo's flashbacks to World War II and life before the war sometimes make the book difficult to follow, but also add to the intrigue. As for the Laguna culture and the ceremony Tayo goes through; Silko explains this quite well. All the factors make the book interesting and enjoyable to read. One must think and analyze rather intensely in order to understand Tayo's sudden flashbacks and memories, his get-well ceremony, and the concept of the past and present being related through legends and how they help society understand and resolve quickly the strange problem of the present. The more complex the book, the greater the intrigue it lends to the educated, interested reader. As this complexity is illustrated in "Ceremony", it is and excellent book to stimulate the mind.

I remember reading a quote from M. Scott Momaday in which he states that we have too many words, and hence, and in this inflation, we are losing the power of the meaning (sorry for the corruption, Mr. Momaday).
That power is here, though, in this novel. Ms. Silko has created a tale that is clearly a journey: of self-discovery for Tayo, of reclaiming the land, and of re-discovering the gift of ritual and storytelling.
The flashbacks and quick changes kept for a lively reading. I thought it had a jazz-like tempo, with quick-slow, here-there pacing. I enjoyed the gradual unfolding of characterization. I could see the land and the blue sky, smell the sage, the dry dust, I could almost hear the drafting of the hawk in the sky, she is that good of a landscape writer.
Watch out for the ending though, BAM! it happens fast. At first, I didn't like that, but upon reflection, I see that that is the only way she could have ended it.
Oh, one more thing: read this novel for the the wonderful poem in the middle of the book about the beginnings of witchery. It is good enough to be used for a monologue in a speech competition. Good material.

CEREMONY is a stylistic masterpiece worthy of the highest honor. Leslie Silko's refusal to tell her tale in an expected, pedantic format works to pull the reader deeper into the narrative, to feel that he is a part of the story himself. It is not a straightforward narration, but one that twists and turns through more than one character, through more than one time period and finally through more than one style of story telling. Silko somehow manages to make her plot gell with the poetry and mythology employed until at the end all three of these elements come together to create one story and one message.
It is also a novel founded deeply in setting. The landscape in this novel-both physical and spiritual-is overwhelming, and the statement Silko makes about her main characters connection to the land and the old ways could not be made outside of these specific settings. It is that connection that Tayo forges between himself and the land that allows for his transformation, and in effect allows the land itself almost to become a character within the story-an active participant within the narrative.
The story itself is beautifully, if soberly told, and the narrative, instead of being one of piecemeal patchwork such as you might expect from a work that weaves in and out of prose and ceremonial poetry- instead achieves the hushed, somber, reverential aspect of the ceremonial poems and stories it contains. It is by this achievement that Silko manages to make the stories and the landscape that figures so importantly in them alive to readers. The settings and themes of CEREMONY are specific, but its lessons universal. We all have `ceremonies'-things we must do to keep us sane, to keep our worlds in balance, and we must accept that these needs change over time.
Gorgeous work, not to be missed.

The difficulties of a war veteran returning to normal life is a theme that has proved rich, fertile, fecund. So many people, over the last hundred years, have had family members who returned from war - or didn't - or have themselves come back from the horrors of the battlefields. There is something within us that seeks to understand the full magnitude of what happens to people when life and limb become so many strategic points on a general's battle plan. Humanity, perhaps. Leslie Marmon Silko's novel, Ceremony, takes the fairly ordinary story of a young man returning from fighting in Japan during World War II - and I mean ordinary in a very broad sense, as there is nothing really ordinary about fighting and dying for one's country - and spins it in a different direction. What happens when your uniform confers upon you the respect of others, admiration, hospitality, grateful thanks, but when it is removed and the war starts to fade, you become, once again, a 'filthy Indian', a mixed blood who feels uncomfortable in both the 'white' and the 'native American India' worlds? Ceremony seeks to provide not the answer, but an answer. And here it succeeds.

'First time you walked down the street in Gallup or Albuquerque, you knew. Don't lie. You knew right away. The war was over, the uniform was gone. All of a sudden that man at the store waits on you last, makes you wait until all the white people bought what they wanted.' Tayo has returned from Japan, and is suffering what we now call Post-traumatic stress disorder. During the war, he saw his relatives in the dead bodies of the Japanese. Afterwards, he sees death all around him. Coupled with this is the hostility of his native American India family members, who distrust him because he is not fully theirs, and the whites, who only like Tayo when he is wearing a uniform. One of the novels large themes is dealing with the sadness of the native American Indians who, after serving their country in World War II, assumed that their equality and the respect they were receiving would last beyond the last shot fired. It didn't, and what was left? Can a man - woman, too - who tastes what it is like to be free ever return the bit to their mouth, the harness to their back? Not easily, and not without sadness. 'They had been treated first class once, with their uniforms. As long as there had been a war and the white people were afraid of the Japs and Hitler. But these Indians got fooled when they thought it would last.'

Another aspect is the land where Tayo lives. To begin with, he has only a small level of appreciation for the stories and mysteries embedded within the mountains, trees, streams and rivers. The writing is focused internally, through memories and thoughts. But later, as Tayo comes to learn more about his heritage - which is done wonderfully through many different song-poems that capture and reveal ancient native American Indian myths and stories - the land itself becomes not a character, but almost the entire force of the novel. Silko's writing luxuriates in the earthy reality of the land, lingering lovingly over descriptions of what, in other novels, is often overlooked. 'The mountain had been named for the swirling veils of clouds, the membranes of foggy mist clinging to the peaks, then leaving them covered with snow. This morning the mountain was dusted with snow, and the blue-gray clouds were unwinding from the peaks.' It is impossible not to shiver with cold upon reading these words. One of the major goals of the novel - and the most successfully accomplished - is bringing out the beauty of the land.

Perhaps less successful is Tayo's descent into alcoholism. While it is believable, and competently written, there is a jagged, fragmented sense of the writing that pulls the reader away from the text, rather than keeping them inside. This technique was no doubt used to mirror Tayo's disordered, confused mind, but there are occasions when we are simply willing to pause a moment to truly understand what is happening. Happily, the missteps are brief, and the most important parts of the novel shine the brightest.

Silko is a physical writer, not just in her descriptions of the land, but also in the sheer physical delight she takes in describing ordinary, mundane situations. Consider this brief snapshot: 'Tiny black ants were scurrying over the shattered melons; the flies were rubbing their feet on fragments of pulp and rind. He trampled the ants with his boots, and he kicked dirt over the seeds and pulp.' Again, we can almost taste the melon, can clearly and distinctly picture the poor ants.

Ceremony occupies an important place in the canon of native American Indian writing. The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, the latest in this noble series, accurately captures the impact of the text through Larry McMurtry's introduction, and Leslie Marmon Silko's own foreword. Silko's novel rises above what could be referred to as 'minority fiction', in that it is important because it is written by a minority group, because its achievement as a text does not require the shackles of race or class or gender or nation. Silko's novel is perhaps the most famous native American Indian novel, but it is also a fine, sturdy, worthwhile achievement within the broader genre of the novel itself, and that is what is important here. Read Ceremony because it has something important to say about difficult, weighty matters. It is more than merely a minority piece.

This was a great idea for a novel, but not a great novel.
The protagonist, Tayo, is a half-blooded Laguna Indian World War II veteran. He is suffering from PTSD as well as guilt over his failure to save his half-brother Rocky from dying in the war and the shame over his mother's socially unacceptable behaviors. His people's traditional medicine ceremonies are not effective for his modern ailments. Like I said, great idea for a novel.
Events are non-chronological and the perspective frequently shifts between magical realism and stream of consciousness. But behind all the smoke and mirrors, there is not much of a plot. For all the time that is devoted to his backstory, Tayo doesn't actually say think or do much in the novel. I felt sympathy for him, because like his people, he has had a tough go of it, but I never really warmed to him as a character. He doesn't have a personality beyond his victimhood. At the end of the day, the dots of the plot are too far apart, the reader doesn't know what's real and what's not, and instead of feeling like I went on a meaningful journey with the protagonist, I was just glad to be done with it.

I'd read some of Leslie Marmon Silko's short stories before starting on this novel. They were like gems, polished, smooth, and echoing with a gentle quiet not commonly found in English literature. CEREMONY is a far more ambitious undertaking; the building of a literary castle. Set in New Mexico, in and around Laguna Pueblo, immediately after WW II, the plot concerns a young Indian war veteran who has been traumatized by his experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese. When we meet him, he's barely conscious, being released from a mental hospital. He lost his half-brother on the Bataan death march, his favorite uncle had died at home, a herd of special cattle---adapted to life in the desert---has disappeared, and his old friends are drinking themselves away in bars. To top it all off, Tayo, the central character, is illegitimate and half-white, raised by relatives, not accepted fully by everyone in the family. He seems destined for the asylum, jail, an early death from alcohol, or suicide; not exactly unknown fates for young Indians then or now.
Elders arrange a healing ceremony for him, but the healer is a maverick, not tied to traditional methods. Tayo's whole life and consciousness merge into the healing process and that process begins to look like a prescription for the Indian peoples in North America to heal nearly-fatal wounds dealt their cultures over the last five centuries. Silko sees the materialism and violence of Western civilization as a curse threatening the continued existence of everyone on the planet, a curse stemming from evil itself rather than from a particular group of people. In tones that ring most uncannily today, she wrote in 1977 [p.191] "If the white people never looked beyond the lie, to see that theirs was a nation built on stolen land, then they would never be able to understand how they had been used by the witchery; they would never know that they were still being manipulated by those who knew how to stir the ingredients together: white thievery and injustice boiling up the anger and hatred that would finally destroy the world: the starving against the fat, the colored against the white."
The ceremony thus begins as a curative ritual for a single man, but expands beyond a simple hogaan to the whole world. Dream figures come to life, life becomes a dream, life is healing and healing is life. Silko attempted a very difficult task and I am not sure that it is entirely successful. Sometimes, the pieces don't seem to match. Her World War II sequences don't ring entirely true either. Americans never evicted Japanese soldiers from caves before the Bataan death march; they were not executing prisoners then. The shoe was on the other foot. But these are quibbles. CEREMONY's language, the poetry, the beauty of the land, the theme of healing--- all come through to make an unforgettable novel, an original voice that deserves an honored place in American literature. If you have a special interest in Native American literature and have enjoyed N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, or Sherman Alexie, Silko's work will be a welcome addition.

This is an amazing novel. The writing is beautiful, the story is difficult and very, very important. Although first published in 1977, it is relevant right now as we witness the Dakota Pipeline protests and the climate change deniers. It is a testimony to the strength and dedication of our Native brothers and sisters in protecting the earth for generations to come.

Never have I read such a novel as cathartic and therapeutic as Silko's "Ceremony". I first encountered it in an English Lit. class in college. As 'sophomoric' as I thought I was at the time, it was not until a few years later that I reread the novel and fully grasped what was being said through the protagonist Tayo and his actions.
"Ceremony" is a journey of the soul, a Bataan Death March that we are all forced to experience at some point or another in our lives. That is what makes this novel timeless and accessible to us all. Leslie Marmon Silko, who I believe won a literary award for this novel, opens the heart and mind of the reader to a theme which has been recorded since the ancient Greeks (see Aeschylus' "Oresteia"), that of mathos through pathos, enlightenment through suffering.
Having already paid a heavy price as a veteran of WWII, Tayo returns to the suffering of his tribe. It is then that Tayo is able to recover what he never knew he had lost, his heritage and soul that was intricately linked to everyone and everything around him. The author attacks the demons plaguing Tayo with the rich symbolism in Native American culture (pay particular attention to the use of yellow and blue colors) and the aid of an enigmatic medicine man. Silko's weapons are in Native American song and myth, histories that empower Tayo to fight the state of mind that oppresses the Laguna Pueblo people on his reservation. With this, Tayo is able to finish his Bataan Death march once and for all, his past behind him, and his heart born again as true a Native American.

Somebody told me this was the best book he read in undergrad -- 'needed a shower afterwards,' he said. You know what they say about high expectations . . . . Silko's writing, especially her use of metaphpors and imagery, is spectacular. But the storytelling is a bit disjointed, constantly slipping back and forth from past and present and different settings. I tried but ultimately gave up trying to organize it all. No reader should be forced to try that hard. Nonetheless, at the end, the book takes a unique and unexpected turn that I suppose is worth wading through all the confusion. Silko covers the range of the Native American plight, from alcoholism to poverty to white men (and women), generally managing to keep the pretentiousness and false spirituality to a minimum. The story is far from the life-changing ritual that its proponents suggest, however. I would recommend any of Sherman Alexie's books instead. His work conveys so much more in a much more subtle and subversive way. Maybe my exposure to Alexie made me feel that Silko was trying just a little too hard here.

Ms Silko paints a picture, not of historical wrongs, apologetically <yet easily> swept under faded carpets of days gone by, but of contemporary sufferings and injustices, hidden from white consciousness by the remoteness of the reservation system, and quietly tucked away behind white washed institutional walls. It is not a little ironic, that a people so quick to denounce the injustices of a Kosovo, or the horrors of the Holocaust, become so indignant when confronted with their own ongoing cultural/ethnic genocide. Yet Silko, herself of mixed ancestry, does not place the blame solely on the shoulders of the whites, she takes Native American peoples to task as well. She chastises those holding tightly to an improvident past, unable to accept changes that are necessary to Indian cultural survival. She is equally critical of those who abandon their identifies, embracing solutions offered by the white man, solutions leaving them in cultural limbo, no longer Indian, and
perpetually at the mercy of white prejudice. The key to Native survival in Ms Silko's view, is adaptation, symbolized by the protagonist, Taio. Adaptation which involves accepting the white presence, acknowledging that it is neither good nor bad, simply an unwitting pawn of ancient forces way beyond its ken. Adaptation which at the same time celebrates one's Indianness, its unique way of relating to the land, to things both living, and non, and its special understanding of those forces which the collective white conscious has chosen to forget.

I've read this book twice. The first time I read it, I didn't like it a whole lot. I was required to read it again for a class and I enjoyed much, much more the second time. The book is well written. I found it interesting how the structure of the book pretty much reflects Tayo's changing mental state, as it gets less and less eratic throughout the novel. However, one major problem I have with this novel is that Silko seems far too heavy-handed in her attempt to represent the native culture as the answer to all of Tayo's problems. There are a lot of cliche references about white culture and Silko doesn't seem to feel that it has anything to offer Tayo or any of the other characters in the novel. I felt that that this was a bit too cliche and heavy-handed for a writer of Silko's caliber.

I have to read this for a lame LBST class, but I'm trying to make the best of it. As far as I can tell, it is pretty well written, it's just a shame that I don't care. My teacher, however, gives it rave reviews. If you're just looking for something to read that's interesting. Search Dean Koonz or Greg Hurwitz. Unless you are actually into anthropology, then this book might be for you. And why I spent this much time reviewing a book I don't even care about...well...I guess I don't know. Hahaha

This book is absolutely beautiful. I will warn you now, however, that it is not an easy read. It is complex and multifaceted, which makes it too complicated to be a fluff book even though it is fairly short. Reading it takes some serious thought.

The plot of Ceremony is that of a half Native American man who comes back from World War II and has difficulties dealing with the world he returns to. At first he turns to alcohol but he is slowly drawn to healing not only himself but the world around him with the revised rituals of the Laguna people.

The book is incredible for the issues it covers and on the way it discusses them. The questions of belonging, of being an outcast, of the mixing of cultures and of one's role in a greater society are just some of the topics that get discussed in the story. But they are not put easily on the surface for any person to pick up on. To understand at least some of what the book is really about one must get through the layers and really read between the lines. This is a good thing. It adds to the depth of the book and makes it much more potent.

It does, however, make the book much harder to read. Not only are the main themes hidden within the main plot but the way the book jumps back and forth between present and past, events and memory, can be very confusing unless one keeps careful track of what is going on. But all this means for the intelligent reader is that she or he must pay careful attention when reading, which is a good idea anyway since the book is filled with connections and underlying themes.

One of the things I enjoy about Silko and some of my other favorite Native American writers is that they retain a certain mystery in their writing. Making use of Indian spirituality, there always seems to be a question as to which events actually occurred and which were part of the vision that lead to the healing. There are also aspects that non-Indian readers can never quite understand, but that is part of the depth.
Much of the American Indian literature I have read deals with veterans of Viet Nam so this story of World War II veterans was particularly interesting. In general, no matter what socio-economic group, there is not quite so much literature about the adjustments these veterans made on their return. Though I'm sure it was particularly difficult for American Indians, who, in some ways saw this as an opportunity to be like the warriors of old, but who were fighting a very different war in defense of those who had been their enemies.
I found parts of this work a little heavy-handed, especially where Silko feels compelled to spell out the contentions between the white and Native American cultures. This came out in the story, and it didn't need to be hammered home. However, given the time this was written--the 1970's--a time when Native Americans were just beginning to rediscover their culture and find their strength--I think this minor flaw can be overlooked.
Over all the poetic language and the strong story make this a fine piece of literature.

Ok, ok. So I'm a suburban WASP (well, half on the W) kid with far too much time on my hands. And except for what I've read in books, I don't know jack about Native American culture. But any way you slice it, this is an extremely well structured book.
Silko's writing style is very mystic, with adequate doses of hope and cynicism throughout. The integration of Native American poems throughout the novel is very interesting, as the stories parallel what is happening in the book, and they offer interesting symbols and history. It takes a bit of analyzing, but the result is very rewarding.
The main character Tayo is almost too easy to sympathize with, as many of the people around him are immature alcoholics or self righteous pricks, most notably the aunt. The narrative can be confusing, with its flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. I had to read over many parts multiple times.
The ending is especially beautiful, though a bit precarious. The way the book starts and ends with "sunrise" suggests a cyclical nature to life. And, this sounds really stupid, I felt more connected to the earth after reading it.
If there's one drawback, other than the occasionally frustrating prose, it's that Silko's authenticity in depicting a battleground setting is questionable. For the most part, though, the scenes are not trying to show the horrors of war so much as stress certain key points of the story.
It can also make you sick if you're easily grossed out by vomit. I feel it in my belly...

Ceremony is a narrative that can and does heal. The novel is the "ceremony" of the main character's-Tayo returning to a healthy mental state. In this novel we see the effects that war can have on people, especially soldiers. This novel for the first hundred pages is a little bit hard to follow. Tayo has many flashbacks of past events that he cannot seem to forget. These flashbacks come up when he is reminded of significant events, which have left marks. As the Ceremony progresses the flashbacks are not as frequent and the novel becomes easier to follow. There are many passages in the novel that have left a mark on me. One particular disturbing scene is when the life of the really poor was described. To me the horrible conditions portrayed did not bring back any flashbacks, but they did create upsetting and vivid mental pictures.
I really enjoyed the book. In my Intro to fiction class we argued about the author's goal in writing the novel and the perspective it's written in. I think that her goal was to show the Whites what life for the less fortunate that we have conquered is really like. In my opinion her message was conveyed very strongly. Reading this novel was an awakening for me. It made me face the harsh reality and the truth. Not only did I learn about the other cultures that are less fortunate and live in horrible conditions but I also learned about my own race and culture. I learned that the Whites now prosper from land that was taken from others. The Whites are powerful and superior, but at the expense of the others/natives. In my history classes, most of which are Eurocentric, I learn about history from the American point of view. Our actions are always justified and we do not learn how the other side really feels. What is life like from their perspective? We as Whites cannot truly understand unless we learn and see from the others' point of view. We cannot learn by assuming and making our own judgments about what their life must be like. The perspective in this novel has a much greater and a more touching effect. I always like knowing the truth and knowing both sides to a story. I therefore really like this story!

Ms Silko paints a picture, not of historical wrongs, apologetically <yet easily> swept under faded carpets of days gone by, but of contemporary sufferings and injustices, hidden from white consciousness by the remoteness of the reservation system, and quietly tucked away behind white washed institutional walls. It is not a little ironic, that a people so quick to denounce the injustices of a Kosovo, or the horrors of the Holocaust, become so indignant when confronted with their own ongoing cultural/ethnic genocide. Yet Silko, herself of mixed ancestry, does not place the blame solely on the shoulders of the whites, she takes Native American peoples to task as well. She chastises those holding tightly to an improvident past, unable to accept changes that are necessary to Indian cultural survival. She is equally critical of those who abandon their identifies, embracing solutions offered by the white man, solutions leaving them in cultural limbo, no longer Indian, and
perpetually at the mercy of white prejudice. The key to Native survival in Ms Silko's view, is adaptation, symbolized by the protagonist, Taio. Adaptation which involves accepting the white presence, acknowledging that it is neither good nor bad, simply an unwitting pawn of ancient forces way beyond its ken. Adaptation which at the same time celebrates one's Indianness, its unique way of relating to the land, to things both living, and non, and its special understanding of those forces which the collective white conscious has chosen to forget.

Difficult at times to incorporate, simply due to an unfortunate life, truth prevails- Tayo's life was his life. Prepare to be enlightened and informed, even if you were already. Silko, with an earned status, walks the walk and talks the talk.

I teach this novel every semester at a university. I have taught it in courses on American Indian literature and in courses on American novels (no ethnic categories). It can stand up against any American novel you can name, in terms of its emotional impact, its artistic achievement, its prose style, its narrative structure -- anything. I admit it is a challenging novel, but it is well worth the work. It is best if you can read it with others, or in the context of a class or online study guide. Some reviewers here are high school students who read it for class, and I admit that may be asking a lot of high school student to dig into the novel as much as it needs/deserves. But that can be done, especially with the right kind of guidance. However, it is hard for me to imagine teaching a university-level course on American Indian literature without teaching Ceremony.

While reading Ceremony I was very uncomfortable at times with the voyage that the author takes the reader on. The attention to detail that Silko brings to her writing engulfs the reader and allows them to really get inside the head of the characters and share their emotion (whether it's good or bad). I'm not a Native American, nor have I fought in the military, but throughout the novel, I often found myself experiencing and identifying with some of the emotions that the main character (Tayo) goes through and I'm able to see the critique that Silko is trying to make. The novel can serve as a healing process for the characters in the story as well as the reader.
The novel's critique is the effects of colonization on Native American culture. Reading Ceremony really makes you think about the way of life you have today and who or what was sacrificed in order or you to have it that way. It's very depressing when you think about what the white man did to the Native Americans and their land. I recommend reading this book if you are interested in human spirit and emotion. Needless to say, I really enjoyed the novel.

I guess I can understand why some of you wouldn't enjoy this book -- you simply couldn't grasp what it was saying, and for that, I pity you. The bouncing back and forth in time had a point! She was illustrating the idea that time is irrelevant. The stories are interwoven and meld as one great story. She's also not bashing white people for those of you who think she is. She happened to have a father who was white and loved and respected him very much. She is simply honest in the story. Tayo had many reasons to hate what some of the whites did and recognizes in the end we are all one together against the evil. There are so many other beautiful characteristics about the book -- language, imagery, characters -- but rather than bore you, just take my advice and read this book for yourself and keep in mind that the reader is trying to make a point. Try not to miss it.

As I began reading this book, I thought to myself, oh boy another book on how White Americans are in the wrong. There are so many books that I have read lately, that point out that the White American should feel guilty because they stole America from the natives. Then as I continued reading this book, and learned about Tayo's story, I realized just how angry and upset the Native Americans were, and still are. Another argument that I learned from this book, is that people with Native American and European dissent are seen as outsiders, and they do not fit in within either race. I did not realize that �half-breeds� were looked at as different, or wrong. This story takes place after WWII, and in one situation in the book, Tayo explains, that when he was in uniform women saw him as a heroic and attractive man. They did not see him as a �half-breed� until he was out of uniform and in street clothes. I found this chapter to be sad, but true. We do this often in our society. We judge people before we know them. I am able to say that this book changed my outlook on life. After reading Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko, I realize that we as Americans, should be grateful for the land that we live on, and we should not be so quick to judge others before we know them.

For years punishment have existed among the different races. But those who are punished can demonstrate that they are able to gain positive things from life. The Indian culture has been punished by the white people, because, they believe that the Indian race is inferior. For this reason white people deprived Native Americans of lands, freedom, justice and many other things. Ceremony, the novel written by Leslie Marmon Silko, is mostly based on those kinds of problems. Silko is part of a bicultural race. She is from indian parents and also have a white origin. This means that she can visualize both points of view. The story Ceremony discusses other types of social problems. Some of the problems are war and abandoned kids. Tayo, the principal character of the story, had suffered both problems, because he was a veteran of war who was also a prisoner of the Japanese people and his mother abandoned him at an early moment in his life. Some Native American characters in the story seem to care too much about how white people treat them and make them feel, for example one of them pretended to be an Italian in order to have relationship with white women. They treated them without respect making them feel inferior. With this situation the Native American felt upset and in response to these feelings they create a spiritual rebelion against white people. Tayo and other people from his tribe have many problems, because white people do not trust them as they would like to be trusted. Also historically white people have repeatedly lost the trust of the Native Americans. But this is not a barrier for Tayo, because he always try to do the best he can, no matter in what situation he gets involved. Tayo got sick, because all of the problems he had, then he solved with an Indian ceremony that help him get well. Another message that the story has is conveyed in the poems that intercept the narrative of the reading. Those are trying to let us know that our Mother Earth is suffering a lot, because human beings are destroying her without thinking of the consequences. Those poems are written in a way that makes the reader think a little of what we are doing to nature. Readers can be very interested in what they read from Ceremony, but they must concentrate since some times it may be confusing. The novel have some narrative that intercept the story, so the reader have to compare them with the basic story of it. Ceremony is a good story that presents different points of view such as the white people's belief that Indian culture is worthless in contrast with the Native American belief that white people are responsible for their problems.

Richard Alvarez Gonzalez 802-90-0261 Expository Writing
Review of Ceremony
War is one of the most terrible evils man has known, yet is has been going on for ages. Since the beginning of known history man has been at war with his fellow man, himself and the world. In Leslie Marmon's novel Ceremony the point of view towards war is different from that of most people. A sense of loss takes central stage in the novel; loss of loved ones, loss of land, of heritage, and loss of self. Tayo and his cousin, Rocky, joined the army looking for a way out and adventure, they would go and fight a Great War. While fighting in the jungles of Asia, Rocky gets killed. Now Tayo is back, the war is over, but not for him. Tayo feels responsible for his cousin's death. He was supposed to protect him and he failed, and now his memory haunts Tayo's every second of existence. In the beginning of the novel we take a look into Tayo's disturbed and tormented mind, as he takes us along the story of his life, of death, war, and rejection. Tayo is a man desperately trying to hold on to his sanity while he wastes it away on a bottle of alcohol which sends him into constant sickness spells and confines him to a bed from which he is terrified to move. As his sickness progresses, Tayo is taken to see a medicine man that sends him on a journey to retrieve his uncle's dreams, thus putting his own fears and doubts to rest. It is during this journey that Tayo completes his healing process with the aid of a woman with whom he will fall deeply in love, Ts'eh, a mystical character that appears and disappears various time in the novel, seeming as if a dream or a creation of Tayo's mind. Ts'eh is a very interesting character because there seems to be various references to her in the novel, but with different names, adding another spark of magic to the story, and making it a trip into fantasy and wonder. Of course, the story is full of legends and mystical occurrences, unlikely events that seem to complete the story and make it right; and poems that interrupt the story and explain the Laguna people beliefs, merging with the story and coming together in a story of hope. Complex and engaging, Ceremony reveals a whole new world of magic, mysticism and beauty. It is a book that must be read carefully in order to understand all the little details here and there, which will in order reveal a much larger picture. A piece of literature which may carry different meanings, and messages, to different readers.

I don't know if you recieved my Cermony book review since I haven't heard back from you so I am sending it again. Thanks
Lindsay Klausner
Book Review
Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony emphasizes the important role that storytelling plays within the Pueblo culture. Silko portrays the endangered state of the Laguna reservation following World War II. He reveals the treats facing the Pueblo's since World War II as well. Tayo, the main character a war veteran, is part White and part Native American. Not only does he struggle with his identity, but he also has to conquer and survive his mental state. His events in the war have traumatized him and you begin feeling for him as you get into the book. The book starts out very confusing, since it starts off with flashbacks. But as you begining to read on you understand what exactly is going on and see the unfair treatment that the Pueblo's are receiving. This book keeps you wanting to read more and gets you to develop feelings you never thought were there.

Ceremony, By Leslie Marmon Silko 261 Pages Price: $ 10.36 Published by Penguin Books 1977
In Ceremony Leslie Marmon Silko describes the different aspects of Native-American life and it's transition to being part of American society. We see how by being integrated in the military system during World War II Native-Americans were affected by the issues of how they were treated with respect when they wore the military uniform and with indifference when they didn't. We see how Tayo; a Native-American from the Laguna Pueblo returned from the war traumatized. His trauma was because of the horrors of war and the issue that he had left his family in order to go to the war. During this period of time his uncle died trying to maintain the family work and land from collapsing from the Drought. Tayo blames himself for this and is tormented by his uncle's death. He enters a search for healing and redemption; he struggles for the call of two different cultures because he is half-Indian and half-American. Tayo finds this healing among the old ways of his Native-American culture and he finds out that this is where he belongs. During this healing process Tayo finds action, adventure, love and deals with many of the problems that affects Native-American society.
Silko encourages us to see in Tayo the aspects of this transition and the internal struggle he has as a result of being half-Indian and half-American. This raises many questions for the reader: How does this heterogeneous mixture of cultures affect his relations with both worlds? Why when they wore the military uniforms were then seen as White Americans and were treated equally and when they returned home and removed the uniform they didn't? How does Tayo feel about the fact that he is half-Indian and half-American? How do his Native-American counterparts see him? What are his internal fears? Is he white or Indian? What does it means to be both? Silko takes us on a search for identity and in a quest for Home. Tayo is the new root of Native-Americans and he is fighting to find out who he is and where does he belongs.
Silko presents the different aspects of life, both positive and negative on a Native American reservation, such as alcoholism, unemployment, family traditions, connection to the land. We see many facets of the lives of Native-Americans and the myths, stories, rituals and beliefs of their culture. We see in the poems of the reading cultural aspects and beliefs, they are the essence of the Laguna Pueblo people interpretation of life. For Tayo they are the essence of his healing process, the road to his true home and cultural heritage.
This is a very intense reading because of the way the author shifts from reality to fantasy or subaltern states of Tayo's mind; present and past are also important factors in these shifts. The novel is kind of difficult to read but it is very interesting because the reader himself feels like he is part of the action of the novel. The poems are difficult to read but they give us a better understanding of Native-American culture and beliefs. If you like stories about a person's life and struggles and also like Indian culture and their life as part of a reservation this is a novel you may want to read.

I thought that "Ceremony", written by Leslie Marmon Silko, was a very good book. It told a story of a Native American and the life he returned to after coming home from World War II. The topic of Native Americans and the life they lived in the reservations is not a very populat topic in American History because it always seems to be over shadowed by things deemed more important. Tayo, the main character in this story, has several flash backs from the war and he is very sick when he returns home. Because he is half white he gets a lot of greif from some of the pure Indians that live on the reservation. Some of the flash backs include parts of his child hood which depict a poor life style in which he lived in, even after he went to live with his aunt. His flashbacks are worrying the others on the reservation and all the doctors that he sees are not able to cure him. His grandmother eventually calls an old medicine man to help Tayo. I would recommend this book to most reading levels.

"Ceremony" demonstrates how people seek freedom from alienation.That white people see Indians as inferior occupies the thinking of the Laguna community, and to see yourself as an American, young men decide to join the army as Tayo,Rocky, and Emo did. That joining the army will "Americanize" and free them from the misconceptions associated with Indians in Laguna. The army's promise of traveling around the world was also seen as "Freedom" as it is envisaged that the circle of inferiority would be broken. At one point, Emo had to pretend to be an Italian in his quest to date a white woman. Tayo's return from World War 11 and the traumatic experience, as well as Rocky's death during the war, are pointers to the fact that the freedom they were seeking was after all tragic and deceptive. Veterans discontent found roots in alcoholism, disgruntled life, and a sub-standard way of living.All these, represent a mockery of freedom. Tayo's psycholigical instability on his return to Laguna land after the war, and Auntie's racist undertones against her own people- Indians, are ample manifestations of false freedom, even when white people are not directly involved in the perpetuation of submisiveness and acceptance of inferiority by a minority group. The Laguna community and its dictates attest to this assertion. To free himself from inferiority and stereotypes, Tayo could not be healed through the very apparatus which he thought would have guaranteed his freedom.That did not heal him. In Betonie, a return to Laguna medicine practice ushered itself once again to the healing process - a return to tradition. That freedom did not help Tayo. Rather, it traumatized him - memories of war, and a disease Western medicine cannot heal. In effect, the run for freedom was not worthwhile - joining the army in the name of recognition did not yield the desired result.

Ceremony is a very descriptive and intriguing novel. Silko presents us various situations of the Laguna Indian's life and their struggle to determine their self-identity. The characters were chosen very wisely. Tayo, the main character, is an Indian who served in the war and witnessed the death of his cousin Rocky. The war and the death of his cousin have caused him an internal conflict that haunts him. While he tries to untie the knots in his mind, his family and friends think that he has gone crazy. He also has to deal with the shame of his mother's past and the hate of Emo, a war-vet who hnows him since childhood, who envies Tayo's white roots. The autor presents us various types of Indians. The Indian who denies his culture presented by Rocky. Harley characterizes the sterotype Indian who is always drunk and in troubles. Emo presents the Indian who wishes to be part of the white world. Silko also presents us Auntie, the racist Indian, who discriminates against her nephew Tayo because he is part white. Betonie characterizes the typical medicine man that is an important character in the Indian's culture. Silko presents us these situations throughout anecdotes and memories told by the characters. The author uses poerty to presents us various legends that are part of the Laguna Indian's culture. This provides us a mythical background or explanation of the situations that are occuring. The author changes frequently from present to past. This may confuse the reader but it does mantain you in suspense asking yourself what will happen next.

This can be a difficult to read as it is written in stream of consciousness format, but it parallels the quest of a young man, Tayo, and the history of the Laguna people. (They are Pueblo Indians located in New Mexico). The story takes place just after WWII when Tayo returns from Japan, he's lost the two people he's closest to: Rocky, his best friend, and Josiah, his father. Tayo has problems remembering things and is on a quest to remember his past, just as the Laguna people must also remember their past, and each must do this through traditional ceremonies that they must learn to adapt to the new ways of the world because of the presence of wickedness which threatens their traditional ways. For anyone who can appreciate stream of consciousness writing, and also has an appreciation for the Native American culture and history, this is an incredible, beautiful book.

BOOK REVIEW Ceremony By: Leslie Marmon Silko (Penguin Books, 1977. 262 pp.)
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony is a wonderful novel about how some people fight to rescue and preserve their culture. Tayo, the protagonist, is a young Native American who has come back home to Laguna Pueblo after participating in World War II. In this war the Japanese imprisoned he and his cousin Rocky but only Tayo escaped alive. Rocky was beaten until he died. Seeing his cousin die in front of him plus the traumatic experience of fighting a war that he doesn't understand affected him mentally and physically. The nightmares, the weakness, and to vomit at any time made him refuse the white people's cultural influence and begin healing process searching his cultural roots. After the war veteran Native Americans earned some kind of "respect" and equality with white people but Tayo learned this vanished when he removed the uniform. He wants to recover his religion, the relationship his people have with nature and everything that reinforces his cultural identity. For this purpose he starts a ceremonial process in which he may discover those things that are really important in life. Also he will discover that to survive cultural extinction each person must make changes and adapt to the new social environment without losing their cultural essence. This novel is a real ceremony that makes you be part of it. In some moments you can feel the suffering, anguish, and despair of the characters. Each part makes the reader live the situation from the mind and soul of Tayo, the protagonist. The themes developed in this book make me think of the way many people around the world are losing their culture and the importance of it. The great talent of Silko makes this novel a masterpiece. She uses innovative writing techniques that place this novel in high level. She also includes in this novel some Native religious elements that give a magical and mysterious atmosphere. For example, it is really interesting the way the author intercepts some poems through the novel. These poem are prayers and stories equivalent to Biblical tales. Each poem presents many situations that help to create the scenario and the mood for this narration. I consider this work as a perfect example of excellent writing. I think this book a magnificent and rewarding work, and Silko, as a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, has an excellent perception of the reality of her people. For this reason I proudly recommend this novel to every person who wanted to know other cultures and to those who wanted to find their cultural essence.
By: José Miguel Garcés Rivera/ Expository Writing (ENGL 3231)/ University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus

I read this book for my Intro to Fiction class and I'm glad that I did. This book by Leslie Marmon Silko opens your eyes to a new perspective. Leslie writes this book from the view of a Native American trying to re-adjust himself to the world after going through World War II. I would warn thought that the book can be difficult to read in parts, because the main character Tayo keeps having flashbacks.
Several of these flashbacks consist of his childhood and upbringing. Tayo is half Indian and half Mexican and this causes problems with not only the woman who raises him, but also the society around him. You also read of the horrors he goes through while he is fighting for his country and losing close loved ones around him.
This is a great book about the struggle of not only a man but of a Native American and I would recommend it. You should be prepared to struggle with parts but know that finishing "Ceremony" will be worth it.

Leslie Silko, through her intricate nonsense, tries to explain that all of the "white" people are evil. Such a silly argument, for such a silly novel. WHAT AN IGNORANT WAY TO ADDRESS THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY ("white people"), WHEN IT IS ETHNICALLY DIVERSE AMONG IT'S CITIZENS AND EARLY SETTLERS. And to choose a foolish character such as Tayo as a protagonist, when considering all the follies he experiences, is absolutely ridiculous.
The book is so choppy that you'll get lost while reading. It supposedly contains a "plot", however I don't find it as a linear plot like other novels. The reader will be more tangled with the flashbacks and mythical nonsense.
My final synopsis: THIS BOOK SUX. IT'S THEME IS BASICALLY: WHITE PEOPLE SUCK. Therefore, do the planet a favor and recycle the paper the book uses, for it such a shameful waste. White people are bad?....baahh

Tina and Sarah would just like to say that this novel is a frustration to all those in search of a correspondingly good book review, because we feel that Marlene is the sole reputable source from which we access information. The novel was a "rare find," as so many other fine scholars on this website have noted. We hope that someone desperately searching for a decent review will read this, and realize it is yet another bad one. Take care, good luck, and good night.

...
"Ceremony" is a wonderful, well-written novel that deals with the dis-integration of a particular culture and cosmology in the context of a larger, global disintegration: the second world war and its repercussions. Tayo, the protagonist, is a "half-breed", and his journey towards re-integration involves rediscovering his people's ceremonies. This journey itself is a ceremony, a process that necessarily changes with time. Tayo is completely lost at the onset of the novel, and begins to find himself as it progresses. The structure of the novel reflects this beautifully: "Ceremony" starts off disjointed, with frequent changes in time, and gradually becomes fixed in the present.
This book inspired a good deal of hope in me, hope that the disjointedness of our "modern" world can be mended, and that it is a worthwhile process to attempt (just as reading this book is.)

The structure of this novel may put off some readers--there are many flashbacks, and pieces of short, traditional stories are woven into the main narrative. And there is much in the first half of the book that is painful. But as the novel progresses, as the reader becomes part of the ceremony, something remarkable happens--pieces fit into place as healing becomes sickness. A wonderful, gentle novel--very different from Silko's ALMANAC OF THE DEAD.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

It's about death., October 19, 2003

Reviewer: Charity Kendall (Fenton, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews

The point of the book is that an individual Indian sees himself not as individual like the people in white society but as a member of a people. The main character could not define himself as psychologically distinct from his culture. He was sad because of what he saw in war but he could only define this sadness in terms of how Indians saw the death of humanity. The only thing that brought the main character out of his shell shocked vomiting state of mind was a story about how it was the Indian culture itself that set the evil destroying white culture against it through witchcraft. The story came from a medicine man and it empowered the Indian. Either way everything around the Indian spelled disaster because destroying white society had defeated the Indians. His life was empty and the world is doomed. This is not romantic or uplifting, only sad.

Book Review I think that the book was one of the most, well written books that I have ever read. The book includes a somewhat of a poem writing style. I found the writing style pretty difficult to understand when I started to read it. However as I kept reading it I either got used to the writing style or the books writing came to be easier and not so complex. With this happening it became easier to comprehend what was going on in the story.
For never having read a story such as this and not particularly liking the reading that this book included in the past I did on the other hand enjoy it the beginning of the book was a very slow start, but in my opinion I thought that the book came to be more and more interesting as I read on. When I started reading this book, I started reading it with no one referring it to me or prior knowledge of the book or any of Leslie Silkos writings.
After reading the back of the book, I thought that the book sounded interesting. But as I read through it, I found that the book was a lot more than interesting. I think that there are some very boring and slow parts in the book that you may not want to put the book down and say "where is this going". There are also parts that hold your attention and you don't know what may happen next or wonder what is going to happen to whomever in the book.
If you don't like books with hard-to-understand writings included in it, this book may not be something that you would like to purchase or read. I know in my opinion, I found the book pretty enjoyable for not really liking the type or reading that Silko used in this book. But I'm not sure if all of her books are written with this style of writing. If it is you would probably enjoy this book a lot.

Ceremony by Lelsie Marmon Silko was a pretty good book. I have not read book about United States History from a Native Americans piont of view, and now that i have, i have a lot of sympathy for those people that lived during that time. When studying US history we typically look at the Americans stand piont i thought it was interesting to see if at another angle. Tayo was a very bold character and i really enjoyed seeing his situation progress, and liked watching his life unfold the it did. I thought the book made a lot of sense and although it had a dark, morbid tone at first it really came to be an uplifting sort of story. Silko did a great job describing life on an Indian reservation after WWII. Reading of Tayos both physical, and spiritual journey made for a great book, and i would recommend this story to any high school, or college english, or history class.

If you are a reader that tries to read with an open mind, the power of "Ceremony"will simply overwhelm you. The novel opens up a world that is almost completely unknown to the mainstream Euro-American perspective. It is a world of American Indian wisdom that has been maligned, and misrepresented for way too long.
On a personal note, this book took me out of the comfort zone that is so guarded cherished by American whites. A white male myself, I too bought the fantasy that nothing exists outside of our middle class life of cars, houses and jobs, and if something does exist, it is "tragic" and not noteworthy. Leslie Silko challenged this assumption in such an amazingly eloquent fashion that I can't help but to be in awe every time that I think about it.
While the book makes us uncomfortable, (since it breaks our almost sacred concepts and beliefs) it does not concentrate on increasing the whites' guilt on "how horrible we treated the Indians. "Guilt, however great, leaves us the option of thinking 'Our creations are superior, but we shouldn't have treated these poor stupid people badly anyway.' But it is instead the western-minded readers that are poor/stupid in this book in comparison to Indian wisdom, and that's something that you should be prepared to deal with.
After reading "The Ceremony" my life will literally never be the same, for I am now able to look at things around me in a new stunningly amazing light. If you are the type of person that likes to try and put pride and the presumptions of centuries aside, this is absolutely THE BOOK for you to read. But if you are not prepared to say (at least for the purpose of reading) that our western beliefs are not superior to beliefs of other cultures, this book will do little but infuriate you.

Yes, I too had to read this for school, but surprisingly it was a very good book. It was definitely a struggle, and I wouldn't say that it was boring because it wasn't, but it is one of those books that you must take in little peices, say twenty pages at a time. It changed the way I look at Native Americans; or rather, it made me start looking at the Native Americans around me. There is a lot of meaning and beauty in Silko's writing, and I highly reccommend this book.

In the book Ceremony, Tayo is a young Native American who is returning home to the Laguna Pueblo reservation after being held captive by the Japanese during World War II. Tayo deals with needing to find a solution to cure himself from the horrors of being held captive. Tayo is traumatized by many things, including being ordered to shoot a crowd of Japanese soldiers and watching his cousin Rocky die, driving Tayo out of his mind. After staying in a Veterans' Hospital for a while he returns to his home, with his Grandmother, his Auntie, and her husband Robert. He returns to the family that raised him after his mother left him at the age of four, giving birth to him by an unknown white man. He suffered the kind of trauma that left it hard for him to have the motivation to survive.

What made it even more difficult for him was the fact that other soldiers found comfort in drinking and mindless violence. Tayo needed to search for another kind of way to find comfort and resolution. He finds himself on a journey leading him back to the Indian history and its customs, from its beliefs about witchcraft and evil to the ancient stories of his people. In his search he finds a sense of healing, undergoing a kind of ceremony that overpowers the most dangerous of sufferings and misery. Ku'oosh performs for Tayo a ceremony for warriors who have killed others in battle. However, both Ku'oosh and Tayo fear that the ancient ceremonies are not going to be the solution to Tayo's mental anguish. Tayo is helped but not cured by Ku'oosh's ceremony. Tayo continues his journey of healing and peace through the help of Ku'oosh and the medicine man, Betonie, until he finds what he's looking for.

I definitely recommend this book, the quality of Silko's writing is very brilliant in a way that she interweaves the individual stories of Tayo and his people. She includes poems that tell old yet fascinating stories, as Tayo's quest unfolds. You really get into the kind of mental anguish that a veteran goes through after their experience being in a war and what they often have to deal with once they come home. Silko draws out her personal experience as a Native American in this story. She also uses the art of storytelling, a tradition of giving the present awareness of the past.

Native American storytelling assures that each version will slightly be changed and modernized for better understanding. Moreover, Silko goes to a certain depth in which she talks about the history of the Natives, giving forth the realizations of the sufferings that they had to go through when the foreigners came and invaded their lands. Through this reading, the readers are given a sense of the author's opinion about her concern in preserving the Natives American culture, its traditions, natural resources, and language, with a combination of awareness and reality of its history under the whites. Silko, herself is also of mixed ancestry, she doesn't blame the whites wholly, she also voices out the mistakes of the Native American people as well. She reprimands the people who continue to hold a tight grudge on the past, and talks about the need to accept the changes that have occurred in order to survive as a people and community.

There weren't really too many women's issues in the book, but what stood out was the trivialization of power through the character of Auntie, Tayo's aunt. Thelma is one of the negative characters in the book, who follows the Native American tradition in a damaging manner. Auntie misinterprets both the Native American and the Christian tradition and as a result it clashes both cultures and ends up affecting all the characters. Auntie is next in line to be the matriarch of the family. She feels that she must take on this responsibility to the community and set a good example to everyone. Thelma feels that she must also be the one to protect her family name and avoid bad gossip that can ruin it, to give merit to the position she is soon to have. For her, she feels that in order to gain the respect or her peers she must suffer the sins of others, a complete misunderstanding of her responsibility to her clan. In the Native American culture women have a voice and they have power, yet they carry a great deal of responsibility to their clan.

A classic in Native American literature, Ceremony tells the story of Tayo, a young Native man who returns from W.W.II with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Silko's masterful writing interweaves the personal, social and societal causes for Tayo's illness with traditional Native legends and cures. Beautiful, inspiring and very harsh. Like Tayo's life. A stellar book. I have a list of study questions our Book Review used in examining this book. E mail me if you want them.

When I first read Ceremony, I was a little surprised at the strong imagery and plain language. I got the impression that Silko was writing an accusation of white people in general, and the reviews I found here seemed to support that. It wasn't until I read the book again that I realized we are not so much being told a story as being allowed to share Tayo's mind with him as he went through a difficult period in his life. The words in this book are Tayo's thoughts, not a parable by Silko. Naturally he would see life from an extremely slanted point of view, having come in contact with the most opportunistic, prejudiced side of white society. What reason would he have to believe any of them were otherwise?
Keeping this in mind, I rather enjoyed seeing Tayo's progression from confused ex-soldier to whole person, and though I don't agree with some of the sentiments expressed in the book, I believe it was definately worth a serious reader's time.

I enjoyed reading 'The Ceremony' because the book brought to light issues of the Native American in today's world and how they used their own rituals and ceremonies to get back to their center. It was a good read. Thank you.

While reading "The Ceremony" by Leslie Marion Silko, you are unable to deny the feeling of seeing the world through someone elses eyes. The main character in the book is part white and part Indian, this makes it a story that is cultured and diverse. Silko uses flashabck in her story to explain why characters in the novel behave the way they do, and this can cuase confusion, but in the end, you can understand why she used that literary element in her novel. Silko writing about the time after war and how it effected different cultures is an amazing way to show readers that there is a life outside your own, and it takes a great narrative for one to grasp that. I loved the book and I would recimmend it to anyone interested in a mind-altering experience.

Using poetry, myth, and engaging prose, Leslie Marmon Silko weaves an intricate web that takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery with her protagonist, Tayo. Through his relationships to a beloved Uncle, a spirit woman, an older woman of great experience, and a somewhat unconventional Shaman, Tayo comes to a deep spiritual awareness of the connections of all things. He is part of the web, the pattern. The stories of his ancestors belong to the stories of today. The faces of the Asian soldiers in war and the faces of his friends and family are the same.
Milan Kundera talks about the modern novel as an art form which pulls together various strands of ideas, various types of storytelling, and weaves them all together into a cohesive whole. Leslie Marmon Silko is an expert at the art.

I have just finished reading Leslie Silko's novel Ceremony. Now, dont get me wrong. Mrs. Silko is an excellent authoress and a credit to her genre. However, Ceremony isn't my favorite book by a longshot. Set in the Laguna Reservation in the late forties, Ceremony is a story about a young Laguna man of mixed heritage who comes back from World War Two with shell shock. He spends some time in a veteran's hispital only to be sent home far from being cured (if one can ever really be cured from shell shock). While he is at home, his condition continues to get worse until he meets an old medicine man named Betonie. The old man tells him what he's really fighting and experiencing is the evil that the ancient witches realesed onto humanity. The largest curse that they sent being the white man. Tayo (the young veteran) has lost a cousin and an uncle: one in the war, the other at home. His heartsickness could only be cured with a healthy ceremony. One, Betonie tells him, that must blend the old ways of fighting the evil with the new. Eventually, Tayo is able to overcome his sickness and live a fairly normal life in the knowledge that there is evil out there. but there is goodness, too. Silko draws heavily on racism and inequality as heavy themes in her novel.\

In fact, this is one of the points that she critizes Louise Erdrich on. Silko claims that Erdrich painted a picture of Native AMerican life that was never real, that Erdrich is naive. It isn't hard to see a possible political agenda seeping through nearly every page of Silko's work, something conspicously absent in erdrich's work. What exactly is wrong with literature for literature's sake. Must everything have a moral and be filled with allegory?

Tayo is a half-white Laguna Indian suffering from the after-effects of his experiences in WWII. When he returns home, he is unable to find his place among his old friends or his family. Over time and with the help of a medicine man Tayo discovers his connection to the land and to ancient rituals. I liked the interspersed myths/poems (which are mixed into the narrative), but the landscape descriptions became tedious over time for me.

The sample is useless. The foreward and introduction are so long, that you finish the "sample" before even one page, one word, of the actual novel. Having said that, the author's foreward was insightful for me, a writer myself. I connected with her "false starts" and the way her environment and characters affected her.

I dont know if it was because I was stuck reading this book over my summer break for school, or if it was the medley of references to vomit and drunkards, but this book plainly does nothing for the concept of entertainment. Because of the never-ending discriptions of insignifigant things such as snakes, I found myself dreading the next page. I would not recommend this book to ANYONE! Unfortunatly I had to read this book for school, so i could not just throw it into the fire like i wanted to!!!

Ceremony was arguably the most frustratingly vague, indirect and confusing book I have ever read. By jumping between present, flashbacks, back again, and so on every couple of pages, it becomes nigh impossible to discern what is going on. This deliberate obfuscation of the plot was a huge irritation that distracted me from the otherwise rather good writing, at least for the first two thirds of the book. The final 80 pages were poorly written, dragging out the events of...nothing. I cannot for the life of me recall anything of significance that happened in the endless walls of text that preceded Ceremony's thoroughly disappointing ending. The plot peaked early, and never resolved. I would not suggest this book to anyone looking for a good read, though it is overripe with symbolism and has wonderful messages, and I found watching Tayo recover from his emotional problems fascinating.

I thought that this book was interesting. The storyline held my attention throughout the entire book. Tayo's physical and spiritual journey helped him become a stronger person and regain his sanity and stability in the reservation after returning from World War II.
I enjoyed reading this book because you never hear about what it was like on the reservations from an Indians point of view. I thought that Silko did an excellent job describing life on the reservations and how difficult it was for the Indians to adjust to life after the war.

Ceremony, overall, was a pretty good book. It was quite educational even, having known little about Native American culture prior to reading it. Silko writes of the hard times Native Americans went through after WWII, their trouble on the reservations, alcoholism, etc. Tayo, the main character, struggled throughout the novel with a sort of post-war depression. It also dicussed the Native American view of White people, which I found quite intersting. This book was slightly confusing because it jumped around in terms of time period, but as the book continued it was less noticable. Overall, this a good read.

I have loved this book ever since I first read it, and it is

near the top of my list of great books. Silko manages time

in such a fabulous way, jumping back and forth among three

specific periods in Tayo's (main character) life as he

struggles to overcome the sort of existential dilemma

Sartre explored in "Nausea." Silko addresses the fundamental

danger in placing too much power in the hands of others

as a means for deciding identity. Although this is

first and foremost a Laguna Pueblo story, and that warning

carries that strong racial/cultural dimension, it is

at heart a human story. Ceremony ultimately does what

great writing does: takes a specific person from a

specific point in time, and through exploring those

specifics, discovers essential truths that transcend

those specifics.

Follow Tayo as he searches his traditions and his past for something missing from his life and vitally important to recover: a sense of ceremony. A study in how the rituals we do not live have a habit of living us.

I needed to read this for a class in desert lit, and I found the book to be difficult. Not because of the non-linier format but because of the authors style. Stylistically, she has much to say and needs to say it. This book was easy to put down!

I ordered this book for a summer reading project I had to do for high school. I thought about buying hardcover, but I know from experience that paperbacks are overall better when it comes to school use. I ordered the book and to my suprise it came days early. It was packed very neatly and there were no folds or tears. Overall I would say that this is a great product to buy!

I recently had to read this story for my English class, and wasn't too excited about getting started. However, once I began, I couldn't put it down. The powerful narration, the changing settings, and Indian legends combine to create a riveting and enthralling story about self-discovery and the nature of the world. Truly, an incredible novel for anyone willing to contribute a significant amount of thought while reading it.

I read this book years ago in college, and still find myself re-reading it periodically. It's brilliantly written--while putting you very much in Tayo's mind, it also gives the aura of being seen from a far-away, benign presence. I can't explain it, because I could never write like Silko, but it's a book that makes ugly realities beautiful.

This book is awful. I had to read it for an American Literature class and I could barely make it through it. Maybe white people are devils but she could have expressed these thoughts more creatively. This book sucks-try again Leslie.

I hate this book with everything I have. This was the absolute worst book I have EVER read. Maybe that's why I put off reviewing this book for so long. I just don't want to ever have to pick up this book again, let alone revisit it. Let's just say the day I turned this book in, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted of my shoulders. I was so sick of reading this and as soon as I had taken the final test on it, I dropped it and never finished. I can't remember hating a book this much ever - it was that bad. So I'm not going to write a fully professional review, just a bullet point list and explanation as to why. I just don't want to relive this ever again.

◉The non-linear plot line -
Horrid, just horrid. Maybe it's just my OCD but this made it so hard to follow and figure out.

◉Want to get something deep from this book? -
Have fun trying. You'll either learn about how Tayo goes to the bathroom or that white people suck. Or at least that's all the book talks about. White people did this, white people did that. White people, white people, white people, white people. Ugh.

◉More on that:
Want to remember the plot or what is attempting to be one? Have fun with that after the 20+ pages about cows or whatever. I'm not kidding. It's pretty much that long.

I just don't think I can talk about this anymore. I hate this book so much.

Please do yourself a huge favor and never read this.

I just finished reading Ceremony for a book project in my AP English class. I really enjoyed the book and it definitely made me view some things differently. The language is easy to understand and quite blunt in places, which I feel adds to the power of the novel. I think that anyone with a remote interest in Native American culture should read it.

This is an excellant book for all those book worms out there that love to take the time to analyze every single word that they read. For the average reader that enjoys books for fun and pleasure I would not recommend this confusing book. It continually skips to different time periods and settings all throughout the story. As soon as you start to understand what is going on, Silko tricks you by going back in time. I do believe that there is an interesting message to be found but I think Silko could have done a better job keeping her readers hooked.

This book describes in tedious detail the many problems of a young Native American named Tayo. Even though Tayo faces such obstacles as shell shock and alcoholism, I felt no sympathy for him as I desperately waited for the book to be over. I think that Silko is meaning to addess the problems that Native Americans face, but she does so by accusing whites of being "devils" and "evil spirits" whose only goal in life is to ruin the Native Americans. My final opinion of this book is that Tayo is too pathetic to be the protagonist of an entire novel.

I'm not a big fan of this novel; I feel like instead of using specific character experiences to mold its unique story, it really capitalizes upon the context of the story. Its setting, native american reservation post WW2, is certainly a fertile ground for all sorts of social commentaries.

However, the tone of the novel is set mostly by the main character's incessant depression and post traumatic stress; you can't blame a war veteran for being traumatized, but this tone makes everything slightly noticeable in the novel of great exaggerated importance because, hell, it could somehow refer to war or the suboridination of the native americans.

All of the action in this book occurs before you open the first page. We get glimpses of Tayo's life in the war, which would have probably made for a much more interesting, revealing, enlightening, and emotional book. I feel like this novel is very dry and not of much consequence.\

If you're not being forced to read this book through school, then don't waste your time. After pages and pages of non-events occuring in the desert wasteland, you'll wonder what made you pick it up in the first place.

If you're suffering from ensomnia, I highly reccomend Ceremony. If not, avoid it altogether. The book makes no sense at all. It jumps back and forth in time and expects you to follow. It has no chapters and no clear plot. I only read it because it was required for a class. Why this book is considered so good is beyond me. Tayo, the main character, spends the majority of the book puking, and the rest of the characters are just stupid. I give it two thumbs WAY down

This book is not worth the paper it is printed on. It has no plot, no structure, and no merit. The author makes sweeping generalities while trying to combat those same generalities which are against Indians. Avoid this book at all costs.

If you haven't read it, you should, and if you did read it and didn't like it, you didn't understand it. We see ourselves as masters of our destiny, but we are a part of the greater whole, a part of the cycle and our world. This book is about what we have become and what it is doing to us, how we are killing ourselves to save ourselves. A must read for everyone! Read it slowly and figure it out, it will be well worth the effort!

I read this book for a class, so I had to read it. It was okay. I think the book was good, but it just took me too long to get through. It was interesting, but not a book I would read on my own. It wasn't hard to get through either, it just seemed a little overdone, until I finally got to understand the book and meanings in it.

I needed to read this book in my college English class. Needless to say, I found it very difficult to follow and did not enjoy it. In order to write my papers, I had to use Sparknotes. Even using this resource to understand the book was difficult. The class wasn't engaged in class when we discussed this book because everyone was having trouble following it. It was a very disappointing English class.

While reading the 1-star reviews, I noticed that all of them just generalized the book as "stupid", "waste of time", "retarded", "I would rather shoot my toe off", etc.
Now, while I fully agree with those statements, they hold little merit as they provide no real fundamental explanation behind their hatred; or at least, none that can be interpreted on a literary level.

Ceremony is an unconventional novel employing many unconventional literary tools and devices. I will take an example which fellow readers complain about: the abrupt change of tenses and time. Non-linear plot lines aren't awfully uncommon, but in this case Silko actually uses it as a witty cultural mirror that reflects a Native American's perception of time.
In an interview she gave (in which she was quite hazy and inarticulate, by the way--Peyote?), she stated that "time is like an ocean" and in the eyes of a Native American, "what happened 500 years ago is the same as the present," (i.e. the spider web connection). However, instead of blatantly forcing this belief on the reader, she presents the idea in a clever manner by actually implementing this outlook in the timeline. I will give her that.
BUT!
The reader has to keep in mind that this is merely a tool the author uses and regardless of how astute it may seem, if it compromises the novel itself, it should still be critically scrutinized. And how it did. There were parts of the novel where it was nearly impossible to locate on a timeline or fit into the story. The same thing happened with some random characters: Silko will suddenly start developing the backstory of a minor character, and it seemed like it was going somewhere but it just wandered off and didn't connect with anything.

This become a pattern with Silko's themes and symbols; the concept and tools are interesting and new but they don't add anything to the novel. Another key example is Tayo, our mysterious protagonist. Personally I feel like I had no idea who he was or is. He really did seem like "white smoke" rather than an entity--but christ, you can't form a novel around that!
I could not connect with him on any kind of level because Silko did not allow for it. Rather, she built his character through, for example, the description of the landscape or nature. Once again, this is an interesting concept and most likely reflects the Native American culture but does not make for quality literature. The amount of times he vomited or cried was the closest indicator the reader has to Tayo. When he cried, I understood the unstated reasons, but I could care less because Silko left him isolated from the reader and no sympathy was developed (I was almost glad). As another reviewer so articulately put, "The whole time I wished Tayo would come to life and try to kill me with a beer bottle."- MM.

I read this book with my senior IB class and we (students and our 2 English teachers) were all assigned specific symbols or motifs to track. Symbols are used in literature to carry across a point and give the novel a deeper significance. In Ceremony, it simply became a nuisance. For example: the colors, oh god, the colors.
It is obvious that Silko implemented colors with symbolic intentions as her pages are littered with them. Let's take blue. The woman Tayo shags had the blue door, blue shawl, etc. But blue is used EVERYWHERE in the novel and it was impossible to distinguish when it was significant or not. You can't, however, say that any of the symbolic meanings of the colors contradict them self because they were never clearly defined. This is the whole feel on the book: vague and ambiguous. I finally gave up trying to figure out the colors and their many uses mean and asked my English teacher. Her reply was along the lines of: Silko often describes nature and blue, of course, is pre-dominant there, so sometimes her imagery and symbolism overlap. Our English teacher is probably one of the best I have had in my high school career but here I disagree: the author has a responsibility to the reader to at least be clear and consistent in what she puts forth.

I understand why this book was part of the IB curriculum and that it is always worthwhile to reach beyond the borders of your own culture/comfort zone and try to see different viewpoints of different cultures in order to become more open minded yourself. But I feel that Silko did an awful job of advocating for the part of Native Americans. Her intentions feel sincere but the product lacking.
Imagine her sitting around a campfire on a reservation with her fellow Indians giving a "book reading". I would bet my grandmother's tombstone that everyone would either fall asleep from her 3 page-long, mundane descriptions of imagery or they would just become frustrated and throw glowing coal at her. I don't believe that this is the format in which Native Americans share their stories--besides the interwoven poetry which I will grant as a beam of light (it's interesting to note because the novel strongly promotes the importance of stories in their culture).

I have listened to university professor's lectures on the book on youtube and their analysis of the novel, but I don't buy it. It seems to me the emperor's new clothing.
But don't take my word for it, flip through the pages and see for yourself. I especially recommend trying to read it on a Sunday night when you want to fall into a deep sleep, free of any coherent thoughts.

There was no story line and I felt that Tayo was a flat character. I was unable to really understand where the story was going and I'm sorry,but the people who say it was life changing are full of crap! If it was really that life changing then sweety you have no life. This book should have never been published and Leslie should really stop writing. This book has proven that Leslie has no skill and that she really should'nt be writing while being depressed. Her story truly reflected the sad state she was in. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just being honest.

I am one of the unfortunate persons who had to read this abomination in my Senior Comp class in High School, which was taught by one of those hippie teachers who was white, overly liberal, and somehow thought she was a Native American. The book holds the title of "Worst Book I Ever Read." It is about these Native Americans who come back from WWII and decide that the best ways to cope with the trauma of war are drinking, beating each other up, and having sexual intercourse with cheap hookers. Except one guy, Tayo, decides that he should go smoke peyote with some medicine man, which is better than what his buddies do nonetheless. Well, the moral of the story is: white man bad, Indian good. At least that is what my teacher said. Not that I don't feel horrible about the way the U.S. government treated these people, but for God's sake, we aren't going to win the hearts of SUV driving suburbanites with nonsensical bass-ackward books such as this. The only thing that caught my attention was the portrayal of the atom bomb test on these poor people's land. Otherwise, the book - with its flashbacks, flashforwards, and flashsideways and upside downs - made no sense whatsoever.