Ceremony

The novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is actually an assigned reading that I had to do for my Native American Literature class in college. It is defiantly a different type of book and one that raised a lot of questions for me about the type American Indian.

The novel is a third person presentation of the mind of Tayo, a World War II vet who was able to finally return home from the Pacific Theater after the war was over. However, do to the loss of his cousin and uncle in the war suffers from "battle fatigue" or more commonly known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He has a hard time dealing with his PTSD and the family matters that accrued from before and after the war.

In trying to cope with what is happening, Tayo is instructed by his grandmother to go see a medicine man to see if he could be healed that way--the white Army doctors were able to help him stop feeling like "white smoke" and invisible, but they haven't been able to help out much more than that. He goes to two medicine men and they end up helping him through the ceremonies and stories they provide.

Tayo's presentation of the world is extremely skewed. This novel is the definition of a non-reliable narrator. The narration of the novel constantly jumps back and forth in time, so much so that it is disorienting and rather confusing.  His flashbacks can last anywhere from a small paragraph of five sentences to pages. There are also no chapters, just paragraph and page breaks to separate what is happening to our narrator. 

This book, in my opinion, is good for anyone who is looking for insight into the life of any vet who suffered from PTSD as well as a look into the traditions of the American Indian. Some people may think that Silko is simply portraying a stereotype of drunk Indians who have nothing better to do with their time, but she says in her preface that she saw many of the vets that returned from the war act the way that many of Tayo's friends do. They go to bars to get drunk and to "remember the good old days" when the white women would throw themselves at them because of the uniform they wore. 

Over all, it was an interesting read. One that opened my eyes to the culture that I had never known before. One of my classmates, who is Navajo, said that it was a fairly accurate depiction. He had been to a few of the places mentioned in the book (Gallup in particular) and said that the world portrayed in the novel was very accurate--which is really scary sometimes. I particularly found the story of how whites came to be as eye opening. 

I would recommend this book to someone who was looking for more information about the Indian people, or who were looking for information about PTSD and how it effects the people who have it.