Ceremony by Silko

Ceremony / Leslie Marmon Silko
NY: Random House, 1986, c1977.
262 p.

It's hard to know what to say about this classic novel. It's powerful and striking, and yet I know I didn't really understand all of it. The final pages are something I'd have to reread a few times to grasp the ending, I think. 

The story is non-linear, moving back and forth in the main character Tayo's life and experience; it also moves back to legend and storytelling in brief interludes, and has other characters sharing the past and the mythologies of the Pueblo people. You can feel the power in the storytelling even when you aren't getting it all, nevertheless. 

Tayo is only partly Pueblo, so he's held at a distance from those in his community and his own family. He's "Indian" enough to be discriminated against in the wider world, though. He has just returned home from serving in WWII, where he survived the Bataan Death March although his cousin and best friend Rocky did not. The guilt and the post traumatic stress is destroying his life, and the treatment he received from army doctors hasn't really helped. 

He is led to undergo traditional ceremony as a way to heal him and merge his fractured sense of self. Betonie, a traditional medicine man, explains the witchery of the world to him, and Tayo begins to understand his delusions, realizing that he wasn't crazy, just seeing all the world without boundaries. To create a boundary for his self is to return to regular living again. 

The book's format, with poetry and legend breaking into the more narrative chapters, reflects the theme of the story as well. The underpinning of myth and spirit underlays normal life just as it does the more 'normal' chapters of the book. 

Silko's theme of the interconnectedness of all the world, people, nature, animals, spirit, is drawn poetically and is the final 'meaning of life' such as it is. 

While Tayo is a fragment in a larger net of life, he is also a particular person in a particular setting with a particular identity. Balancing both of these truths is what brings him back to himself. 

It's an unsettling read, partly due to the violence of war that is described, and partly due to the big ideas of life and spirit. Despite the fact that the structure and style is somewhat unsettling as well, and I didn't feel I fully grasped all the shades of what Silko is trying to represent, this story is a world of its own that you can feel the energy of while you read. It's a classic which will continually open itself to new and repeated readings and meanings.