Response Piece - Silko & Benedict

Response Piece - Silko & Benedict

As noted in the response by Janet Tallman, there are three main themes concerning Ruth Benedict's ethnography of Pueblo culture, Patterns of Culture, and Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony. Both detail the importance of matrilineage, harmony and balance versus change, and ceremonies to the Pueblo Indians. It is important to note that Silko gives the reader a first-hand perspective of this lifestyle (she was raised in the Laguna Pueblo Reservation), while Benedict's book is written from a third-person point of view. Because of this, it was fairly easy to see how much of the actual culture was overlooked or misinterpreted in Benedict's work. While the above-mentioned themes about Pueblo Indians were indeed mentioned in her book, Ceremony allows the reader comes away with a better understanding of why they lived as they lived, and how their lifestyle choices impacted every decision they made. As in my first assignment, my interpretation of the books was that Silko's was from a much more personal perspective; a luxury provided because her book is to be enjoyed as a fictional novel instead of an academic text.

Set against the backdrop of post-WWII reservation life, the struggles of the Laguna Pueblo culture to maintain its identity while adjusting to the realities of modern day life are even more pronounced in Ceremony. Silko uses a wide range of characters in order to give a voice to as many representatives of her tribe as possible. The main character, Tayo, is the person with whom the reader is more than likely to relate. The story opens with him reliving various phases of his life in flashbacks, and through them, the reader shares his inability to discern reality from delusion, past from present and right from wrong. His days are clouded by his post-war sickness, guilt for being the one to survive while his cousin Rocky is slain, and his inability to cope neither with life on the reservation or in the outside world. He is one of several representations of the beginnings of the Laguna Pueblo youth interacting with modern American culture.

Tayo's aunt (Auntie) is the personification of the Pueblo culture's staunch opposition to change. She is bound to her life and the people around her; more so because of the various "disgraces" brought upon her family by her nephew Tayo being a "half-breed", her brother Josiah's love affair with a Mexican woman and her younger sister abandoning the tribe to live amongst the white man. The reader can see how she feels forced to abide by unspoken rules established by her tribe, and Silko emphasizes in her how one person's disgrace shames every person with whom they are connected. As the eldest daughter in her family, it is her duty to tend the household, took after her mother, and to raise Tayo after he was abandoned by his mother at a young age.

In contrast to her strict adherence to Pueblo life, she is also a devout Christian. At several times in the story there are references to her polishing her church shoes with great care, or reading out of her large black bible. In Benedict's ethnography, this would be as result of the culture selecting from among the possible traits in the surrounding region those traits which it could use, and discarding those which it could not (Chapter 3). Her husband Robert represents the role of husband and provider in their matrilineal culture -"he was patient with [their family] because he had nothing to say. The sheep, the horses, and the fields - everything belonged to them, including the good family name (pg. 32)." The only man who was able to assert himself in the family by right is the eldest son, Josiah.

Auntie and Robert's son Rocky is the representation of Indian youth fully embracing American culture. In another contrast to her set ways, Auntie sees her son as the one way her family will gain respect with the Laguna people again. She sends him to boarding school to learn Western ways, and is proud of his embrace of science instead of Pueblo rituals and ceremonies. When he disrespects the household elders while attempting to disprove traditional stories with scientific facts, Auntie pretends to not hear the conversation. He refuses to partake in ceremonial dressings of slain deer, he plays football instead of tending the cattle with his uncle, and is so eager to leave the reservation he hastily enlists in the Army to expedite his departure.

Rocky gives the reader a strong character to contrast with Tayo, who is neither encouraged nor allowed to be bold enough to determine his life's path without consulting the family or tribe. Though raised in the same household as Rocky, he tended to believe in the "old ways" more than his cousin. Much of his struggle came from attempting to reconcile the lessons he learned in boarding school with the realities he saw in his day to day life. While he could recall times when his teachers gave hard evidence to contrast with Pueblo stories, there were many things he saw in his life that gave them (the stories) much weight.

Tayo's mother, represented in third-story accounts by the narrator, gives the reader a chance to see the emerging impact of white culture on young Indian women. Unlike her older sister, she was sent to an Indian school taught by white people. There she was taught to be ashamed of her culture and to shun the ways of her people and she began to revolt against her traditions. Caught between two worlds, she was taught to hate herself and her lineage and to be excited and flattered when she was acknowledged by those in the white community. At the same time she hated the white culture for talking about the peculiarities of her people, and "the feelings of shame, at her own people and at the white people grew inside her...like monstrous twins that would have to be left in the hills to die (pg. 69)." Or drowned in cheap wine and whiskey.

Also providing contrasts to Tayo's sensitive, almost fragile character are his peers Leroy, Harley and Emo. These men represent the disillusioned Pueblo youth and the bitterness of the tribes towards the white man. When they were in the war, they were elevated to a social level they had never experienced. They were noticed, respected and even appreciated as part of American society. However, as soon as the war ended they fell back to their secondary level in society, and the transition was not easy for any of them. While Tayo vomited and had hallucinations from his experience, these men chose to spend their days getting drunk and recounting the short-lived enjoyment of loose white women and non-reservation life. A brief character in the novel, the young Ute woman Helen Jean, was a female perspective of the despair felt by Pueblo youth. She left her home in order to make