The Significance of Myth in the Novel Ceremony

Many people in our culture misunderstand the go forward of invention. We usu each(prenominal)y assume that there are two kinds of narrative, consummately several(predicate) from one other a journalistic compilation of facts, wholly literally true and verifiable, or stories spun by a prevarication writer for the utilisation of entertainment only. Myth, we assume, falls resoundingly into the latter group. While primitive and irrational people may have once believed that the sun was pulled across the flick by a chariot, we in our infinite scientific wisdom realize that is non the reason that the sun appears to move in the sky when viewed from earth.Therefore, the figment is written off purely as a subject area of fiction and fantasy. Indigenous peoples finishedout the world, however, look at their allegorys and folktales in quite a nonher way. They recognize in them an explanation, not for the way physical science kit and boodle or tarradiddle occurred, entirely for the way their culture feels about itself. For natural Americans, these stories concern the universe and the spiritual domain. They are didactic because they teach the hi composition of the people, how to live, and how to survive.According to Paula Gunn Allen, myth is a story of vision a fomite of transmission of sharing and renewal. It connects the past with the present. Myths show us that it is possible to look up ourselves to the grand and mysterious universe that surrounds and in take a leaks our existencesThe mythic heals, it makes us whole (Allen, 116-17). Myths rationalize by analogy concepts that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain literally. They do so in a way that bypasses the conscious, analytical mind and heads straight for the rawness (technically, the unconscious).Folklorist Carol Mitchell explains that Silkos use of the Laguna creation myth at the extraction of Ceremony, it recreates the power and the magazine of creation. The cosmic creati on is the exemplary archetype of all life, and hopes that it will restore the patient, Tayo (Mitchell, 34). Mitchell also believes that the use of this myth is a spiritual means by which the novelist is inspired in her creative fake (Mitchell 28). The stories are thus emotionally and psychologically satisfying, and can have a very therapeutic effect when an individuals spirit is sick. Ceremonies are the retelling of the myths by a tribal healer or sha globe.Then there are rituals which are the physical enactments of what is told in the myths. The purpose of the ritual is to transform something (or someone) from one pass on to another (Allen, 103). In the novel is a improve ritual which changes Tayo from a sickly, altered state, one which is of isolation and despair, to a state of health and oneness with his people. This is the plot in Leslie Marmon Silkos novel, Ceremony. Her narrative plot follows a cyclical of time, give care that found in indispensable American myths and l egends, preferably of a horse opera linear sense of time (Bell, 53).It is open to irrational spiritual experiences instead of confining itself to scientific logic and reason. In addition, Silkos main management is more on the whole familiarity and Tayos blood to that community than it is on Tayos individuality. More strategicly, she constructs the novel itself as a unspeakable ritual. Continuously throughout the novel, Silko flip flops between the main plot and different internal poems of Native American origin. One such poem involves a organism named Thought-Woman. When Thought-Woman thinks, whatever she thinks about appears. Im telling the story she is thinking, says Silko at the start.The myth is reality, and the novel leads the reader into that unity between myth and reality. Reality is a story, Silko explains. The material presented in poetic form paces the reality, leading us to the denouement of the novel, and it also portrays the action of the story and gives structu re. When we go over the reality of the novel in terms of the mythic poem, is when we see this parliamentary law in the story. The exit of power and vision, or, as Tayo says, how the world had come undone, the champion to pass on the world to its proper ays, the ultimate end to the crisis, and the individuation and conformity created by this successful conclusion of the story are all predicted, ordered, and enjoin by the myth or poem. The mythic poem expresses the poems meaning. It creates that meaning. It is not plainly a metaphor or a piece of local sentiment. The extensive drought, the Whites, the fall of tribal identity and meaning, the war, and even nuclear experiments are apt(p) meaning through the poetry, or you could say through the connection and intertwining of myth and reality.Robert Bennett, in his critical analysis of Silkos Ceremony, states, these interspersed poems create a moment mythic narrative that runs parallel to the lifelike narrative about Tayo. w ithal though these mythic poems take up less space than the realistic narrative, they are equally, if not more, important than the realistic narrative (Bennett, 2). The poems mark important mile stones in the story for Tayo. They are placed in the beginning of the novel and at the end. These mythic poems trace Tayos find oneselfy throughout the novel.Gregory Saylor describes the crack of Ceremony as with corroborateing with Silkos vision of healing because it is written in the verse of Thought-Woman, who is the giver of all life. He calls that from these opening pages we learn about the energy of stories, their ability to cure, and their capacity to counter the witchery of destruction (Saylor, 00). This connection of stories as healing entities and the warriors of witchery gives an intriguing spatial relation to the purpose of Tayos journey. Tayo has suffered what we would consider a nervous breakd feature as a result of traumas suffered in the war.The trauma actually occurred because he encounters rival soldiers, who seem to bear the faces of his family. He is first of all sent to a Veterans infirmary upon his arrival covering fire to the states, where he is diagnosed to suffering from battle fatigue and rel relieved without being cured completely. He then returns to his home on the reservation, where his symptoms get worse. Tayo has been told by the young doctor at the VA clinic that he really should rid himself from all his Indian heritage as much as possible, because that is what is making him sick, and that the worst thing for him is Indian medicine (Silko, 3).By Indian medicine, the VA doctor does not mean herbs and weeds. What he truly means is Tayos spiritual condition and the return into the culture and heritage of his people. The Indian culture is of deep spirituality, and it is difficult for an Indian to think of having a mental disorder that is not a subscribe to of a spiritual disintegration. The fact that Tayo feels his connection to h is spirit and to the spirit of his people fading is why he perceives himself as egg innocence smoke.He feels this mainly because he is no longer completely an Indian, and the smoke is whiten-hot because Tayo has accepted too much of white culture that differs from his heritage as an Indian. Tayos aunt calls a local healer to treat his problem, Tayos spiritual distress, which shows his loss of identity with the values and heritage of his people. Betonie, the healer called to help Tayo, makes the surprising claim that Tayo is not to blame white people We can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented white people it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place (Silko, 132).What he means is that Native Americans, by doubting the say-so and the rightness of their culture, have allowed the white man to manipulate them the triumph of white culture, he asserts, is a result of the spill of the Indian people as a whole. Al though Betonie appears to be a innocent shaman, with all the usual potions and paraphernalia, he heals through stories intended to put Tayo back in touch with his natural heritage. One of the stories told in Ceremony is that of the sorcerer Pacayanyi and his lure of the Indian people with promises of magic.The Indians idolize the Corn Mother by working(a) their fields and helping the Mother grow big amounts of corn. In return the Corn Mother blessed the peoples land. Pacayanyi spoke to the people and told them that they should not work so hard in the fields, it was completely wasting their time and energy. He told them that he could see to it that their fields could continue to be fur-bearing just by him using his magic for them. The people stopped working and The Corn Mother became angry with her people, and left them on their own. As a result, a terrible drought came the corn wilted, and the animals left.The people realized for the first time that what they had with the Corn M other was a two-way relationship and that it took work to sustain the relationship. For many years they had worked hard to serve her, and as they had worshipped her, she had blessed them. No amount of magic or witchery could supersede what they had once had. Tayo had a natural relationship with the earth based on his heritage, as well as with his Indian spirituality. entirely he had been seduced by the witchery of the white man into believing that he did not pauperization to practice his ethnic heritage.By leaving the Indian world for the white one, he turned his back on his culture and replaced it with a punctuate of cultural beliefs that seemed more modern and a lot less work. However, in doing this, he lost sight of himself and his spiritual connection to the earth. Betonie proves that what Tayo is, inside and out, is an Indian. To hold on an ethnically different heritage in a white world, and to keep that heritage viable and meaningful, is hard work. But the cost to the ind ividual of allowing that relationship to lapse is tremendous. Tayo momentarily paid the price of his neglect with his sanity.Now he is able to go forward and recapture his cultural inheritance, and by doing so, repair himself. Tayos return to individual and cultural identity and health through ceremonial integration with a unified story, or reality, is central to the novel. Tayos act of cursing the rain parallels the loss of rain in the incomprehensible story. His personal breakdown reflects the breakdown of Laguna cultural integrity. His personal sombreness of emotion, spirit, and community identity find physical manifestations in the drought suffered by the people of Laguna.Betonies ceremony is Tayos cart track to reintegration back to identity on the personal, cultural, and mythic level. But it is also the Lagunas path back to reintegration. Tayo begins to heal when he is able to leave himself open and conquerable to the forces of myth. Bettina Havens Letcher maintains in he r dissertation, In the Belly of This Story, that the Native American notion of myth is one that counteracts the negativity of witchery. When Tayo begins to live the stories of his youth, he opens his soul to the possibility of healing. He takes his culture and allows it to take over his personality. By losing himself he is able to bring into being whole.During this journey, Tayo and Tseh, in their connection with each other, opens Tayo to the vulnerability that begins his healing. During their union, He was afraid of being lost, so he repeated trail marks to himself. He eased himself deeper within her and felt the warmth close around him like river sand. But he did not get lost (Silko 181). Instead he gathers strength from his connection with the land through his physical and emotional connection to Tseh. Tayo is heal because he is able to allow himself to join the mythical battle. The importance of Tseh in the story is derived from her role in Tayos recovery.Tseh lives on her ow n in the rim rock and is in touch with her land. Being out o f touch with his heritage and caught between the white world and his own peoples world, leaves Tayo feeling invisible and hollow inside. Through the power and strength of nature, Tseh helps Tayo run in touch with his Indian side. She instructs him on how to use certain plants, flowers, and ceremonies and how they are helpful to Native Americans. When Tayo falls in cognize with her is when Tayo begins to feel animate again. He restores his connection with his culture and no longer feels invisible anyone.Tseh takes away all Tayos nightmares and replaces them with pleasant dreams, like when one night he awoke dreaming of her arms around him strong and he was overwhelmed by the love he felt for her (Silko). Nevertheless, Tayo has completed his healing journey and feels whole again. Tayo no longer feels like a walking shadow, but finally a real person with feelings and emotions, other than anger and guilt. It is with the hel p of Betonie and Tseh that he discovers himself and is ultimately able to overcome the trauma inflicted upon him by his birth mother and Aunt. He is able to accept his mixed ancestry in a ever-changing world.Therefore, when Tseh finally leaves him, Tayo is able to go on living and remembering all that she has taught him. Overall, Tayos healing process was long and arduous. However, it was successful. With the guidance and support of Betonie and Tseh, Tayo was able to complete his healing journey on his own. In essence, he was able to recover his own life and find a desire to live. In collar that the real world and the mythic world is one in the same, Tayo is healed and the reader is shown how the combination of the two leads to the success of not only Tayo, but to the story as a whole.