Ceremony (Silko novel)
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| Author | Leslie Marmon Silko |
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| Cover artist | Lee Marmon (First Edition) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Published | March 1977 Penguin Books |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 262 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 12554441 |
| Followed by | Storyteller (1981) |
Ceremony is a novel by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, first published by Penguin in March 1977. The title Ceremony is based upon the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and Pueblo people.
The main plot line of Ceremony follows the trials of a half-Pueblo, half-white Laguna Pueblo man named Tayo upon returning from World War II. His white doctors say he is suffering from "battle fatigue," or what would today be called post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the novel interweaves several different timelines around Tayo, from both before and after the war, as well as a spiritual timeline where the Thought Woman (also known as Spider Woman, Corn Woman and Reed Woman, the three main Pueblo spiritual entities, create the world and then Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly must go down to the Fourth World to retrieve Reed Woman to stop a drought. Also in this spiritual timeline is the introduction of the "witchery" and the "destroyers," who are like anti-medicine men, sewing evil and destruction which the medicine men work to fight against through Ceremony. By the end of the novel, all of these timelines converge in the ceremony of Tayo.
The Tayo we find at the beginning of the novel is struggling with the death of his cousin, Rocky, whom he saw die during the Bataan Death March of 1942, and the death of his uncle Josiah, whom he believes he saw in the face of a Japanese soldier killed by firing squad during the war. While Josiah did die during the war, his death occurred back on the Pueblo, not in the jungles of the Pacific. Rather, Tayo's hallucination and guilt comes from two promises he made to Josiah—the first, before he signed up for the war, was to help him wrangle the spotted cattle that Josiah had purchased before the war. The second, made after signing up for the war, was that he would he'd protect Rocky. He believes that he let down Josiah, and that's why he died. Tayo has spent several years at a mental health facility, and has gotten no better, but is being released by his doctors. After vomiting from the light at the train station, he returns home to the pueblo to stay with his Auntie, Grandma, and Robert, where he can barely move or get out of bed, and any hint of light makes him vomit.
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