Embedded Files
Ceremony has definitely changed me as a person. In fact, it's my favorite book. I first found it in high school when we had to read it for my AP English class senior year. After that, I saw it again my junior year of college in my Native American survey course and here I am making a blog about it for my Expository Writing class. Funny how the book keeps showing up? Perhaps it's trying to tell me something important.
I think the thing I get the most out of this novel is the trial and journey of true acceptance. It's easy to think we are who we've imposed ourselves to be, but the character of Tayo shows us how untrue that can be. From a reader's perspective, all of his primary facets are grey at best until the end when he develops thanks to the Native American stories that have enriched his roots and are beginning to shape his future. Upon reading Ceremony for the third time, I began to wonder how true that might hold for people - students, even - like us? It wasn't clear to Tayo at first, even after he underwent physical and mental trauma. Could the same be said for us as people? Are we grey as well, even when we think we aren't?
There's a lot of questions that Ceremony causes to bubbling in my head, which is likely the overall point outside of the common avenues detailed throughout this blog. I think, having analyzed this book for a few years now, that the answers are a lot simpler than most would have you believe. For me, they come from doing what brings the most solace - even passion, and even the arbitrary term of "flow" - and the themes related to that underlying Silko's novel, which primarily have to do with one's history, culture, etc., are things I believe hold an innate interest in us as human beings when served correctly. Deep down, we want to know where we came from so we know how to proceed and so that things feel a little less grey, because we know how it feels when blinks of color show up in our lives in the form of passion or fun, and we seek to feel that way more often, thus we search for the underlying because we know that is always there with us. While Tayo is an exaggerated case, the point still stands relevant to everyone involved - and those reading this - and especially, I've found, for myself.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse