Ceremony 56-105

In this part of the story we are starting to see the good and evil people have inside of them. The boys are drinking at a bar and Emo's true colors are shown when he starts talking about the war. " 'We were the best. U.S. Army. We butchered every Jap we found. No Jap bastard was fit to take prisoner. We had all kinds of ways to get information out of them before they died. Cut off this, cut off these'  Emo was grinning and hunched over staring at the teeth"(Silko) 56. Emo was telling Pinkie, Harley and Tayo about the ways they would torture the Japanese soldiers. He looked at war differently then the other men, he enjoyed killing people. "Tayo could hear it in his voice when he talked about the killing- how Emo grew from each killing. Emo fed off each man he killed and the higher the rank of the dead man, the higher it made Emo"(Silko 56). Emo would feed off of killing other people and he liked to kill the men with high authority because it would make him feel superior. The way Emo was talking about killing was getting under Tayo's skin at this point and he kept drinking the more Emo would talk. Throughout the story Tayo will have flashbacks of different memories when he gets put in a bad situation. He goes from listening to Emo talk to think about a memory in an old mans field. "Tiny black ants were scurrying over the shattered melons; the flies were rubbing their feet on fragments of pulp and rind..."(Silko) 57. Tayo is thinking about a time when the ants were eating a melon that was decaying. He thinks about the circle of life and how decay and death happens. He uses this memory to try to distract him from the things Tayo is talking about.


Assimilation and Integration are also shown when Tayo is looking back on a memory with Rocky. They're discussing the different ways to raise cattle. Rocky is reading books about how cattle should be raised and asks Tayo of his opinion. "The problem was the books were written by white people who did not think about drought or winter blizzards or dry thistles, which the cattle had to live with"(Silko 69). Tayo is telling Rocky that the books are written not from the perspective of people who have actually raised cattle or from people who have lived through and seen the conditions that the cattle go through. Then Rocky argues that they are scientists and they know what they are talking about. "These books are written by scientists. They know everything there is to know about the beef cattle. That's the trouble with the way the people around here have always done things- they never knew what they were doing"(Silko 70). This is the where assimilation vs. integration comes into play again if the scientists were to take the information the Native people could give to them and integrated the two different sides everything would work better. The fact that Rocky wasn't seeing it like this made Tayo sad. " Tayo was suddenly sad because what Rocky said was true. What did they know about raising cattle? They were scientists"(Silko 70). Tayo is sad because thats the way everything has been; assimilation and not integration.

Reel Injun

The Neil Diamond movie Reel Injun shows how the portrayal of North American Natives grow through out the years in film. The Birth of the Hollywood Injun is the opener in the movie and it shows the Hollywood idea's of an Indian. The film makers at that time were looking at Native Americans as a mythology as if they were extinct. Jim Jarmusch says "That is a genocide that occurred the American culture wanted to perpetrate the ideas that the Natives are now mythological, you know, they don't even really exist, they're like dinosaurs"(Reel Injun). Film makers made it out to seem as if Native Americans were no longer real. They wanted to make it seem like they were a culture that died off. However they are very real to this day and always have been.  Clint Eastwood says "I remember once we were on a set, the director said 'I want a real native upfront, I want to see the real thing' We couldn't find one"(Reel Injun). In reality Native Americans didn't have the money or education to become actors so Hollywood painted an image of who they were. They would paint the faces of people red and put on long dark hair wigs held on with headbands. It was easy for Hollywood to create an image for the Native Americans and it captured the worlds imagination. Western movies became huge in the filming department and gave the Natives a savage and brutal image. The heroic Cowboy killing the Indians and saving the day was the new entertainment. Jesse Wante says "When you're kids and you're trying to play Cowboys and Indians, and if you're an Indian kid- well doesn't that mean you're going to lose all the time?"(Reel Injun). The made the Indians look like the bad guy and the Cowboys look like the hero's. People grew up unaware of the true Native culture only seeing what Hollywood portrayed Native Americans to be.

The Renaissance era and the release of the movie Atanarjuat(The Fast Runner), directed by Zacharias Kunuk, showed the true culture of Native Americans. This movie was authentic and accurate representation of their culture. Chris Eyre says "They tell our stories our way"(Reel Injun). This was the first movie made about Native Americans that was directed and made fully by Native American people. This movie preserves their culture and was called an "inside job". The film industry took away who these people are. Zacharias Kunuk says "Were taking back, stories we used to hear, what we believe and why we are here"(Reel Injun). They were bringing back their culture with this movie. When a persons background is taken away its as if they are taken away too, but this movie brought it back. There is a very famous scene in this movie where a man is being attacked in his teepee and he runs out completely naked across icy terrain cutting up his feet. His dedication to this role showed his true spirit. Jhon Trudell says " We're not Indians and we're not Native Americans we're older then both of those concepts, we're the people, we're the human beings' (Reel Injun). John Truddell makes the point that everyone is just human and that the Native American people are just the same as everyone else, they just have a different past.

Ceremony up to page 54

In this story Tayo has so much compassion for others the his guilt starts to consume him. It is unclear if he actually has personally killed people in the war when he was fighting but he blames himself for all the deaths just because he feels guilty by association. "He didn't know how to explain what had happened. He did not know how to tell him that he had not killed any eery or that he did not think that he had. But that he had done things far worse, and the effects were everywhere in the could less sky, on the dry brown hills, shrinking skin and hide taut over sharp bone"(Silko 33). Tayo blames him self for the pain that has been caused and the ripple effect. He relates the war to nature when he talks about the sky and the hills. Tayo sees that everything has a chain reaction. The idea of interactions on Earth contribute to the complex system of life on the planet as a whole, is the Gaia theory which is the outlook Tayo has on the deaths of other and how it's contributing to the sky and the hills.

Ceremony up to pg 26

In the book Ceremony the main character Tayo comes home from war and is faced with the challenge of going back into society with PTS. On the way back to his aunts house he gets on a train and is coping with the pain of loosing his friend Rocky. "Tayo felt weak, and the longer he walked the more his legs felt as though they might become invisible again again; then the top part os his body would topple and when his head was level with the ground he would be lost in the smoke again, in the fog"(Silko 15). Tayo goes from being in combat to being in everyday life getting on a train and and the PTS is taking over. He is at the train station but starts having body detachment. His body begins to feel like its starting to disappear and he feels like he is getting lost in the smoke. The white smoke is something that Tayo continuously talks about when he experiences PTS. The white smoke is when he imagines himself drifting away when he is put on the drugs he was given when he was in the war. And now is a self defense he uses when the PTS comes back. "It was all worse than he had ever dreamed; to have drifted all those months in white smoke, only to wake up again in the prison camp. But he did not want to be invisible when he died, so he pulled himself loose, one last time"(Silko 15). The white smoke is a place he goes in his mind when he numbs the pain from the PTS.

Stress consuming your mind

White Smoke

Tayo also is trying to deal with survivors guilt throughout this story. Survivors guilt is when someone feels bad for being alive when so many other people had died. He wasn't ready to leave the war after The Death March he wasn't ready to go back into society. "If they had not dresses him and led him to the car, he would still be there, drifting along the north wall, invisible in the grey twilight"(Silko 14). He didn't want to leave he wasn't ready to go back especially without Rocky and he felt guilty that he was going home leaving so many people dead behind. After he leaves a doctor is checking him out and asks him if he is visible. "The new doctor had asked him if he had ever been visible and was allowed to speak to an invisible one"(Silko 14). This shows the racism during this time period. To the white people he was invisible. Tayo began to feel invisible because no one cared and he just wanted to disappear.

Racism

Invisible