Ceremony: Section 5 Summary & Analysis

In the white world, Tayo is not seen as more than a lazy criminal because of his Native American blood. Knowing the story of how white people came to be allows Tayo to brush off this racism because it means that white people aren’t actually the dominant culture that they believe themselves to be. After meeting with Betonie, Tayo cares more for nature than he did while he was sick, being careful not to hurt even an insect.

The methods that Harley uses to “get back” at the white people who have wronged him are actually more destructive to Harley than they are to white people. Driving this truck means nothing to white people and could actually kill Harley. Similarly, alcohol as a numbing agent so that the Native Americans can live in a culture that constantly puts them down is actually more destructive to the Native Americans than it is helpful.

Helen Jean wears copious amounts of makeup, in some sense hiding her Native American identity in order to appear beautiful by the standards of the dominant white culture. Harley also seems to be trying on a different identity by dancing around like a “chickish muggy,” a term that seems to mean a man who acts like a woman. These performances of “putting on another skin” recall the story of the bear boy that Betonie told Tayo. Meanwhile, Harley and Leroy display their own performance of being accepted by white culture by bragging about having sex with white women, such that they prevent themselves from making a connection with Helen Jean, a fellow Native American.

Helen Jean, like Rocky, has left her Native American heritage behind in order to be survive in the white world. Her inability to return to her reservation suggests that it is impossible to live according to white culture’s standards and stay true to a Native American identity.

Helen Jean is a competent and intelligent woman, but white culture refuses to see her as anything but menial labor because of her race. Helen Jean also faces sexual harassment, as her white manager seems to believe that Native Americans exist to please him. Yet instead of returning to her Native American community on the reservation, which has its own problems of poverty, Helen Jean believes she must look out for herself alone by tricking Native American veterans out of their money. Her roommates also seem to live by the individualistic values of white culture, demanding that each person pay their own way rather than helping each other when money is tight for one of them.

The veterans use Helen Jean as a placeholder for their own desire to fit into white culture, also displaying the violence that the novel sees as inherent to white culture when their attempts do not work. Trying to be white forces both the veterans and Helen Jean to stop seeing each other as people. Helen Jean has also internalized the racism that paints all Native Americans as poor, drunk, lazy, and going nowhere. She has more faith in the Mexican men who she assumes have paying jobs and money to spare.

Whether the fight arises from competition for Helen Jean’s attention, or simply Harley’s desire to start a fight and distract him from his sadness, the fact that the fight is with Mexican men rather than white patrons is another sign of white cultural dominance. Instead of finding commonalities in the ways that both Mexicans and Native Americans are treated as sub-human in white culture, the two groups fight each other as they each try to gain white acceptance. Tayo’s dream reminds him that he should be on a mission of greater importance, and that the cultural hybridity of the cattle is better than petty fights over which race is better.

Believing in the myth that white culture is better than Native American culture leaves Native Americans perpetually unsatisfied, chasing a pipe dream. It is not that the novel suggests that Native Americans could not achieve the kind of material success that white people enjoy (though there are certainly difficult obstacles because of racism against people of color) but rather that these things wouldn’t actually make them happy if they got them. As in the story about the beads, possessions will never take the place of belonging to the land and their cultural heritage. Tayo is in the midst of realizing that he has to go back to his Native identity instead of chasing after white people.

The Gambler in this story parallels the role that white people play in the novel, forcing Native Americans to do acts of violence against each other just as the Gambler forces his victims to eat other people. The Gambler also harms the natural environment as white people do in the novel.

In order to trick the Gambler at his own game, Sun Man has to stay true to the native wisdom that Spider Woman teaches, and avoid all the tempting offers that the Gambler makes. Similarly, Native Americans must put their faith in native wisdom and refuse the false goals that white people offer as success. Making the Gambler’s eyes into stars is another example of the interconnected nature of the world, as humans and natural objects can be transformed into each other.

Looking for the constellation echoes back to the Gambler’s eyes being used as stars, drawing a connection between the formation of stars that will help Tayo escape from the white cultural power that the Gambler represented in the story. Crucially, modern transportation like the truck is ineffective on this journey and Tayo has to use a natural method of a horse instead. By finding the woman, Tayo has now found two of the four objects that Betonie told him to remember. Like Caterpillar giving Fly and Hummingbird tobacco, the woman gives Tayo valuable help on his journey by giving him a meal and a rest.

Sleeping with this Native American woman is an act of true love and self-acceptance, rather than the desperate attempts at acceptance hidden in the veterans’ stories about having sex with white women. This act brings Tayo closer to finding the cattle, and closer to his Native heritage. By remembering the tradition of starting stories with an offering to the sunrise, Tayo effectively begins a story about himself within the novel that will follow his quest to find the cattle.