Ceremony: Section 7 Summary & Analysis

Tayo has now finished Betonie’s ceremony by returning the cattle home, and even old Grandma (who most firmly believes in not changing the old ways) recognizes the value of Betonie’s unorthodox methods. On the other side, Auntie doesn’t seem to trust Tayo’s return to health because she no longer trusts traditional ceremonies.

Pinkie visiting the bar after doing such fine work shows how the pernicious influence of alcohol and white culture more generally always remain a threat for Native Americans.

Tayo leaves the community of New Laguna in order to be closer to the natural environment, mimicking Betonie’s choice to live in the hills rather than among the Navajo people. Tayo has to remove himself from society to more clearly see the lesson that Betonie wanted him to learn – a lesson that may be able to help Ku’oosh and the other veterans as well.

True health for the land involves a balance between drought and over-saturation of rain. The land is resilient enough to endure periods of extremes, showing Tayo that he too can return to health after his tumultuous time spent in the violence of the white world. Tayo honors nature with the yellow pollen, a sacred ritual of the Pueblo people.

The woman appears out of the natural world, making her a cohesive part of Tayo’s return to nature rather than a distraction from this harmony. The peace and ease of their interactions is an important contrast to the competition and tension in the sexual relationships between native Americans and white women described earlier in the novel. Yet this ease is not simply because Tayo and the woman are both Native American, but because neither of them are hiding their Native American heritage.

Ts’eh’s blue shawl echoes Night Swan’s blue clothing when Tayo visited her. As blue is a sacred color to the Pueblo people, this clothing marks both women as important carriers of lessons for Tayo. Ts’eh’s nickname helps reframe Rocky’s character. As much as Rocky rejected Native American culture, his use of a nickname involved a rejection of a white name and therefore indicates some remaining tie to his Pueblo heritage.

As with Grandmother’s attitude towards gossip in the Pueblo community, Ts’eh’s beliefs about gossip show that it is a way that people can stay involved in other people’s lives. Now that Tayo knows he is not “stealing” Ts’eh from her rightful husband, they can have a more honest relationship. The way that it seems to both Tayo and Ts’eh that the other one came to them suggests that the world has chosen to bring Ts’eh and Tayo together naturally, rather than through human manipulation.

The way Ts’eh connects plants and sky is another example of the many connections between all parts of the natural world. The bull, a sacred yellow color, helps Tayo continue to the tradition of celebrating cultural hybridity that Josiah started. The bull seems to stand for Native American culture, both for its hide color and how it has survived an injury from white culture (the rodeo). The cows accept the bull, showing that peaceful coexistence between many different cultures can be possible.

Tayo is again an integral part of a ceremony meant to restore balance to the world, this time ending the drought instead of returning cattle. Ts’eh brings all the elements of nature together in her bundles, with plants, rocks, water, sky, and starlight involved in some way. Tayo and Ts’eh’s peaceful life together is a model of how all human lives could be if humanity lived in harmony with nature.

Emo has become so consumed by white culture that he sees living in the hills as crazy rather than as a return to nature. Though Tayo is clearly healthy and happy, the others do not trust this natural cure after so many years of white culture marking nature as something to fight against and dominate instead of live with.

Death is a natural part of the cycle of life, rather than the needless destruction and pain that the destroyers (i.e. white culture) cause in the world. While Betonie’s ceremony involving stars, the cattle, the woman, and a mountain seemed to be over after Tayo found the cattle, all four of those elements are also involved in Ts’eh’s final ceremony.

The elk represents the strength of new life and the future. The health of this future depends on how Tayo honors the past stories. As long as he remembers the sentiment of respect for life in the stories, the specific ritual of painting an elk can be changed.

The worst parts of human nature are given free reign in white culture, but the more pressing issue is Emo’s belief in the values of white culture. While white people are too self-absorbed to put in the effort of doing Tayo harm, Emo (under the influence of the destroyers) will tirelessly work to force Tayo’s story to have a tragic ending. The way that Ts’eh speaks about all this as if Tayo is explicitly a character in a story references the place that Silko intends l Ceremony to take alongside the ancient stories. Put another way: Ceremony is itself a story, itself a ceremony.

Though Ts’eh’s departure is sad, it is mitigated by the fact that the land is so much healthier than it was just a year ago. Mirroring the return to health in the environment, Tayo is also in a much better place. Betonie’s ceremony that blended traditional rituals with modern elements has seemingly been successful, even if Ts’eh’s ceremony still needs to be finished.

Tayo now trusts the natural world far more than he trusts the human world, given the major impact that the destroyers have had on white culture. By bringing the story to the elders, Tayo can hopefully help the rest of his community find healing as well. Tayo may be healed, but he must help the others of his community before he is truly finished with his task.

Here, Tayo fears the way that gossip creates divisions between people instead of bringing them together. The timelessness of the desert landscape connects Tayo to everything before and everything after – his own story is one among many, and also an echo of those other stories. As happened earlier in the novel, Harley and Leroy pick Tayo up, repeating another cycle. Yet the first episode in the truck did not end well, foreshadowing that this episode will not benefit Tayo either.

Harley wears a shirt that is popular in “mainstream” American culture, another attempt to belong to America even though it is destructive to his Native American identity. Being around the other man undoes some of Tayo’s efforts to return to his Native heritage, as Harley and Leroy are able to pressure him to drink again.

It is painful for Tayo to accept that the people he loves may be working for evil, or have been taken over by the witchery (human greed and selfishness) that infects white culture. Tayo chooses to ignore that using alcohol as a numbing agent. And just as alcohol is a self-destructive “medicine” for all “Indians,” it will soon be clear that it is literally destructive for Tayo to indulge in it now.

Harley and Leroy are unfortunately acting in ways that counter the old values of the Pueblo people. Tayo’s stomach, the place where he feels the connection to the stories that explain how Pueblo people should act, warns him that Harley and Leroy are dangerously out of balance with the Pueblo community. Tayo takes the screwdriver as protection if the others try to attack him. Tayo may defend himself with violence, which the novel has established earlier is not in concert with Native philosophy and only brings more evil into the world.

The Cebolleta Land Grant was actually first stolen from the Navajo people, then taken from the Spanish by the American government. This competition over land rights deals only in the power and resources that the land represents, rather than the health of the land itself. White culture as seen in the American government destroys the land first through over-farming, and then by stripping it of minerals for their monetary and military use. The government abandons the land when it is no longer useful, even though they leave guards to ensure that the land is still their possession. The fences remain as unnecessary divides in the land even after the white people have left.

The mining efforts are still affecting the land, making the water impure long after mining activity has stopped. The mine is part of the ultimate culmination of all that the novel suggests is bad about white culture, as atomic bombs are a destructive power so vast that they by their very nature constitute a lack of respect for nature or the world. Tayo’s reference to a pattern recalls the poem-story about the creation of white people that mentioned a pattern of yellow rocks. That Tayo sees the bomb as having the potential to unite people against it indicates his ability to reach across borders.

Seeing the atomic bomb makes it clear that the old stories really are true, because the “ultimate weapon” that Americans used to win WWII was actually foretold by an ancient Native American story. Betonie’s constellation reappears, suggesting that Tayo is still in the midst of making his own story about resisting the witchery. Tayo takes inspiration from the poem-story about Arrowboy. By closely watching his own actions, Tayo might be able to prevent himself from joining in any witchery.

Though drunk Native Americans may seem harmless, Tayo knows that the impulse that drives Native Americans to drink also hides the violent greed that white culture pushes on everything it touches. Though Tayo never explicitly says why Emo might be hunting him, Emo’s vendetta against Tayo for being half-white is clearly at play here.

Emo, Leroy, and Pinkie are all united against Harley even though Harley is a fellow Native American, and a fellow veteran. The true harm of the witchery is how it breaks down these connections and forces every man to act for himself against the entire world. Emo’s hatred of white people means that Harley’s paled skin turns him into a “white” person on whom Emo can take his revenge.

Emo has descended into pure evil that delights in causing pain and taking life, but tries to blame these actions on Tayo – just as white culture destroys Native American communities and then tries to blame the Native Americans for being lazy or alcoholics. Tayo holds a tool, the screwdriver, that puts him in danger of becoming a “tool” for the witchery should he decide to use it.

By killing Emo, Tayo would have added more evil into the world. By letting Emo live, Tayo proves that there are other responses to death and destruction. White culture does not, and cannot, understand this perspective. White people expect Native Americans to commit violence against each other because it is all they know themselves. While Tayo may not belong to the violent world that white culture has created, his knowledge of the past and faithful adherence to traditional values that respect life , the novel suggests, are actually crucial to humanity’s future.

The stars, like the desert landscape, remind Tayo that all the stories still apply in his life. He has a responsibility to finish the ceremonies and live according to the lessons that the old stories teach. Tayo finally reconnects with his family, even those who are dead, as the rain comes to end the drought. By refusing to kill Emo, Tayo has brought balance and healed both himself and the land.