Ceremony: Section 8 Summary & Analysis

The Corn Mother story ends as Tayo’s story ends. Both stories affect and influence each other, as Tayo’s story happens chronologically later in time, but appears earlier in the novel. Tayo is living proof that fixing things again will not be easy, but hopefully his ceremony will act as a warning to future generations not to let this happen once again.

Tayo brings his wisdom back to the tribe, reconnected with his Laguna Pueblo heritage as he adds another story to the Pueblo legacy. Tayo faces south, the direction that his cattle always want to go, and the direction that traditionally signals home or ending to the Pueblo people. These directions are also important for Ts’eh, who follows the traditional route that the Reed Woman uses to bring the seasons to the Pueblo people. Just as the Reed Woman took the rain away in the story-poem in the beginning of the novel, the novel implies that Ts’eh either is the Reed Woman or acts as the Reed Woman to bring the rain back.

Tayo retraces another story to fully cleanse himself of the false identity that white culture put on him. Just as coyote-man sheds his coyote skin, Tayo sheds the evil influence of white culture while sitting in the kiva, a traditional round sacred structure used for Pueblo religious rituals.

Harley and Leroy die without coming back into harmony with nature or their Pueblo identities. As such, the flags that mark them as veterans outshine the actual people that these men were. In death, Harley and Leroy lose everything that tied them to their Pueblo heritage.

Instead of resenting Tayo for his white blood, Auntie now avoids Tayo because he is too Native American for her Christian friends. Yet for Tayo, this is an important step as he is no longer considered a half-breed, but fully accepted by the Native community. Note that Auntie, who is out of touch with Pueblo culture in favor of Christian righteousness, quotes the Corn Mother story – she seems not to realize how she cannot escape the importance of Native knowledge in her own life.

Emo continues to be a tool of the witchery, causing pain, destruction, and death wherever he goes – but rather than give him power the continued destruction he causes leads to his ouster from the tribe, while Tayo’s stories have been accepted by the tribe’s elders. Old Grandma’s observation that stories seem to repeat themselves again implies how new generations come and live out the same plots in the never ending fight between good and evil in human souls, while also tying each of those generations together in a fabric that both remains the same and always changes.

Though the witchery will return, as evil and good always shift in their balance, Tayo’s actions have held it back for now, and his story becomes part of the history and legacy along with the Corn Woman story and so many others. That the novel ends just as it began, with “Sunrise,” suggests a number of things. First, it is another example of the novel’s structure mirroring its themes, of the cyclic nature of stories, their constant change and sameness. It also suggests that a new story is beginning, one made possible by Tayo’s own story. And by leaving that story untold, by leaving the reader only with “Sunrise,” the novel implies that this new story could be the readers story – that influenced by the lessons and power of Tayo’s ceremony, it is time for the reader to create a new ceremony. Silko seems to suggest that Ceremony is not just a novel, but that it is itself a ceremony, and now it is has been released into the world, and given to the reader, to perform its healing.