Ceremony Continued

Tayo, the main character in the novel Ceremony, comes home from World War II in the Philippians  He is expected to assimilate back into his hometown culture like nothing had happened, but Tayo cannot stop thinking about his severe war memories and is unable to fit back into society based on several reasons.  First of all, Tayo comes back to stay with his aunt Thelma, who is nothing but disrespectful.  She does not understand what posttraumatic stress is and sees Tayo as “her dead sisters half breed-child.” (Silko 27) Rocky had always been Thelma’s favorite child, where as Tayo is an unfortunate burden that she must care for only because it is her duty as a Christian women.  Tayo’s aunt eventually brings over Old man Ku’oosh, the medicine man, to hopefully heal his “sickness.”  However, Ku’oosh also could not understand Tayo’s Posttraumatic stress; “he would not have believed in white warfare-killing across great distances without knowing who or how many died.” (Silko 33)  Times have changed from the old way of warfare, where one couldn’t kill another without knowing the result of it.  Tayo could not handle using mortars and big guns on random targets, innocent people or not.  Old man Ku’oosh leaves Tayo with no hope to get better, and Tayo becomes only certain of something he has feared for a while.  “It took only one person to tear away the delicate strands of web, spilling the rays of sun into the sand, and the fragile world would be injured.”  The Laguna Pueblo group believes that one has to heal first, before the world can heal; if Tayo cannot heal, then the people around him will be affected.  Tayo tries to cry, but he feels not relief from crying anymore.  Solving Tayo’s posttraumatic stress will take something more than white people’s and Ku’oosh’s medicine.
and brings back posttraumatic stress.

 

Ceremony displays large signs of Posttraumatic stress throughout the book, but also displays signs of transferred oppression and the homo social exchange of women.  Transferred oppression occurs like dominoes; one person takes the hate given by a group that is socially seen as a higher power (due to their race, religion, etc.) and then that person reflects it on someone that is socially seen as a lower power.  The white people oppress Native Americans, so Native Americans transfer that oppression to others, like Mexicans.  “Men run around with Mexicans and even worse, nothing is ever said.” (Silko 31)  Another example of transferred oppression is when someone gets bullied and that person takes his or her anger out by punching a wall. Transferred oppression only embraces the social class system and it still occurs everyday.  Women constantly get oppressed by men and are seen as objects by many men.  Men pass women around just to please their sexual wants, which is called homo social exchange of women.  Silko explains how Tayo and many other veterans, “didn’t want to give up the cold beer and the blonde cunt.” (Silko 38)  This explains how Tayo puts on his war uniform to conceal his true identity, just so he can sleep with women.  Homo social exchange of women and transferred oppression are two underlying themes in the novel ceremony that shape the world's social structure.