Final Revision - Summary/Application

Part One: Summary
In “Toward a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko’s ‘Ceremony,’” Gloria Bird discusses her feelings about the colonization of her language and culture, but most importantly Bird talks about the lie of the whites. He realizes that he is equal to the whites and is no better than them. Tayo comes to understand that his Indian friends were wrong about hating the whites. “Silko is at once bringing the problems to our attention and undermining them. Identifying the source of the “lie” is the first liberating gesture by which Tayo is then free from its hold over him” (Bird 6). Not only does Tayo figure out the lie of the whites, he figures out that Emo, Harley, and a few other Indians were part of the lie too. “Though he “wanted to scream at Indians like Harley and Helen Jean and Emo” and all of the “people [who] had been taught to despise themselves,” he comes to the realization that, “they were wrong (Ceremony 191)” (Bird 6). Emo betrayed Tayo by trying to kill him. This shows Tayo’s struggle to avoid becoming colonized by the ideas about the whites that other Indians were suppressed under, and then having his eyes opened to the sight of reality of the equality between the whites and the Indians.

Part Two: Application
Silko’s Ceremony and Gloria Bird’s article suggest that a productive topic is “the lie,” but not just the lie about the whites, but the lies and the deceptions of your own people. Tayo, a veteran of World War II, had to cope with the colonization of not only the white people and their mind control over the Indians, but Tayo had to deal with the troublesome antics of Emo.

Bird describes Tayo’s view of “the lie” as, “Tayo is employed to reject the internalization of negative typifications as he frees his cattle from the white man’s land debating whether or not to label the man a ‘thief’” (Bird 6). Here this is where Tayo begins to see through the lie and break out of the colonization, which has been embedded in his head for so long. Tayo and his people have been forced to think that they are the ones whom are to be thought of as the “thieves” and not the white people. In Ceremony, it is even admitted by Tayo that, “he had learned the lie by heart – the lie which they had wanted him to learn” (Silko 191). As the lie unfolds in the novel, Tayo cuts open the wire that held captive Josiah’s cattle. Not only did the white man take the horses, the white man also took advantage and raped the land. The Pueblo culture believed that the land was there for everyone to share, which is why the Indians never used fences. The land does not belong to one single person. The whites had no respect for the land as they used it to only better themselves and to make up for any insecurities or doubts that they may have within themselves. Most importantly though, Tayo realizes that the white men are actually just like the Indians, they are no more powerful than the Indians. But since the Indian’s were brainwashed to believe that the White man was better, they were able to just take and take from them.

Emo, a troublemaker from the start of Ceremony, betrays Tayo with a plan to hunt him down and kill him. But once Tayo figures out the betrayal and runs away from all of his friends, as Harley then eventually takes the blame and has to face the consequences. “Tayo was halfway up the hill before he stopped: suddenly it hit him, in the belly, and spread to his chest in a single surge: he knew then that they were not his friends but had turned against him, and the knowledge left him hollow and dry inside, like the locust’s shell” (Silko 225). Not only has Tayo believed the lie about the whites, now he comes to find out all of his friends have turned on him.

Bird also shows a bit of betrayal by her family. She had always felt like she was “stealing” the language of her people. For example, her mother, “she spoke Indian around me only when she wanted to exclude me” (Bird 1). Also, at family gatherings, Bird would have no idea what her aunts and uncles were talking about because she had a lack of understanding of the language. Her family’s actions made her believe that she was unworthy of her language. She admits, “It seems I have lived under the weight of meaninglessness, the nadir of making meaning, of finding a way in the only language I know to reconnect something, as if to somehow jar the language out of the illusion of its impotence. Auntie did this same sort of thing to Tayo, when she did not fully accept him because he was mixed-blood.

Staying true to the landscape, giving thanks to it, taking care of it, and sharing it; all these things are what keeps the Pueblo culture alive within its people. Tayo finally discovers this when he cut the wire that caged Josiah’s cattle. As he cut the fencing, he was also breaking free of “the lie” and of his insecurities. Finally, Tayo, cured from his ailments, sees the truth, that no matter what color skin, we are all equal within the land.

Works Cited:
Bird, Gloria. "Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony"" Wicazo Sa Review, Vol 9, No. 2 Autumn 1993. University of Minnesota Press. 04 Jan. 2009 .
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). New York: Penguin Books, 2006.