Ceremony

I find the writing style of Leslie Marmon Silko very evocative, visual, she uses many colors in her words and description of the land, of the inner emotional states of Tayo, Harley. It is a delicate yet powerful style of writing and usage of words.

I think that Tayo, Rocky, Emo and Harley know each other from the reservation and from their youth. Josiah is part of it too but he stayed in the reservation, as I understand it.

Silko uses flashbacks in her description of Tayo during the war, during his captivity and after during his illness, and his constant PTSD as we call it nowadays. She blurs time and space, as these are blurred for Tayo who is constantly experiencing the past even in the present.

As in Erdrich, we can see that alcohol is a way to anesthetize one's senses to pain and suffering and facing reality. Alcohol was brought by the settlers to Native American who did not use it, and they fell for its addiction and the way to escape their loss of identity, and as in the case in our book, to escape the suffering brought by the war and its horrors.

In an article I read (http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr93_2.html), the author explains the importance of three figures in Pueblo mythology: Thought Woman, Corn Mother and Sun father, as we can read also in Silko.