analysis of illness and healing of Tayo in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony
...ople cannot afford to forget the stories because their very survival rests on the telling and continuing of tribal stories. So, to forget the stories is to become vulnerable and diseased. Tayo is ill and vulnerable because he forgets the native stories and curses the rain. Tayo comes to realize the gravity of his wrong only after he returns to the Laguna land because it is the Laguna land that is drought-stricken: “So he had prayed the rain away, and for the sixth year it was dry; the grass turned yellow and it did not grow. Wherever he looked, Tayo could see the consequences of his praying” (Silko, Ceremony 14). This realization makes Tayo feel guilty of what he has done. He can redeem himself from this guilt by bringing rain back to the Laguna land. Rain alone cannot solve his problem; he has Josiah’s spotted cattle to recover, too. All this is possible through a curative ceremony that involves Indian traditions, beliefs, and stories. But before his curative ceremony starts, Tayo is taken to the Veterans’ Hospital in Los Angeles. The white doctors in the Hospital prescribe modern medicine to Tayo which proves inefficacious in his healing because his illness is more cultural than it is physical and the modern medicine does not address his cultural illness. Moreover, the white doctors tell Tayo “he had to think only of himself, and not about the others” for “he would never get well as long as he used words like “we” and “us”” (125). This is their cultural prescription which, far from relieving him, aggravates Tayo’s situation because it aims to separate him from his tribe. So, his search for healing or identity is not to find his individual self as suggested by the white doctors but to find a transpersonal self by returning home culturally, as William Bevis describes, “. . . ‘identity,’ for a Native American, is not a matter of finding ‘one’s self,’ but of finding a ‘self’ that is transpersonal and includes a society, a past, and a place” (19). Tayo’s curative ceremony begins only when he returns home from the Veterans’ Hospital for “the road to healing lies in Tayo’s ability to find his way back to his community and his traditions” (Riley 325). Homing-in is, in fact, a major motif in Tayo’s story of healing. When he returns home from the Hospital, his uncle, Robert, welcomes him: “I’m glad you are home, Tayo” (Silko, Ceremony 32). This homing-in is related to Tayo’s curative ceremony. If his homing-out leads him to illness, his homing-in will certainly show Tayo the way toward healing, as Toni Flores writes, “Tayo works out his cure, not solely within himself, but largely by going home [Flores’ emphasis], among people who know him deeply and who are known by him because he has been part of their stories” (117). Immediately after he comes home from the Hospital, old Grandma initiates his curative ceremony by sending for old Ku’oosh, the traditional Laguna medicine man. Old Ku’oosh is the full-blood Laguna medicine man who performs traditional healing ceremonies over Tayo. As a custodian of the Laguna Pueblo belief, he very well understands the gravity of Tayo’s illness, which, if not cured, has the capacity to disrupt the community as a whole. This is what he means when he tells Tayo, “I’m afraid of what will happen to all of us if you and the others don’t get well” (Ceremony 38). Old Ku’oosh, however, is not sure that his ceremony can heal Tayo completely. He fears that his healing rituals may not be adequate to heal Tayo whose illness is caused by his contact with the white world, especially his participation in the white man’s war: “There are some things we can’t cure like we used to, not since the white people came” (38). Realizing, thus, his inability to cure Tayo completely, old Ku’oosh suggests Tayo seek help from the Navajo medicine man, old Betonie. Old Betonie, whom Tayo visits as his last resort to healing, can be assumed as Tayo’s most authentic healer because both the healer and the patient share circumstances that are identical: both are mixed-blood Indians disinherited by the whites. The belongings in Betonie’s hogan reveal to Tayo “You are never the first to suffer a grave loss or profound humiliation” (Silko, Landscape 892). This revelation is significant in Tayo’s healing process because he gets consoled when he sees the medicine man in situation similar to his. Moreover, Betonie appears a new medicine man who “didn’t talk the way Tayo expected a medicine man to talk. He didn’t act like a medicine man at all” (Ceremony 118). Old Betonie, in fact, stands for the change or adaptation that Leslie Silko emphasizes in the novel Ceremony. Change, in Silko’s view, is essential if the Indian culture is to survive in the modern world because “things which don’t shift and grow are dead things” (126). Betonie has kept the ceremonies alive and strong, precisely by changing them, by adding to his collection of healing paraphernalia such modern items as coke bottles, railway calendars, and telephone books among other things. He assures Tayo that his ceremonies prove effective in his healing because they have been modified from time to time: “But after the white people came, elements in this world began to shift; and it became necessary to create new ceremonies. I have made changes in the rituals. The people mistrust this greatly, but only this growth keeps the ceremonies strong” (126). Betonie’s major contribution to Tayo’s healing is to provide him with a vision, a vision that guides Tayo on a quest for healing, as the old man utters, “Remember these stars, I’ve seen them and I’ve seen the spotted cattle; I’ve seen a mountain and I’ve seen a woman” (Ceremony 152). This vision provides Tayo with a map of a curative process the success of which lies in the fact that he experiences a woman, encounters a mountain, locates Josiah’s cattle now lost, and sees a pattern of stars on the course of his healing journey. This vision also suggests the fulfillment of Tayo’s cure rests more on a quest than on static traditional ceremonies. Besides, Betonie performs a bear-cure ceremony over Tayo “to bring his life back in order and to give it, once again, direction, harmony, balance, and happiness” (Harvey 257). For this ceremony, Betonie prepares four hoops and a white-corn sand painting. He then makes Tayo seat in the center of the sand painting and treats him with prayer sticks and hoops while his helper Shush imitates a bear. Commenting on this ceremony, Valerie Harvey writes, “After this ceremony is completed, Tayo begins his recovery and starts his healing process” (258). So, in Betonie, we see the continuation of the old tradition with some modification necessary to accommodate the new realities. The effect of Betonie’s ceremony is immediate upon Tayo as he begins to have a dream of the spotted cattle. Tayo is determined to recover the objects of his dream for “there would be no peace until he did” (Ceremony 145): “He had been so intent on finding the cattle that he had forgotten all the events of the past days and past years. Hunting the cattle was good for that. Old Betonie was right. It was a cure for that, and maybe for other things too” (192). These hybrid cattle Tayo is determined to recover represent the survival of the half-breed culture in the post-contact Indian world. Like Tayo’s, theirs is a story of survival. So, to find them is to find himself. In the words of Roger Dunsmore, “They [Josiah’s spotted cattle] are like him [Tayo]—are him—mixed blood, partway between the wild desert antelope and the white-face Herefords. They are what Tayo must become if he is to survive in this world . . .” (21). Commenting upon the function of the spotted cattle in Tayo’s healing, Susan Blumenthal writes: “When Tayo sets off to find the spotted cattle he in essence embarks on a vision quest to bring back the rain and heal his emotional wounds” (10). What Blumenthal implies here is that the cattle serve Tayo as spirit guides who lead him on his journey of healing. In reality, too, it is while searching for the cattle that Tayo meets the woman, sees the stars, and comes in contact with the mountain of Betonie’s vision. Following the medicine man’s vision, Tayo heads toward Mount Taylor, the sacred mountain of the Laguna people, in search of Josiah’s Mexican cattle. While looking for the cattle, he encounters, on the foot of the mountain, a woman, named Ts’eh later, as the “lady of the apricot tree”. Apparently, for Leslie Silko, Ts’eh is the modern incarnation of the mythical Laguna Mother, Ts’its’tsi’nako or the Thought Woman as the name itself suggests. Susan J. Scarberry calls this sacred feminine figure by the name of Grandmother Spider and gives her the status of a medicine woman: “As a keeper of sacred traditional knowledge, she [Grandmother Spider] is a powerful transmitter of culture. By teaching the young their traditions, she practices ‘preventive medicine’. Through her good advice and knowledge of the old ways, she enables the people to help themselves” (101). Tayo spends the...