[Also, just FYI:
this post will be spoiling the heck out of the climax to its focal text, Leslie
Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony (1977).
If you haven’t read it, well, go do so ASAP and then meet me back here!]
On the climactic
decision and its aftermath that together exemplify everything I love about
America and American literature.
There are lots
of reasons why we read fiction: to see aspects of our identities reflected yet
also to connect to experiences and lives different from our own; to learn about
dark and painful realities yet also to be inspired by what can be; to be
entertained and comforted yet also to be challenged and forced to grow; to
remember and to imagine; and so many more. When I think about the American novels
that I’d put at the top of my list—an ever-changing category, but certainly
including The
Marrow of Tradition; The
Awakening; My
Ántonia;
Absalom,
Absalom!; and The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—what tends to link them is that they
achieve many of these goals and effects. And I’m not sure any American novel
comes closer to achieving all of them than Leslie
Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), a
work both specific to its worlds and contexts (Laguna Pueblo Native American
culture, World War II veteran experiences, the Southwest United States) and universally
relevant, both traditional and postmodern, both historical and supernatural, both
tragic and inspiring.
Every element
and moment of Silko’s novel contributes to those aspects and effects, but I’d
say they all coalesce in one climactic and amazing three-page section. As I
wrote in this
post, the section begins with the protagonist, Tayo, making a utopian
choice: faced with a situation in which it’s practically impossible for him not
to respond with violence (particularly since he has done so in an parallel yet
not as extreme earlier moment), Tayo instead courageously resists that impulse,
and the forces of evil, prejudice, and destruction (within his community,
nationally, and spiritually) that lie behind it. Having done so, he comes over
the next two pages to a series of powerful and crucial epiphanies and revelations:
about history and heritage, his family and his identity, the reservation and
the nation, his long-lost mother and his own life and future, about, in short, every
central character, setting, and theme in the novel. I’ve taught Silko’s novel
at least ten separate times now, and I’ll freely admit to getting choked up
each and every time I read this section.
It’s a beautiful
and powerful moment on many levels, but I suppose if I had to boil it down, I
would do so through a quote from another inspiring American scene in a work I
love: President Andrew
Shepherd’s climactic speech in The
American President (1995). The speech is full of great lines, but I’m
thinking specifically of this one: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced
citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.” To be
clear, I don’t mean to suggest that Tayo, or any Native American, has to “earn”
his or her American citizenship any more fully than any of the rest of us.
Quite the opposite, I’d say that Tayo here exemplifies a concept both Shepherd
and I would apply to all Americans: that if we hope to reach our ideals, our
best selves—as individuals, as communities, and as a nation—well, to quote my favorite
line from this section in Silko’s novel, “The only thing is: it has never been
easy.” It’s far easier to give in to the worst of what we have been or can be,
whether that means meeting violence and hate with the same, getting cynical and
pessimistic about the future, settling for far less than we can be, or any other
understandable but limiting and ultimately destructive choice. But as Tayo and
Silko demonstrate in this amazing section, the hard way is the better, and the
American, way.
My last American
love (for the week) tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
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