Summary and Analysis: Ceremony

Author
Lesile Marmon Silko, born in Albuquerque, NM in 1948, grew up an outsider among her tribe on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. Silko was only 1/4 Pueblo and also identified with Anglo American and Mexican which excluded her from tribal activities. Ceremony was published in 1977 and in 1981 she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Grant and and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. Critics have associated Silko as one of the key figures of the Native American Renaissance.

Setting
On a Laguna Pueblo Reservation located about thirty-five miles from Albuquerque, and about seventy miles from Los Alamos. Presumably the same reservation that Silko grew up on. 

Characters
Tayo- A half-white, half-Laguna man who has returned from WWII and is continuing to struggle with "battle fatique". 
Betonie- A mixed blood Navajo healer who guides Tayo to complete a new ceremony he believes will cure the contemporary world. He is an outcast due to his unconventional methods and contact with whites.
Auntie- Raised Tayo as a child after his mother (her younger sister) was banished and resents him for being mixed. She is a firm believer in Laguna traditions, but is also a Catholic convert. She runs the household and seeks the grief of her neighbors for all her burdens.
Josiah- Tayo's uncle. He is one of the few people on the reservation who accept Tayo and takes his nephew under his wing to educate him about Laguna traditions. Josiah abides to both traditional customs, but also had an affair with the Mexican Night Swan and raised Mexican cattle.
Night Swan-An attractive, Mexican woman, probably a katsina, who seduces men to teach them to interact and live harmoniously among people outside of their race. 
Harley- Tayo's childhood friend who also went off to war, but is apparently in a more stable mental state than Tayo. Harley, like most Pueblos returned from the war, spends his free time in bars and developed a severe alcohol dependency.
Rocky- Tayo's cousin and adoptive brother. Tayo followed him off to war, but Rocky died in the Philippines. When Tayo returns home, he feels guilty that he survived instead of Rocky because he was the perfect son--a native pueblo successfully assimilated to white culture. 
Grandma-Tayo's grandmother serves as a female in the novel who is the most consistent with her Laguna traditions/beliefs. She recommends that Tayo see a medicine man and slips him pieces of wisdom through out his life.
Old Ku'oosh- The Laguna medicine man. He is not successful in curing Tayo using a traditional ceremony and recommends him to Betonie. Although traditional, Ku'oosh is accepting of Tayo after he completes the new ceremony.
Emo- A childhood friend and foil to Tayo. Emo belittles Tayo about his mixed blood, yet he brags about how in the war days he would sleep with white women and was treated like a white man. When Tayo begins to criticize Emo for his glorified perception on the war, Tayo becomes the target of his anger.
Plot
Tayo returns from war traumatized by Rocky's death and a vivid hallucination he had of watching Josiah be executed. After he is released from the Veteran's Hospital, he finds his homeland is suffering from drought which he blames himself for because he prayed for rain to stop while he fought in the jungles of Philippines. The protagonist is revisited by a childhood friends and  finds that they have all become alcoholics and pass the time talking about how great the war was and the respect they received when in uniform. Their ignorance of the "white destruction" and their lack of respect for their heritage makes Tayo sick and he feels even more of an outcast. Tayo's health worsens and his Grandmother sends for Ku'oosh to cure him. However, Ku'oosh's traditional ceremony seems too outdated to rid whatever evil is in Tayo's body. 

As predicted, Ku'oosh's ceremony does not cure Tayo and he begins to reflect on the events leading up the war. He recalls the Mexican cattle he helped Josiah raise and beautiful Night Swan. The summer before he went off to war there was a drought, yet Tayo managed to  successfully invent a rain ceremony. That same summer, Tayo slept with Night Swan.

Ku'oosh recommends Tayo to seek the help of a controversial medicine man, Betonie. The medicine man has a unique knowledge of the issues that occur when Native Americans come in contact with whites and after listening to Tayo's problems, he realizes they will need to create a new ceremony. Betonie tells Tayo that his grandfather started a ceremony similar to the one that they must conduct to defeat white destruction, but says there is still more to be done. From there Tayo is set on a mission to find Josiah's cattle. Along the way he follows the stars to a women's home, named Ts'eh, and climbs a mountain where he finds the cattle. When he looses track of the cattle a mountain lion appears and guides him to the lifestock. As he tries to herd the cattle, he is stopped by two white patrolmen who agree to let him off for trespassing if he hunts the lion. While he searches, it begins to snow which masks the animal tracks and he runs back to Ts'eh's home to find she has successfully corralled the cattle. 

Although Tayo retrieves Josiah's cattle, the drought persists a signal that the ceremony has yet to completed. Tayo spends the rest of the summer with Ts'eh and receives some alarming news from his Uncle that Emo and the police are searching for him. Ts'eh helps Tayo escape from the police and Tayo takes refuge in a former uranium mine to hide from Emo, Harley, and Leroy. Tayo realizes that this symbol of white destruction is the final  piece to his ceremony. His angry friends catch up to him and we has to hide while silently witness Emo kill Harley. Tayo returns to Ku'oosh's hut to tell him about the ceremony which he discovered was blessed by A'moo'ooh--disguised as Ts'eh. Since leaving the mine, the drought has ended and the white destruction has ceased. Tayo spends the night at Ku'oosh's hut to finish off the ceremony and peacefully returns home.

Narrative Voice
Ceremony is written in the third person and mostly focuses on the thoughts and feelings of Tayo. However, a new voice enters the novel in each of the poems that split up the text.

Theme
In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, it is suggested that adapting and blending cultures is the best way to avoid destruction and promote human unity.

Quotes
 "They never thought to blame white people for any of it; they wanted white people for their friends.(39)"
Although miscegenation is a motif in this novel, Tayo is pretty opposed to the integration of Pueblo people and whites because he feels they are the root of all the destruction to his ancestor's land and even in Japan. This shows how badly Tayo wishes to see a change in his fellow Pueblos and completely cut ties to white society.

"'It seems like I already heard these stories before...only thing is, the names sound different. (242)"' 
Grandma ending the novel with this phrase is evidence of the intertextuality that is the basis of Ceremony. Silko retells the classic clan/tribe stories that she grew up with through the journey of a "modern" man, or unexpected hero. The many layers of tradition and stories that make up this novel are really what makes this such a revered piece of Native American literature.