Inventory of lessons from novels

Two of our last three novels have featured an author (Morrison’s Jazz and Silko’s Ceremony) writing about a time, or rather an “experience” that they didn’t live through.  Our in class discussions have showed how a persons experience, at least as it is able to be revealed through first person narration, is limited to the actions that directly affect that person. (ie can’t relate anything they don’t see)  Perhaps what makes each of these novels so good is that they are not constrained by the someone’s actual experience; instead, the narrators are given the freedom to experience anything someone living during this time may have experienced.  In other words, Silko allows Tayo to embody every problem faced by Laguna war veterans, instead of having his “experience” be constrained to what happened to a real person.

Silko weaves traditional Laguna myths and poems into Ceremony to help the reader understand more about this lifestyle.  Each of the myths that Silko uses explains a different part of the Laguna heritage, and how the Laguna people used these myths to explain their different trials and tribulations, such as drought.  These myths were necessary to the novel because in that they bridged the connection between new and traditional Laguna life, both for the reader and for the novels protaginist Tayo.