Tayo's Quest for Cultural Identity in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony A Thesis Submitted to the Central Department of English

Abstract

In this research, an attempt has been made to analyze protagonist Tayo's quest for his cultural identity in Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony. Tayo’s is a story of contact with attractive but non-Laguna forces, departure from Laguna, and eventual return to Laguna with the acquired knowledge of how to live with those forces. Being abandoned by his mother, and humiliated by his Auntie and friend Emo for his half- breed heritage, Tayo has an acute sense of alienation, cultural dislocation, loss and discrimination. Consequently, he makes his quest moving from one culture to another culture. His quest journey begins with his leaving home to join the World War II, and ends in his homing-in. Unlike his expectation, the war gives him a traumatic experience, which results in his psychological illness. After the failure of the white doctors, he returns to the native culture for his cure. There, firstly he is assisted by a traditional Laguna medicine man, old Ku'oosh and then completely cured by a Navajo healer, Betonie. Tayo performs a ceremony in a renewed native context, which helps him to reconcile with the native land and the spirits. With this reconciliation, Tayo retrieves his cultural position and identity in old Laguna culture. Thus, Tayo's quest for his cultural identity and his discovery of it is the main idea, i.e. thesis of the novel, which has been inquired and explicitly approved in this research work