Tayo, the protagonist of Ceremony, lives in more than just one reality; lives in worlds that exist when you begin to feel their touch on your skin. Worlds where nightmares occur while you're awake, people and animals who say and do things that you see and hear, but no one else does. He inhabits a world where all that remains of everyone else's reality is a patch of sunshine: a world where it is difficult for him to decipher what is "real" and what he feels and experiences, all while others they call crazy. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Throughout the ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko brings to light Tayo's experience that every reader will find emotionally wrenching and emotionally authentic. Tayo, a man of Laguna and white blood, was born into a world where he is taught to act and be a certain way by Western society; a world filled with corpses, gunshots and the betrayal of war. When Tayo returns from World War II, he enters another world where all his experienced physical realities, spiritual realities, and recurring traumatic realities are combined into one. We read his story through poems, legends, dreams and witchcraft. Tayo experiences this reality and is seen from the outside by the characters in the novel and by readers of the novel who might call him "crazy." Crazy, defined as; full of cracks or flaws, unbalanced, unreasonable, offensive, unreasonable and/or out of control. But Tayo is not crazy, he is grieving, he is coming to terms with his life and we see a reality in which his experience of time, emotions and ceremonies does not depend on what counts as “real” or “not real” from his experiences. I just am. They are not crazy, they exist and if you let them make sense and trust his stories without claiming them as “folklore”, “myths”, “magical realism” or “madness”, it might start to make sense. he meets Tayo, he's in the hospital and dissociating, but when: "He watched the room grow brighter, as the square of light steadily grew warmer, yellower as the sun rose," he begins to feel more grounded. This is where we start, with sunlight. This is a moment where Tayo sees himself as others see him. He has been sleeping for a long time and when we wake up in a new life, this patch of sunshine is what keeps him present. The light serves as a reminder to bring him back to land on stable ground, something he can understand is not only what he is seeing, but everyone else as well. This square of light will bring him back to his body. When Tayo wakes up in the hospital, he is invisible, he sees and hears people telling him that he is invisible, except the doctors and people in the hospital, they see him. But they see him sick and vomiting when Tayo might see himself in a field with a deer. His memories appear before him, clouding the rest of the scene, acting parallel in his mind to what he is doing. For example, while talking to a doctor, or walking down the corridor, Tayo is communicating with the doctor, he sees the white panels and flickering lights of a corridor but at the same time a memory floods his vision; gunshots, rainforests, death, broken limbs. His behavior in these parallel universes may seem insensitive to the people around him, lack understanding, or not notice him at all. When Tayo is in the hospital and when he comes home after being there for months, he is obviously uncomfortable, his body is sick with panic and the medicine he is prescribed doesn't make him feel better and all of this together makes him feel better again. more lost. Doctors and much of his family are trying to force him to lose touch with his multiple realities and place him in one that requires standards andrespect for the rules. “The medicine drained the memory from his thin arms and replaced it with a twilight cloud behind his eyes. It was not possible to continue mourning the remote and foggy mountain. If they hadn't dressed him and led him to the car, he would still be there, drifting along the north wall, invisible in the gray twilight. Sunlight, remote mountain, hospital, fog, dusk, car; where is it located? He is not in one or the other, he is in several places at once, he is adrift between realities. Tayo was raised in the very early years of his life by his single mother. The moments spent with her are images he sometimes returns to. He and his mother did not have a stable home, and much of his childhood is described as regularly hungry and uncomfortable. The same kind of feelings he still feels and describes throughout the book. Feelings left empty without meaning, feelings and traumas that he can't put into words and when he can't find a way to connect and translate his feelings and dissociation into the physical world, reality is changed. Tayo has lived a life where he had to resist emotions. She had to push him away for the sake of fitting in or not giving him permission. When he is four his mother leaves and he ends up living with his aunt, uncle, their child and other relatives. This family becomes his family. Tayo and his cousin Rocky grow up together, sharing the same table, the same bed, the same food and the same education. But they don't share the same amount of affection as growing kids. Tayo's aunt is reluctant to identify Tayo as a close relative and it is very clear that Rocky is her only child and the one she supports the most. Tayo is accepted and welcomed more intimately by his uncle Josiah and his aunt's husband, Robert. Tayo grows up without knowing his mother and without his aunt mentioning it. He kept a photo of his mother, a treasure for him and one day his aunt took it away from him and never gave it back: “He cried over this and Josiah came to console him; he asked Tayo why he was crying…he couldn't tell Josiah about the photo; he loved Josiah too much to admit the shame... he wanted his aunt to give him back... but he could never ask her." Tayo grew up trying to forget and detach himself from the loss of his mother and the rejection. But people can't so easily forgetting and ignoring the past and how it affects the body and as Josiah explains to Tayo “…only humans had to endure anything because only humans resisted what they saw outside of themselves.” This resistance causes the mind to dissociate, to escape the pain or to be able to experience it in a different realm. This is where the ceremony can enter into Tayo's life to guide him towards less resistance and greater commitment. memories, stories intertwined and on the surface is Tayo's journey from being hospitalized to sharing his story as part of the ceremony In that journey we learn a list of prevailing details about why Tayo has so much to identify what be it a memory, a dream or an experience beyond his life on earth. Tayo had different influences from his Laguna culture and Western culture. Tayo and his family were all forced into Indian boarding schools, Catholicism, and the world of dominant whites. Some members of his family were interested in practicing Laguna ceremonies and lifestyles, although his aunt is attracted to the culture of technology, English language and education which have a great influence on him and Rocky. He ends up fighting in World War II with his cousin Rocky. These are all products of his past that lead to hisloss of contact with reality. We see a timeline of Tayo growing up without his parents, going to war, losing loved ones, and the initial stages of losing touch with himself. These early stages happen when Tayo returns home from the war, without Rocky, who he and he come. home to his uncle Josiah who died on the battlefield or in the cattle fields. He returns to a different lifestyle, this is when he enters the worlds living in multiple realities. It always starts in his stomach, when his thoughts, memories and dreams start to intertwine and get lost in each other, his body shifts with them and responds with nausea. Throughout the book we see him many times hunched over and vomiting, his body convulsing as his mind takes him back and forth, in and out, from places of fear, places of pain, loss, places where he is empty and alone . But in his pain he also finds moments of balance. He is shown a new way to handle his detachment and this is where he begins to rehearse the ceremony. Betoine, a sorcerer from the Lagoon, is one of the people who introduces Tayo to the ceremony and how to create bridges from dream worlds, visions and the reality of the present moment. Betoine takes Tayo through a healing ceremony in the mountains and offers healing tools, how to stay grounded and how to find home when you are lost. Through the healing process, a song is born from the ceremony that Betoine sings: Following my footprints Walk home Following my footprints Return home, return happily belonging to your home Return again to long life and happiness Return to long life and happiness E-hey- yah-ah-na! Tayo begins to use the ceremony as a daily practice that can live through him and keep him in balance. The ceremony for Tayo consists of telling stories, cutting the thread to cross borders, scattering pollen in the footsteps of an animal he is following and finding refuge in the mountains where he lives: "close to the earth, where the core was cool and silent like stone mountain...."and even with the noise and pain in his head he knew what it would be like: a return rather than a separation." These moments of ceremony where the sun and earth keep him stable and protect him in noise, sight, taste and touch, he can begin to re-engage with the world from which he so often feels separated. The ceremony teaches him how to return safely from the different worlds, dreams and hallucinations he is experiencing, helps him recover after leaving his body and reality. With the ritual and simplicity provided by the ceremony, Tayo begins to learn that his visions and detachment diminish from him, that "his illness was only a part of something greater, and its cure would only be found into something big and inclusive of everything." he discovers that he can make connections between his dissociations towards his community and the land. Through the ceremonies he is trying to learn how his separation from reality can be used to translate his life. “In a world of crickets, wind and poplars he was almost alive again; it was visible. The green waves of dead faces and the screams of the dying that echoed in his head have been buried. The disease had retreated into a shadow behind him, something he saw only out of the corner of his eye, over his shoulder. “The practice of the ceremony occurs when Tayo becomes visible, when he can be clearly seen by himself and those around him. Ceremony is what you do, it can become you and show you how to interact with the world. It can serve as a tool to create boundaries, limits, affordances, that improve you and help you care for yourself and every other living being. All beings impact you and you impact,, 2016.