Silko's Ceremony: Exploration of Traumatised Psyche

The fourth chapter of Scott Carpenter’s book focuses on analyzing a literary character using psychoanalytic theories. He how characters’ actions can be explained from their experiences, right from childhood. In other words, life span development is closely linked to a person’s personality, and literary characters symbolize this fact. Similarly, he also notes that by interpreting literary text in terms of psychoanalytic theory, characters’ hallucinations, dreams, etc., illustrate their subliminal neuroses, anxieties, and desires. He notes, “This type of interpretation, often quite rewarding, may seek to demonstrate how certain childhood experiences mark a character over the long haul, expressing themselves in some form of symptomatic behavior” (Carpenter 79). Considering these facts, this paper conducts a psychoanalytical analysis of the central character, Tayo, in Leslie Silko’s 1977 novel Ceremony. With Native American and Caucasian parentage, Tayo is the embodiment of the identity crises of a nation that houses people of various identities. He is made of aware of being different from a young age and harrowing events, including a war, leave him traumatized the first we know him in the novel. This paper that as the name of the novel , Ceremony illustrates the importance of ceremonies in enabling people to deal with their psychoanalytical issues stemming from adverse events in their childhood and thus, in dealing with life span trauma.

Discussion

If we observe Tayo as a patient when we take the psychoanalyst’s chair, at first, it seems that he displays the symptoms of a soldier suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (a term Silko obviously refrains from using because it the western medicine interpretation of the condition), but we soon realize this is not true. The first time we meet Tayo, it is the summer of 1948, right after the World War II. He is sick and recuperating in the Veteran’s hospital, where he has been cured of malaria and even developed a better will to live than right after the war. Here, the fact that his will to live has been affected that he has already experienced PTSD at its worst—having suicidal thoughts is a symptom of extreme PTSD. It has already been three years since the war, and it can be said that he had been in the mental ward of the hospital for a long time by now. However, he remains fragile because of his experiences: “He could feel it inside his skull—the tension of little threads being pulled and how it was with tangled things, things tied together, and as he tried to pull them apart and rewind them into their places, they snagged and tangled even more” (Silko 42). The pressure he feels inside his head is a symptom of PTSD as is the manner in which he vomits without any physical malaise when he moves from the hospital to his aunt’s place to recuperate fully. For instance, when exposed to direct light, he begins to vomit. In addition, his aunt’s actions such as changing the bed sheets on his and his dead cousin’s—Rocky, who was also his best friend—bed, make him sick to the core, and he vomits. PTSD patients are known to vomit when they are reminded of a traumatic event. This is also a revelation of the fact that Tayo’s sickness, that is, his distress exhibited in his body’s emetic response, is not simply in the PTSD caused by the war but also because of losing Rocky. Moreover, PTSD patients experience an unwanted recurrence of disturbing memories linked to a traumatic event; these can be in the form of nightmares as well. Indeed, Tayo experiences a recurrence of troubled memories during the war when he chances upon the body of a dead Japanese soldier. He is reminded of Josiah, an uncle to whom Tayo was close and who dies while Tayo was at war, so much that he is convinced he has killed in uncle thinking of him as the enemy. Rocky, who was alive and with him has to make force Tayo to look at the corpse: “Tayo, this is a Jap! This is a Jap uniform…. Look Tayo, look at the face” (Silko 43). Tayo’s response to this was to scream because the eyes of the dead soldier reminded him of Uncle Josiah. This event also illustrates Tayo’s PTSD was not simply because of the war. He was already traumatized by the death of a loved one. In addition, Tayo has dreams/nightmares about Josiah, wherein he can smell the dead man as if he was alive—“horses, woodsmoke, and sweat” (Silko 32)—and it makes him weep with a sense of loss and regret. These dreams can also be connected to the war and to Rocky’s eventual death. Since he is around 26 years old in 1948, he has had tough experiences with death that have made caused his suffering. The knowledge of such events and linking them to Tayo’s symptoms enable an understanding of the intensity of Tayo’s PTSD, a sickness that exacerbates his mental health and not something that has manifested only because of the war.

Tayo also experienced many adverse events while growing up, which caused him to suffer from a plethora of issues that impacted his mental well-being. To begin with, he was born in a Gallup, a Laguna reservation, which like many Native American reservations in the United States, was characterized by poverty. This was worsened by the severe drought that happened at this time as well as the World War I. Now, poverty is known to increase the risk of mental illness, including substance abuse, which Tayo suffered from. His poverty status was defined by the reservation schools he was sent to—Native Americans had little choice but to send their children to these schools, where the Native American culture was belittled by Catholic educators. This could have potentially affected his negative affectivity, that is, with a high negative affectivity, he must have seen himself and a range of aspects of the world around him in mostly negative terms. In addition, it did not help Tayo’s cause that was the product of a white father and Laguna mother—although a Laguna in that he grows on the reservation, he resembles his father with his green eyes. This means he has an identity crises that defines him from a very young age. Moreover, the fact that his father abandoned his mother and him means Tayo has to grow with a face that would always remind him of this fact. His mother too, unable to bear the shame of being an unwed mother, abandons him, and Tayo grows up with his aunt as the maternal figure in his life. Tayo’s aunt, however, does not love him as much as she loves the idea of making a sacrifice in bringing up an abandoned child. This is especially shown in her meanness when she berates a young Tayo’s sense of identity and masculinity by describing his mother as a wanton woman: “She was completely naked except for her high-heeled shoes” (Silko 70). A revelation of these events show a therapist that Tayo suffered from abandonment trauma. When children in their developing years are not protected adequately, they are likely to suffer from the PTSD of abandonment trauma. Tayo was undoubtedly exposed to some malicious upbringing that caused him to suffer from this. Moreover, children who suffer from abandonment trauma are likely to face issues as adults, especially when combined with other kinds of trauma. While this trauma is experienced mostly due to adverse events in childhood, it can also be experienced in adulthood. Tayo lost Josiah and Rocky as an adult, and this means his abandonment trauma must have begun in his developing years and was further aggravated in his adult years. The symptoms of trauma are depression and a feeling that one is losing control—one that Tayo dealt with by turning to alcohol. Similarly, there a tendency to want to avoid people and relationships in patients here, and Tayo’s extreme aversion to light can be linked to a subliminal need to avoid people. Another symptom of abandonment trauma is setting unrealistic expectations on oneself. Before leaving for the war, Josiah had asked Tayo to take care of Rocky, but Rocky died in the Bataan Death March, wherein POWs were treated inhumanely and recklessly killed by the Japanese Imperial Army. Clearly, there is nothing Tayo could have done to keep Rocky safe when they were both POWs. However, Tayo was filled with guilt, which resulted in his inability deal with Rocky’s death and even the death of Uncle Josiah (this can also be survivor’s guilt, which is common in war experiences). Similarly, he feels guilty for bringing the drought to Gallup because he cursed the rain while at war.

Now, as a therapist, it is important to aid Tayo in overcoming the trauma that has affected him so deeply. Psychological therapy acknowledges the importance of ceremonies in dealing with trauma. In other words, the process of a ceremony and the preparation for it can enable people to deal with trauma. Thus, ceremonies such as funerals and wakes are important not only as social observations but also as means by which the mourners can deal with the impact of the trauma that is death of a loved one. Indeed, the Laguna solution is thus definitely a good means by which Tayo’s trauma can be handled. This is a treatment mentioned early in the novel, the ceremony can heal his spirit—“the only cure I know is a good ceremony” (Silko 3). In fact, the ceremony in this case is symbolic of the transformation Tayo must experience to become a character that is able to beat the stressors in his environment and the trauma in his past to live (Carpenter 73). In this context, it can also be noted that the novel foreshadows the difficulty Tayo will experience with death right from the time he dissects his first frog is school and time he hunts his first deer with Josiah, Rocky, and Robert. The distinct lack of trauma in these deaths aggravates the trauma in the deaths of the people. As Josiah states, “only humans had to endure anything, because only humans resisted anything they saw outside of themselves” (Silko 27). This understanding of this existential plight that leads to people experience trauma is also an excellent means of developing self-awareness—as if through cognitive behavior therapy—that can help deal with trauma. The fact that, as the novel suggests, Tayo recollects this indicates his ability to overcome his trauma.

Conclusion

Silko’s Ceremony is presented in a non-chronological fashion, which enable the reader to have an acute understanding of Tayo’s psyche—he is a man impacted by his mixed heritage; deaths of his close ones; and the trauma of war. Clearly, Tayo’s PTSD was instigated by the trauma of the war, but he was already traumatized by the deaths of people that he loved. In addition, he also suffered from PTSD caused by abandonment trauma in his developing years. This is because his parents abandoned him and his aunt was a distant maternal figure. Furthermore, he experienced this trauma in his adult years as well with the death of the Rocky and Josiah. Other trauma was caused by poverty; bad experiences with authority figures, that is, teachers (that could have impacted his negative affectivity); and an identity crises because of his mixed heritage meant that Tayo had a hard life indeed. Given these facts, the ceremony, on which the title of the novel is based, was an important means by which Tayo could overcome these adverse events in his life.