Ceremony

Ceremony CONNECTIONS WITH NATURE In Ceremony, Leslie Silko makes a connection in the novel between the spotted cattle and Tayo, and then obscures them until it is difficult to decide where one ends and the other begins. Some of these lines are vague, for example, the use of flies, deer, grasshoppers, and frogs that work in and around larger concepts and set the stage, preparing the reader for more complex metaphors. Other lines are bold and powerful. The passage between Tayo and the cattle is possibly the boldest of all. Like a hoop encircling the story, Silko uses the spotted cattle as a metaphor for Tayo’s transition, and of Tayo’s struggle to find himself and to finish the story. Through Tayo’s relationship with the spotted cattle, we can follow Tayo’s progression. First, with Tayo’s experiences away from home and then with his experiences while at home. The spotted cattle are everywhere in Ceremony, but they are nowhere by accident. Like Tayo, they are part of the pattern and there are two particular places in the book where Silko uses them to point to an evident link to Tayo. The link that Tayo has with the spotted cattle first begins when Josiah and he go tayo, cattle, silko, spotted, land, connection, between, story, passage, able, white, war, people, own, makes, himself, follow, away, way, two, through, pattern, part, man, link, lie, important, home, find, end, both, book, without, while, separated