He sends Tayo to another medicine man named Betonie, who incorporates elements of the modern world into his ceremonies. However, Ku'oosh's ceremony is ineffective against Tayo's battle fatigue because Ku'oosh can't understand modern warfare. Looking to help Tayo, his grandmother summons a medicine man named Ku'oosh. Meanwhile, the Laguna Pueblo reservation is suffering from a drought, an event which mirrors the myth. It is revealed that Tayo once stabbed Emo with a broken bottle because Emo was bragging about taking the teeth of a slain Japanese soldier. His fellow veterans Harley, Leroy, Pinkie, and Emo drink with him, discussing their disappointment from fighting in a white man's war and having nothing to show for it. While staying with his family, Tayo can barely get out of bed, and self-medicates with alcohol. After several years at a military hospital, Tayo is released by his doctors, who believe he will do better at home. Tayo is struggling with the death of his cousin Rocky during the Bataan Death March, and the loss of his uncle Josiah, who died on the Pueblo while Tayo was at war. A parallel story tells of a time when the Pueblo nation was threatened by a drought as punishment for listening to a practitioner of "witchery" in order to redeem the people, Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly must journey to the Fourth World to find Reed Woman.
In addition to Tayo's story in the present, the novel flashes back to his experiences before and during the war. His white doctors say he is suffering from "battle fatigue," which would be called post-traumatic stress disorder today. The title Ceremony is based on the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and Pueblo people.Ĭeremony follows a half- Pueblo, half-white man named Tayo after his return from World War II. Ceremony is a novel by writer Leslie Marmon Silko ( Laguna Pueblo), first published by Viking Press in March 1977.
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