Thinking Woman and Feeling Man: Gender in Silko's Ceremony

Abstract

Feminist literary criticism of the past decades has often pointed to powerful women figures in American literature. From Hawthorne's Hester Prynne to Alice Walker's Meridian one can find many images which counter the stereotype of the clinging, submissive, and selfsacrificing By contrast, these powerful women are courageous, independent of judgment, and as intelligent as any without becoming egocentric or losing their sense of interpersonal relationships. Little attention has been paid, however, to male figures who are sensitive instead of ruthless, gentle instead of heroic, community-conscious instead of individualistic. It is especially important to find such images in Native American literature because in the popular imagination the American Indian male is still either a savage killer, a degenerate drunkard, or nature's stoic, noble man. I would like to concentrate here on two aspects of gender portrayal in a Native American novel: the holistic depiction of a male protagonist, a feeling man, and the mythological background of such a character portrayal, a female divinity who is a thinking woman. Both are transcending Western stereotypes of gender portrayal. Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony (1977) centers on Tayo, a young man of the Southwestern Laguna tribe, who fought in the Pacific islands during World War II. His cousin, with whom he grew up like a brother, is killed by the Japanese. Tayo is driven insane by this loss as well as by seeing the image of his beloved uncle and stepfather, Josiah, in the face of one of the Japanese he is supposed to shoot. When Tayo returns to the United States, he is placed in a mental hospital in Los Angeles and drugged into senselessness by doctors who are unable to understand his inner turmoil. On his release and return to