An Ecocritical Analysis Of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony

Leslie Mamron Silko is a Laguna Pueblo novelist, poet, and short story writer, among the foremost writers to emerge from the Native American literary renaissance of 1970s, as one of the most prominent contemporary Native American writers. Her novel Ceremony published in 1977 has received the greatest critical acclaim and aroused enormous interest in the academic field of the United States and abroad. Considered as one of the most successful work of Silko, Ceremony immediate attracts the readers’interest by its vivid characterization and inventive plots after its publication. Unlike the "savage" Native American image misrepresented and interpreted in some other white authors’works, Silko presents a more authentic life of modern Native American people.The relationship between the Native American and the Nature is one of the most important themes of this novel. This thesis explores Native American’s attitude towards the Nature by analyzing the protagonist, Tayo’s process of recovering himself from the sickness on the perspective of ecocriticism.This thesis consists of five chapters including introduction and conclusion.Chapter One briefly introduces the background of the analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Literature review of Ceremony also included in chapter one. Significance and the structure of the thesis are included in this part as well.Chapter Two gives an overview of ecocriticism, including its development and definitions raised by some scholars as well as presents the cultural background of the Native American’s ecological perspective on the NatureChapter Three tries to analyze the disharmonious relationships in Ceremony. One is disharmonious relationship between the Human Beings and the Nature, which including the Human Beings’ignorance respect for the Nature, for the Land and for the Animals. The other is disharmony among the Human Beings, including the opposite relationship between White and Native. These disharmonies contribute to Tayo’s sickness and his losing of identity. By analyzing the reasons for these disharmonies, a series of ceremonies are needed to reconstruct the harmonies.Chapter Four aims to analyze Tayo’s reconstruction of harmonious relationship by series of ceremonies. Helped by two medicine men named Ku’oosh and Betonie, and a woman named Ts’eh in his ceremonies, Tayo learns to accept new things brought by the Whites and finds the balance between two different cultures. He also learns to accept the changes in the changing world and realizes himself as an integral to the world; he finally finds his connection to his culture.Chapter Five presents that the Human Beings must return to the Nature and live in harmony with it, only in this way can the Human Beings live in generation by generation, which agrees to the perspective of Native American to the Nature.