A Study Of Tayo's Trauma And Recovery In Ceremony From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

As a masterpiece of Leslie Marmon Silko(1948-),Ceremony is a classic representative of contemporary Native American literature.As a mixed-blood who grew up on the reservation of Laguna Pueblo,Silko has been committed to work on Native American themes,intending to awaken the national identity of the Natives through literature,to develop a positive attitude towards life for the confused Native Americans who live on the margins of societies.Ceremony combines the Western modernist writing method of stream of consciousness and the oral tradition of Laguna storytelling.Its unique narrative methods and techniques,profound cultural connotations and thinking about the fate of the Natives have aroused the scholars' strong interest in this work.The main storyline of the novel follows Tayo as he returns from World War ?,experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD)and healing.At the same time,it interspersed with traditional Laguna myths,and the development of the myths suggests the healing effect of “ceremony” on his psychological trauma.This paper focuses on exploring the symptom,cause and recovery method of Tayo's trauma,with the triple spaces of this novel established by Silko's narrative being a guide,analyzing and explaining the process of Tayo's trauma and recovery reasonably from the perspective of spatial criticism,to explore the intention of Silko's spatial narrative and its narrative function.In the construction of the textual space,by using multiple narrative,Silko juxtaposes the Native mythologies with the main line,and by using non-linear narrative,she inserts the pre-war memories of Tayo into themain line by flashbacks,thus the textual space's disorder exactly reflects the symptom of his disordered state of mind.The social space explored in this paper contains the white social space and the Native social space.By analyzing the geographical and cultural exclusion and isolation of Tayo from the two social spaces,as well as his self-rejection and isolation from both societies in turn,it reveals that the social isolation is the root cause of his psychological trauma.This paper argues that,Silko builds the topographical space of the novel by both real and virtual places and vision showed both in the real experience and in the sand-paintings of Tayo,suggesting that not only returning to Native traditions but also the culture syncretism of the Native's and the Western can solve the Native American mixed-blood identity crisis of Tayo.Through the analysis of Silko's spatial narrative,this paper explores the whole process of Tayo's trauma and recovery,which explains the rationality of the process,and finds the spatial narrative's function of suggestion and metaphor in the story line,providing a new perspective for explaining the trauma and recovery of the protagonist.To solve the identity crisis of Native Americans,it needs to return to the Native traditional culture,and to accept advanced Western culture at the same time.At the same time,this paper also reveals the novel's implicational role in solving the crisis of Native Americans.It's believed that the solution is returning to the traditional Native culture while accepting the advanced aspects of Western culture and accepting cultural syncretism.