| Double-consciousness, a term originally introduced by W. E. B. Du Bois in his 1897 essay "The Strivings of the Negro People," and later, more famously, in The Souls of Black Folk, is a complicated identity doubleness that Du Bois defined for African Americans. Although Du Bois defines his term as an African American complexity, it is my belief that double-consciousness is applicable to other minority groups in the United States, including American Indians. Leslie Marmon Silko explores double-consciousness within her American Indian characters in her novel Ceremony.; Silko presents a post-war psychological struggle within the novel's protagonist, Tayo, a World War II veteran. Other than Tayo, the American Indian characters in the novel strain to identify American Indian culture and consciousness within white America. While most characters struggle with double-consciousness, Tayo struggles, instead, with an altered double-consciousness that stems from his biracial identity. |
