Grief And A Headhunter's Ceremony Analysis

Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony is a fictional novel with the intent of healing the protagonist, Tayo, through a series of stories, where he would find answers in the characters from the stories as part of his journey. Its ritual is represented in old traditional events that always repeat themselves, which means the result for every main character is almost always the same. In Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage, the ritual is being reported first hand and the conclusion is based on what evidence has been collected by Renato Rosaldo. His fieldwork on the Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage provided an insight on a ritual practice that serves as a healing method to individuals that were dealing with rage and grief.
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These characters that Silko created show her main concerns with the continuation of the Native American culture by suggesting a few changes. For example, she presents her audience with Betonie, a medicine man that advises Tayo on what he needs to do by referring to personal stories and ideas of change (Silko, 95). Betonie provided some insight as to why ceremonial change was necessary. He suggested that tradition is subject to change and for Tayo to be cured, adjustments needed to be made (Silko, 101). Silko also creates female characters to be close to Tayo as part of his procedure. She uses them to expose his strengths and weaknesses, but most importantly show the importance of female roles in Laguna stories. Silko refers to Tayo as a mixed breed, which allows Silko’s imagination to go either way. Her fiction writing provides a sense of self-awareness for Tayo’s character because she is trying to let the audience know that Tayo is different from his Laguna community and white community. Her main point is that since Tayo is a mixed breed, new procedures could not be avoided, hence the introduction of