Western Ideas In Leslie Silko's Ceremony

From the very start, Leslie Silko’s novel Ceremony features quite a prominent cultural discrepancy between westerners and the Indigenous people. As the novel unfolds, this discrepancy continues to grow in a seemingly exponential manner, where through the characters’ words and actions, white people continually commit numerous forms of aggressions against indigenous people. Given that both Tayo and Silko have in some ways experienced living in two different worlds, it's absolutely essential to the purpose of the novel that Silko criticizes western ideals while promoting Indigenous ideals and cultural norms, that are often underrepresented and underappreciated and stifled by westerners. This novel was meant to be read by westerners. Her intent …show more content…
The people committing such aggressions towards them were seeing indigenous people as subhuman. The idea of subhumanity can be extremely dangerous because it overpowers a vital part of of what allows communities to thrive relatively harmoniously, compassion. Loss of compassion allows a tremendous amount of space for inequality and oppression to form. This creates a superiority complex that some people feel the need to succumb to in order to self-preserve as no one wants be to viewed as a partial human. Tayo’s mom succumbed to this superiority complex in order to eradicate her embarrassment over being Laguna. When white men smiled and waved at her, they were validating her existence and humanity. Even then, both cultures eventually ashamed her. Subsequently, she perished. Individualism isn’t inherently a damaging ideal, in fact, unlike materialism, it carries a neutral connotation, however, the way western individualism is propagated is especially damaging. Individualism is acting in one’s best interest, which arguably, everyone does. However, when associated with ethnocentrism, western individualism, is acting in one’s self interest, regardless of the consequences. For instance, uranium mining. Silko