Leslie Groves

since the coming of the white race, the growing genre of Native American literature often explores the relationship between Native American culture and white culture and the effects such a contrasting mixture of perspectives can have on a human being. Leslie Marmon Silko, arguably the predominant Native American author, examines this relationship profoundly in Ceremony, the story of a Laguna Indian World War II veteran named Tayo who fights the post-traumatic stress disorder the war inflicted…

It couldn’t have been past 10 a.m. when the alarm went off. We all knew what it meant- we were firefighters, it’s what we do. The fire chief told us that an apartment complex in downtown Boston had gone ablaze, and that it was really bad. We quickly got into our uniforms and hopped on as the fire truck left the station. We were a few miles away before I saw the smoke, a dark giant against the bright blue sky. As we neared the complex, I could see the huge crowd of people gathered around…

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is a story about reconstruction, redemption, and the salvation of oneself and world. The mixed narrative of prose and poems follows the recovery of Tayo, a Native American man who returns home to the Laguna Pueblo reservation after fighting in World War II riddled with PTSD and hatred towards the outside world. Tayo 's struggles represent the struggles of the clashing of Native American and White culture both in physical space and within people, as Tayo represents…

The Destructiveness of Jealousy and Greediness What made Othello, written by William Shakespeare in the 17th century, popular is that the play dealt with sensible topics as racism and race. The protagonist of the play is a dark skinned foreigner, surrounded by white characters. Othello’s race makes him sensible for criticism of the people around him, because he knows that he will always be the weaker ‘species’. But what is shown in this play is that it is not his race that will be his downfall.…

“Lullaby” is one of Leslie Marmon Silko’s most noted pieces out of her collection of short stories in her book “Storyteller.” In this short story, it starts off with an old woman named Ayah, who is reminiscing on life experiences. Silko writes the story as if it were told from a storyteller, just as the Natives shared stories amongst each other in order to heal and transform the experience of loss in both personal and culture. (Taibl) With storytelling, Silko includes Native American culture,…

Leslie Marmon Silko novels, Ceremony and Storyteller, both use figurative language and point of view in order to express her culture in a way the readers may understand. Although both novels are alike, they differ through the structure and format of the novels - storytelling and nonlinear narrative. In “Ceremony” Silko use of images center Laguna life and Native American culture, while “Storyteller” is structured through short stories of Laguna people. Both texts explore the similarities of…

In Storyteller, Silko emphasizes the concept of human nature through the usage of register, spacing, and semantic choices in an effort to help the reader gain a clear understanding of people and their instincts. The marxist lens shows how Silko employs purposeful spacing and analogies to highlight the innate temporal instinct that humans ultimately possess and how that leads to direct consequences. In Silko’s story regarding the Ck’o’yo medicine man (105-113), she employs poetry style writing…

Hazel who is a sixteen year old teenager, has thyroid cancer and doesn’t really have many friends at all. Her mother makes her go to a support group with many other teenagers with illnesses. These support groups are ran by a man of the name Patrick, who is a survivor of cancer himself. Here, at these support groups Hazels begins to become friends with this boy named Augustus. Augustus is a amputee, which means he has lost one of his legs, one night after support group Augustus asked if she…

The Man to Send Rainclouds is a short story written by Leslie Marmon Silko about Native American Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, and the events that unfold after they find their grandfather, Teofilo, dead, under a cottonwood tree. The story deals with topics concerning religion and faith, specifically the cultural divide between Father Paul (the priest at their local Roman Catholic church),and the Pueblo Native Americans. This story takes place in New Mexico, near their sheep camp. The text…

Poet Leslie Marmon Silko uses metaphors, several poetic elements, and origins from her culture to mystically express the emotional and physical beauty found only in nature. Silko writes about nature in her poems, with that she has a distinct form that one may only find by reading her poems. In her poem “Prayer to the Pacific” she writes about the ocean and her poem form kind of look like waves. Silko also uses a wide range of metaphors that have to do with nature, for example in her poem ‘In…