The creaking of the wood became a moan and a cry my balance was precarious as if the floor were no longer level. There were changes I could feel the boards of the dance floor began to let and listen. This quote highlights this fact too, by calling attention to the complex dynamic involving Auntie, Tayo, and Tayo's mother whether or not Auntie has treated Tayo and his mother fairly, and whether Tayo's mother deserves sympathy or blame, are questions that readers must decide for themselves. However, some of the relationships in Ceremony are much more ambiguous. Emo is clearly defined as Tayo's enemy later on, Emo will emerge as the book's prime antagonist, hunting Tayo down with the help of some other young men. This excerpt establishes Tayo's thoughts, feelings, and personal alliances in an especially blunt manner. Since he could remember, he had known Auntie's shame for what his mother had done, and Auntie's shame for him. He knew Emo meant what he said Emo had hated him since the time they had been in grade school together, and the only reason for this hate was that Tayo was part white. Yet in another irony, they replace meaningful traditions with empty stories and rituals that are their equivalent of "medicine chants" and ceremonial "drums." These young men have lost touch with tradition, dignity, and hard work. Now back in the Laguna community, the men of Tayo's generation tell stories to evoke a sense of "belonging," though now, they no longer "belong" either to the white society that now ignores them or among the more respectable Laguna residents who see the young men as outcasts. This quotation serves to summarize Tayo's situation after returning from war, and to indicate a few of the unpleasant ironies that Tayo's life now entails. They repeated the stories about good times in Oakland and San Diego they repeated them like long medicine chants, the beer bottles pounding on the counter tops like drums. Tayo knew what they had been trying to do. His suffering it pitiable on an individual level, but also allows reveals a broader insight about how "the world had come undone."īelonging was drinking and laughing with the platoon, dancing with blond women, buying drinks for buddies born in Cleveland, Ohio. Silko, however, portrays Tayo's physical and metal weaknesses for an important thematic purpose. He has been so weakened and traumatized by his experiences that he can barely control his reactions, or his own body the violent vomiting mentioned here, for instance, is induced by nothing more than the sight of a few Japanese-American civilians at a train station. Here we see the fragility of Tayo's mental state after his return from war. Maybe it had always been this way and he was only seeing it for the first time. Years and months had become weak, and people could push against them and wander back and forth in time. He couldn't vomit any more, and the little face was still there, so he cried at how the world had come undone, how thousands of miles, high ocean waves and green jungles could not hold people in their place. He could still see the face of the little boy, looking back at him, smiling, and he tried to vomit that image from his head, because it was Rocky's smiling face from a long time before, when they were little kids together. The smell of his own vomit and the rotting garbage filled his head, and he retched until his stomach heaved in frantic dry spasms. The swelling was pushing against his throat, and he leaned against the brick wall and vomited into the big garbage can.
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