Ceremony Parts Two and Three

As our SLCC class drew further in to the novel, Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko, we began to analyze the thoughts and ideas present in Tayo's mind with even more understanding than before. One of Tayo's friend's, Emo, had also served in the war and illustrated a different way of coping with his issues than Harley or Tayo. He used his words to attack others whom he found to be emotionally strong in order to break them down and gain confidence for himself. "'You drink like an indian, and you're crazy like one too- but you aren't shit, white trash. You love Japs the way your mother loved to screw white men'" (Silko 63). This is very ironic because Emo is being racist towards three races including his own and normally indians, like himself, are the ones that are being discriminated against. Clearly Emo lacks empathy and demonstrates his instability by attempting to cover up his own flaws through pointing out Tayo's. He takes all of the negative attention that was showing on himself and throws it at Tayo so that everyone focuses on his imperfections and not Emo's. "Tayo could hear it in his voice when he talked about the killing- how Emo grew from each killing. Emo fed off each man he killed, and the higher the rank of the dead man, the higher it made Emo" (Silko 61). Irony is embedded within this piece of text because Emo is acting very Savage which is not normal for a native. Natives are very spiritual and thank god for what they kill and what is provided for them. Emo is very psychopathic and lacks much empathy which is not something a native would be respected for so it is very unusual that this would be something for Emo to brag about to his friends.

As we moved in to part three, the discussion of moments of being arose. Moments of being are flashbacks that occur almost randomly and you can remember that moment perfectly. How it looked, smelled, tasted, sounded, and felt. This discussion occurred because Tayo comes in contact with moments of being constantly. They are what fuel is PTS and they are the exact thing that he is trying to avoid because his moments of being are not positive, but horrific memories of the War.