Untangling (and Following) a Thread

For your second paper, you’ll be identifying and following a thread in one of the novels we’ve read in class this far. Let’s practice delving deep into some of the threads in Ceremony. The novel’s structure doesn’t make this an easy task; however, out of all the novels we’ve read, identifying and untangling the threads in Silko’s work is perhaps most enlightening, as it leads us to the deep structure of the work and reveals some of the native storytelling tactics the author employs.

EXERCISE

Get into groups of four. Consider the thread on your card. Start by identifying a few moments when this thread comes up (at times, the word on your card may be used explicitly in the novel, or it may not, requiring you to read more critically).  Once you’ve discussed some of these scenes, answer the following questions and report back to the class:

1. Why is your thread important to the work as a whole?
2. Name one key scene you believe is important to understanding your thread (preferably one that supports your claim above).
3. How does the meaning of your thread change or develop as the novel progresses? (Consider its many valences.)
4. Is your thread connected to any other threads in the novel? Which is the most important?

Uranium Mining on Navajo Lands

In Ceremony, Silko tells the story of the ancient witch people who released evil in the world by telling the story that created white people.

“They will take this world from ocean to ocean, they will turn on each other, they will destroy each other. Up here in these hills they will find the rocks, rocks with veins of green and yellow and black. They will lay the final pattern with these rocks, they will lay it across the world and explode everything” (137).

The rocks the witch story-teller refers to here is uranium, a radioactive mineral that was mined heavily in the Southwest, on Navajo lands, in order to fuel America’s atomic arsenal – that is, in order to create and experiment with the atomic weaponry that was eventually dropped on Japan in World War II.

Watch this slide show put together by the LA Times in 2006, including interviews with Navajo who experienced – and are still experiencing – the effects of the government’s radioactive mining near their homes:

Watch Blighted Homeland.

Learn more from the Uranium Impact Assessment Program.

The Hoop Dance: Traditional Laguna Pueblo and Navajo Cultural Practices

Robert and Tayo travel to the city of Gallup to visit Betonie, the medicine man, for Tayo’s ceremony. Gallup has its problems, but it draws a large crowd of both tourists and native peoples once a year for the Inter-Tribal Gallup Ceremonials.

Navajo Hoop Dancers perform at the Grand Canyon: