Meaning In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

War always leaves behind a trail of suffering, directly or indirectly. Men and women feel this pain during the war as they see friends, loved ones, anyone, fall to human hands. This brutal pain transcends the war itself, reaching for victims long after the war has ended. It evolves into a sickness, one that is not so easily cured by doctors. Tayo, in Leslie Marmon Silko’s, Ceremony, is haunted by this mind-ravaging mental disease after fighting and struggling for too long in the Japanese jungles. He returns to America, no longer a war hero, but as the scarred Native who is back to falling prey under the rule of the white community. Tayo learns to look deep into his mind, trying to decipher the truth of his past from the misplacement of other memories. In doing so, Tayo
“Tayo could not pull the trigger…That was when Tayo started screaming because it wasn’t a Jap, it was Josiah.” (7) Before he began his healing process, Tayo was constantly afflicted with terrible flashbacks to the war mixed with visions of close friends and family members. These mind mirages influenced his ideas and decisions every day before he was able to untangle the truth of his past. With these thoughts, Tayo was unable to see how the white people were at fault for many of the problems. Betonie opened up Tayo’s mind to the possibility of a reality where Tayo was not involved in the terrible things that he believed he carried out during the war. Tayo, for too long after the war, blamed himself for the death of Josiah because he thought he killed him. Through the ceremonies, Tayo connected the cause of Josiah to his own departure to the war. Tayo indirectly killed Josiah by not being there, and Betonie helped him realize that. With that knowledge, Tayo began to solve the mysteries of all of the negative things that happened since his return from