Yellow Woman Essay Example
Yellow Woman: Behind the Myth
The Story "Yellow Woman," written by Leslie Marmon Silko features a compelling blurring of the boundaries between myth and everyday experiences between contemporary Native American Life and ancient myths. In Silko's Story, a contemporary Pueblo woman suspects that her liaison with a cattle rustler is a replay of the Yellow Woman legend, in which the woman is abducted by a spirit. The writer reflects in her writing the Pueblo belief about myths and how they are related to the modern world. She also draws the moral strength of the young woman, who as the story progresses, is trying to figure out her identity including how the past and the myths told by her people can be significant in the world she lives.
Myths are symbolic stories. They are stories that incorporated by different cultures to inform generations about their ancestors, heroes, gods and other supernatural beings in their past history. In this story the relation to myth and everyday experiences can be seen in the way in which the man calls her Yellow Woman, who according to myth was a woman who went away with a spirit from the North and lived with him for a long time, only returning years later with her twin boys. Although the young woman faces the same predicament as that of the mythical Yellow Woman, by leaving her husband and her son and going with the strange man she meets by the river bank. She still believes unlike the woman of the past she is the Yellow Woman of the present and she has choices meaning she can always decide to head back to her people when ever she wills. But despite all the feelings she has about not being Yellow Woman and the conscience of family she has left behind, she still feels compelled to seek as Yellow Woman had in the past.
She feels drawn to the man named Silva. Although much is not known about the man other than what he tells us about his type of work and what it involves, "I steal from them" (46). He does not talk about
The Story "Yellow Woman," written by Leslie Marmon Silko features a compelling blurring of the boundaries between myth and everyday experiences between contemporary Native American Life and ancient myths. In Silko's Story, a contemporary Pueblo woman suspects that her liaison with a cattle rustler is a replay of the Yellow Woman legend, in which the woman is abducted by a spirit. The writer reflects in her writing the Pueblo belief about myths and how they are related to the modern world. She also draws the moral strength of the young woman, who as the story progresses, is trying to figure out her identity including how the past and the myths told by her people can be significant in the world she lives.
Myths are symbolic stories. They are stories that incorporated by different cultures to inform generations about their ancestors, heroes, gods and other supernatural beings in their past history. In this story the relation to myth and everyday experiences can be seen in the way in which the man calls her Yellow Woman, who according to myth was a woman who went away with a spirit from the North and lived with him for a long time, only returning years later with her twin boys. Although the young woman faces the same predicament as that of the mythical Yellow Woman, by leaving her husband and her son and going with the strange man she meets by the river bank. She still believes unlike the woman of the past she is the Yellow Woman of the present and she has choices meaning she can always decide to head back to her people when ever she wills. But despite all the feelings she has about not being Yellow Woman and the conscience of family she has left behind, she still feels compelled to seek as Yellow Woman had in the past.
She feels drawn to the man named Silva. Although much is not known about the man other than what he tells us about his type of work and what it involves, "I steal from them" (46). He does not talk about