Ceremony Flashcards
Paula Gunn Alann
“The Sacred Hoop”
“As near as I can tell, the Earth is Mother.”
How does Ceremony express the primal concept of “everywhen?”
Ceremony moves through time as if time did not exist
a non-linear conception of time, without divisions
Tayo’s realisation of “this night is the same as every night” happening all at the same time (192)
What does the book say about stories before the story begins?
Stories are everything
Without them we have nothing
Defense against evil
Deer-hunt
Deer-hunt is calming, a point of centering, but then it spirals out into memories of Rocky
How does Tayo’s vision of his uncle in the war engage with the central themes of the book?
Represents the commonality of all people
“Witchery” is the source of violence between ethnicities
Symbolism
Yellow and blue = positive
Windmill = Don Quixote
Speckled cattle = survival in this harsh environment, contrasted with the attitude of many of the humans
Barbed wire = the Lie = Divisions
Hoop ceremony = initiation as well as catalyst
Snake = messenger to the People
Rain v. drought
Rain is contrasted between the jungles of the war, and the drought currently going on in the southern US
“Nothing is ever all good or all bad; it all depends.”
Myth of goddesses fighting—aetiology of drought—precedes images of wasteland
What makes a human?
More than just “being”
“Turning into the challenge”
What is the role of the feminine?
Spider-Woman/Creatrix - compared with the spider
The world is powered by the feminine
How does the writing style register religious meaning?
Comparison between large things and small things (e.g., an animal and the mountain on which it lives)
Plants reflecting the beauty of the morning sky
petals the color of the sky
the cattle reflecting moonlight “like snow on the mountain peaks”
Worlds
LOWER worlds are BETTER
The further down you go, the healthier it is
Night Swan
Tayo and Night Swan are compared because they both have hazel-green eyes - it is their very difference that allows them to see the “truth”
The speckled cattle come from Night Swan
Blue is her symbol
Night Swan’s remarks foreshadow Betonie’s
Sunrise
Sunrise connects beginning and end of story
“Accidents happen”
suggests a lack of a sovereign power determining everything
What is in Emo’s Bull Durham sack in the bar scene?
“The teeth he had knocked of the corpse of a Japanese soldier.”
