ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This paper aims to research that Tayo's attainment of cultural identity as a creative messenger would be a good role model in global age in Silko's Ceremony. Tayo's overcoming the cultural conflicts can be the good solution for right direction in the borderland crisscrossing the different cultures. Tayo, a mixed breed veteran who returned with the cultural illness in World War II heals his trauma through his ceremony in the Laguna matrilineal traditions. Tayo has the influences of social roles from males, and furthermore is identified with a Culture Hero, participating in the creative process by the helps of females as the avatars of Creatrix. As a warrior becomes a hunter in Laguna traditions, Tayo should be a warrior/hunter, not as the killer and destroyer but as the caretaker and preserver for life. As a borderlander Tayo should revive the Laguna tradition and culture suppressed by white culture and build the bridge between diverse cultures. His journey is neither to reject the western and American viewpoint of linear and binary opposition nor to return to the tribal identity, because this simplifying conclusion can remove the real depth and complexity of this novel. Tayo's dynamic identity goes beyond the binary opposition. The complex visions rebuild both Indian and the western epistemology to create the new reality. His attainment of cultural identity is the recognition that all things are included in the Mother Earth. Though Tayo had a part of destructive power of white culture, he becomes an emissary of Mother Earth, participating in the process of creation. The reemergence as Laguna Indian is not the nostalgic return but the reemergence as a hybrid identity embracing both Laguna and outside world view. To acquire the creative vision is to attain the life restoring power. Silko insists the importance to transform the violent vision into the creative vision. Indian civilization is alive and has its potentiality to transform the Anglo culture. She purifies both Indian's illusion to white culture and the white's illusion to Indian culture. Compromising with different cultures has the power to revive both cultures. As the consequence of ceremony, Tayo has his hybrid identity, realizes his adaptability to harmonize two cultures and accomplishes the creation of new myth.

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