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Essay on ceremony leslie marmon silko
Essay on ceremony leslie marmon silko
Essay on ceremony leslie marmon silko
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Silko's Ceremony and the Hermeneutic Circle
Ceremony is a novel meant to change us. It is a story, which instructs and enlightens, but it is also a tool for relating. It is useful in an extremely practical sense: It teaches us about being connected to our world, about difference and the other. These are only a couple of the possible tangible effects the book has on readers, and truly, the limiting factor in the number of possible uses for Ceremony is simply the number of individuals who read it. One of the individuals who has read Ceremony and outlined the impact the novel had on her is Alanna Kathleen Brown, a professor from the English department at Montana State University, whose essay is entitled "Pulling Silko's Threads Through Time: An Exploration of Storytelling." She is not a Native American, but has found all kinds of ways of interacting with the text. She has brought Native American storytelling, and with it many different tribal attitudes, into her own life, and attributes much of this to Silko's style of storytelling. Silko creates a ceremony-written-down that a reader can engage with on an active level. Between Silko's story, and style of storytelling, and Brown's reading, there is room for another literary theory that can shed light on why so many non-Indians can relate to Native American Literature, and this theory seems custom built for Ceremony. It is the idea of the Hermeneutic Circle, an ancient idea in European literary thinking, but a useful one that relates literature in many of the same ways Silko and her peers do. Hans-Georg Gadamer, a major player in hermeneutic circles, describes the basic goal of literature: and hermeneutics: "something distant has to be brought close, a certain strangeness...
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...merican culture of a time in which stories were a community-based endeavor, as they remain in large part in Native American communities. By capturing this community spirit, Silko has created a novel that, while completely Native American and tribal in form and content, transcends any cultural, racial or ethnic barriers and succeeds at interacting with the reader. Any reader.
Works Cited
Abrams, MH. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. USA: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1993.
Brown, Alanna Kathleen. "Pulling Silko's Threads Through Time: An Exploration of Storytelling". American Indian Quarterly Spring 1995: 171-179.
Colborn, Benjamin. "Becoming at Home Through Reading: Excursing and Returning in the Hermeneutic Circle". Presented at the 1998 National Undergraduate Literature Conference.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
The Grateful Dead was a famous rock and roll band throughout the 1960’s. They had a lot of ups and downs during their time as a band together. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann were all in the band together. The Grateful Dead played a variety of music but mainly they were a rock and roll band; blues, reggae, country, folk, and space rock.
There are many cumulative events that have influenced Western Civilization reflective in today’s modern world, but the most impactful was the French Revolution. Western Civilization has many historic milestones building to the world as we know it, but none set such broad themes that are felt in our everyday life. Many of these themes have become so ingrained into the way we live that we can’t understand a world without them. For this reason, the effects of the French Revolution molded the westernized world more so than any other event. I consider the French Revolution the catalyst to how our world is shaped today. It’s ideas and events continue to echo through our lives century after century.
Dorothea M. Susag, Roots and Branches: A Resource of Native American Literatures--Themes, Lessons, and Bibliographies (1998).
King, Thomas. “Let Me Entertain You. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 61-89. Print.
The first Battle of Bull Run was the first battle during the Civil War where troops would meet face to face. The battle took place on July 16, 1861. The Union army was led Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. McDowell was marching down from Washington and on the 21st attacked the left flank of the Confederate army on Matthews Hill. Later on in the afternoon reinforcements arrived for the confederates. These new troops advanced and broke through the Union right flank. This sent the Union army into a retreat although the Confederate army was too disorganized to pursue. The first Battle of Bull Run convinced Lincoln the war going to be long and costly. Soon after General McDowell was relived of command and was replaced with Major General George B. McClellan.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010 and was designed to insure millions of people, who did not have health insurance, reduce out-of-pocket expenses for families and reduce costs for small businesses. In essences, when enrollment opens in 2013, the ACA law will target the 42 million Americans that according to a Census Bureau Survey are uninsured (Klein, 2014). Indeed, Obama Care from a utilitarian point of view is a huge improvement in medical services to a larger proportion of the population, that prior to this law did not have insurance available to them, including improved availability of health care services and reigning in out of control insurance companies.
The year 1692 and early 1693 saw the prosecution and execution of nineteen witches, an old man stoned to death, several accused witchcrafts dying in jail and close to 28 being cast out of the infamous Salem Village (present day Danvers, Massachusetts) on the belief they possessed power to sway people into doing what they wanted (Goodbeer, 2011, p. 2). Early 1692, the daughter; Elizabeth and niece; Abigail Williams of first Salem Village ordained minister; Reverend Parris experienced and had frightening episodes of screaming, uttering voices and throwing things around. Another girl Ann Putnam also experienced the same and under magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hawthorne influence, the girls blamed their conditions on three women: Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne for performing witchcraft on them (Goodbeer, The Salem Witch Hunt , 2011, p. 14).
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
Momaday forces upon the reader the idea of language as a remedy for sickness; not only of the mind, but of the heart, also. If a speaker can reach a listener and show the listener what she means, then that is the most honorable achievement. Momaday wants the reader to know the importance of word weaving, of weaving the words to form a beautiful picture that can heal souls if spoken correctly. Momaday believes that the Native Americans who never bothered to learn to read and write, those who depend on their words, are those whose words are most powerful. The love for words, spoken with passion, makes them take on a three-dimensional quality. The words become the images and show a listener instead of telling, making the moment an experience instead of just a moment. The listener can feel what the speaker is trying to say; there is no need for interpretation, everything is already understood. Momaday convinces the reader that the spoken language goes beyond what words are being said; the words become their meaning, transcend into complete understanding and clarity. The experience should be remembered as one of self-revelation and understanding, not a moment filled with monotonous words. Momaday does not think it should be about memorizing the words for intellect, but about seeing the image they create. He wants the reader to know how important the woven web of words is so that the reader is able to understand how Native American tradition has lasted so long without words being written; that it is not the remembrance of words, but the remembranc...
Change is one of the tallest hurdles we all must face growing up. We all must watch our relatives die or grow old, our pets do the same, change school or employment, and take responsibility for our own lives one way or another. Change is what shapes our personalities, it molds us as we journey through life, for some people, change is what breaks us. Watching everything you once knew as your reality wither away into nothing but memory and photographs is tough, and the most difficult part is continuing on with your life. In the novel Ceremony, author Leslie Silko explores how change impacted the entirety of Native American people, and the continual battle to keep up with an evolving world while still holding onto their past. Through Silko’s
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th Ed. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, 1993.
The way that Tapahonso describes the whole ordeal in detail is critical in describing the events in the poem but also in the format of oral story-telling. The author is telling a story to a daughter. A story that must have been passed down for generations and for generations to come. It is a important story that must be told because it explains the history of the Navajos and how the use of turquoise become a part of the traditional regalia. The story also tells how Navajo fry-bread become famous and is now considered a traditional food for all native tribes. Tapahonso gives strength and hope in 1864 to the younger generation by giving them education of their history.
Rao, S. (2007). The globalization of bollywood: An ethnography of non-elite audiences in india. The communication Review, 10(1), 57-76. doi: 10.1080/10714420601168491