earticle

영어

Whereas miscegenation and hybrids in American culture and literature have been dominantly treated negatively and described in negative images, Leslie Marmon Silko, who herself has a mixed ancestry of Mexican, Native and Anglo Saxon blood, finds the possibility of mediation of conflicting cultures in the ways of thinking which hybrids stand for. In Ceremony, Tayo achieves a dramatic transformation from a mentally-ill veteran with confused uncertainty about his identity into a healthy man who is deeply rooted in his native tradition and ready for the changes that inevitably accompany the acculturation process. His transformation, while many other characters in the novel are trapped in worlds of their own construction and suffer the consequences in various ways, is the product of the lessons he learns from T’esh and Betonie, who teach him the love of nature and the interrelatedness of all beings in the world.
Through hybrids in Ceremony such as Tayo, Betonie, Night Swan and Josiah’s cattle, Silko presents a way of thinking which can be a solution to the aggravating conflicts in today’s world which becomes more and more interracial and multicultural. As their bodies are the products of the contacts of conflicting cultures and can be more adaptable to the changes of the surroundings like Josiah’s cattle, they are more honest and more open to changes in their world and, by their existence and their insight, can contribute to the mediation and reconciliation of conflicting cultures and races.