In the beginning of Ceremony, a novel written by Leslie Marmon Silko, I was introduced with three short poems, the first two of which include the ideas of thinking and stories. The first poem shortly talks about what could be three primal gods, their creation of everything, and what one of those gods is thinking about now; the second poem briefly explains the dangers of belittling stories. At first glance with these two poems, I thought that the story would be told in first-person, but I was soon corrected when I began the actual story. The third poem, on the other hand, only says a single sentence in four lines: "The only cure I know is a good ceremony, that's what she said." I wasn't sure at first, but I thought that third poem would show itself within the story at some point. In some way, I also believed that poem made sense with a look at our Christian religion: when we are sick, we look towards God to help us get better and, in some cases, we receive the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. We go through a ceremony so that we may be cured of our illnesses.
When the story begins, the curtains open up on a man named Tayo who is having a nightmare. From how much I read my first time, he is likely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, possibly from being in a war. The narrator shows a symptom a PTSD through an event during his time at war. I do find it odd, however, that Tayo hallucinates and sees a friend of his (of all people) in place of a dead Japanese soldier. Since he and his friend are African American, they would probably look nothing like the Japanese man, so how can Tayo see his friend, even if he is hallucinating, in place of someone so completely unlike them? I, having no experience whatsoever with anything like heat or dehydration-induced visions or mirages, have absolutely no idea how something like that can happen.
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