Essay Example on Leslie Marmon Silko: Ordinary Connections in Extraordinary Literature

Leslie Marmon Silko has an extraordinary connection with the ordinary, and this is seen in the different literature pieces she has been able to create. In the novel Ceremony, her story does not only stop in the Native American culture, but it focuses on how different societies interact with the environment. Although they do not contribute to the plot of the story, land, plants, and animals play a critical role in the fiction piece. This essay will illustrate the relation of Silko with the environment through the novel Ceremony. It will also explore the extraordinary connection that Silko has with the ordinary. The novel Ceremony finds a humanism relation in environmentalism. It illustrates the Aboriginal communities that are often connected to their lands and everything that grows and depends on it, which is far much different from the way modern Americans and Europeans live (Silko, 2006). According to Silko, every harm done on their land ignites pain in their hearts. This theme is evident in the entire novel. The culture of the Native Americans often illustrated a mixture of the beliefs, dreams, and realities of Laguna Pueblo (Silko, 2006). This explains the different events as being somewhat a religion as in the western terms. The stories in the novels illustrate traditional Laguna beliefs, they present a different view of nature, and it is based on peaceful living and harmony.

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When the white people discovered the American continent, the nature present was beautiful and untouched since the then inhabitants had mastered the skill of harvesting from it without posing harm to it. This new world did not do anything positive for the environment. The white people were obsessed with the exploitation of land goods, and they began destroying it over time. According to Silko in Ceremony, this was a poor way of doing things without respecting nature despite the locals having have maintained the environment (Silko, 2006).

As the 1920s and the 1930s came, the loggers came in with mass efforts and began cutting down forests and stripping the canyons while clearing the slopes of the plateaus. Full-time hunters were also hired, and these hunted deers and wild turkeys and they often got up to ten to fifteen deers after a few days. They also killed several turkeys every month (Silko, 2006). The tree harvesters, on the other hand, shot the mountain lions and bears as a sport. This was where Laguna natives realized that foreigners had overcome their land because they could not stop the white people from destroying their land (Silko, 2006).

It shows how the arrival of the whites to the natives' land had significant effects on animals and plants in the land that was formerly owned by the Laguna people. They stole the land from the people that owned it and went ahead to destroy it. At this point in the novel, we realize that the environment and the relationship Silko had with it was a critical relationship that was properly developed. This became an essential topic for the novel "a struggle between irreconcilable notions of land use and land tenure, a struggle between different cultural orientations towards the natural world."(Silko, 2006).

In the novel, when the lands were stolen, the natives of the land were greatly affected. This is because it illustrated a hurtful doubt in their culture. The loss of their land and culture forces the Laguna Pueblos and several other natives of the land to start mourning for the land they had lost and how they mourn signifies that they had lost everything they owned forever (Silko, 2006). This made the lives of the natives had and changed what they had been used to. It further forced them to adopt the ways that the foreigners introduced, including alcoholism. The suffering and the hurt of the native people develop a dilemma illustrating the extraordinary relationship where the crimes against nature and the ordinary transform into crimes against humans.

According to the beliefs of the Laguna Pueblo, hurting animals is not good because everything in nature is seen to be equal as compared to the others. The even have legends and stories on how animals have continually assisted humans from long ago, and this means that they have reasons that guide them not to kill animals. However, the white people that came and took their lands did not share in what they believed.

This dilemma is further illustrated when Tayo, at his young age, is seen killing flies for fun, and Josiah, his uncles, gives him instructions and guides him not to kills the flies because these flies once saved humankind in their stories about their past (Silko, 2006). Tayo, however, only killed flies because the teachers had informed him in school that they are disease vectors, and it was essential not to have them close. To further illustrate how they have lost respect for the animals, Silko shows that Tayo had forgotten the teachings that Joshua had given him by staying the same way towards his dead cousin (Silko, 2006).

Conclusion

After ignoring what the natives believed in, the whites went ahead to assume the aboriginal beliefs, which further ignored the instincts animals have. This is demonstrated in the novel when a conflict arises between the Mexican cattle and the Hereford livestock. The Herefords are believed to be dumb, with the lack of ability to survive in different surroundings. In contrast, the Mexican cattle are considered to have intelligence and strength and are capable of finding water and food even in the driest areas (Silko, 2006). These were, however, not important to the foreigners since they did not offer enough meat and milk, and this led the whites to kill them for sport. The author's relation of humanism to the environment is a demonstration of the extraordinary connection that Silko had with the ordinary.

Reference

Silko, L. M. (2006). Ceremony. Penguin.