Choose any short passage in the second half (LAST SECTIONS), of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and offer an interpretation of that passage using either structuralist or deconstructive criticism.
If you choose to offer a structuralist reading, you might focus on how your chosen passage fits into Northrup Frye’s theory of myth, for instance, or Genette’s ideas about narrative. If you choose to offer a deconstructive reading, you might analyze the text’s ideological implications by examining binary opposites such as “white” and “Indian,” for example, or “sane” and “mentally ill.” How does the deconstruction of such binaries undermine ideological assumptions?
Part Two (Please respond in FIRST PERSON, from YOUR PERSPECTIVE, YOUR OPINION REGARDING THE CLASSMATES RESPONSE. DO NOT USE “THE WRITER……..” THAT IS NOT FIRST PERSON): Respond to the below classmates’ posts & discuss how their theoretical approach compares with your own. What insight into the novel do their approaches reveal, and what (if any) interpretive blind spots do you detect in their (or your own) reading?
Response #1
I wish to discuss the theory of structuralism with the book Ceremony by Marmon Silko. The passage I wish to discuss is starts with “ The scalp Ceremony lay to rest the Japanese souls” and ends with “ defending the land they already love.” ( Silko, 169) I would like to use the part of structuralism that speaks about structural anthropology which “”seeks the underlying common denominators, the structures, that link all human beings regardless of the differences among the surface phenomena of the cultures to which they belong. “(Tyson 215) I think this is a fitting theory to discuss with this passage as well as the idea of semiotics. The passage is about a scene that describes Japanese soldiers being laid to rest . This anthropology theory brings out the idea of a myth in a story having my themes ( a unit of a myth). A hero killing a monster or a villain is an example of a mythemes. In this case, the my themes in this paragraph starts from the sentence “ It was everything they had seen” to “ defending the land they had already lost.”( Siko,169) The my themes here is not an ordinary my themes. It reminds me of the hero having to walk through the moment of hardship where they must decide to either keep fighting for their cause or to turn around and stop chasing after their goal.” A symbol is a sign in which the relationship between signifier and signified is neither natural nor necessary but arbitrary, that is, decided on by the conventions of a community or by the agreement of some group.”
(Tyson 218) A symbol in this passage is the white shell beads that are left on a grave, and a man walking by picks it up. He places the beads on a stick, and then he placed them on a tree. This in turn haunts him for the rest of his life. The beads act as a placement for reminding him of the lives that had fallen for a cause, or the men he killed. In this scene it described death as a haunting experience especially when we realize how terrifying World War Two was.
Response #2
For this assignment I choose a structuralist, Northrup Frye, and his theory of myth, a continuing and developing story of the realism in the mythos of winter (Tyson 221).
“They will take this world from ocean to ocean
They will turn on each other
They will destroy each other
Up here
In these hills
They will find the rocks,
rocks with veins of green and yellow and black.
They will lay the final pattern with these rocks
They will lay it across the world
And explode everything (Silko 137).”
This passage conjures up the familiar stories I have, as an active Christian, for dust to dust in burial prayers and services as well as the final book of the Holy Bible, Revelations. The dark evil and witchery that destroys the world as we know it, yet with the power of God we know all things are possible and the greatest of this is love.
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