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"Winter in the Blood" and "Ceremony"

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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1995 Achieving Cultural Identity in "Winter in the Blood" and "Ceremony" Jennifer Kay Davis College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Indigenous Studies Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Jennifer Kay, "Achieving Cultural Identity in "Winter in the Blood" and "Ceremony"" (1995). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625978. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-9h4j-yr14 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ACHIEVING CULTURAL IDENTITY IN WINTER IN THE BLOOD AND CEREMONY, A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English The College of William and Mary In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Jennifer Kay Davis 1995 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Jennifen Kayflpsm Approved, December 1995 JU Clmsty Bums Colleen Kennedy Q 1 /u u U M v r Kirsten Grueszuesz / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writer wishes to express her sincere appreciation to Dr. Christy Bums, under whose guidance this investigation was conducted, for her infinite patience, precise criticism and good humour for the duration. The author would also like to express her gratitude to Professors Colleen Kennedy and Kirsten Gruesz for their careful reading and criticism of the manuscript. C. I. and John Owen Sikes, Dr. Jack Martin and Margaret Mauldin provided the inspiration for the topic: the writer is indebted to them. Thanks is also due to RAW, EFD, RAD, and Dan Newsome for technical support: besos. ABSTRACT The central argument in this study is to compare James Welch'sWinter in the Blood with Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. Specifically, the main characters, the narrator in Winter in the Blood and Tayo in Ceremony are experiencing a cultural identity crisis. The paper explores the crises that the narrator and Tayo undergo, and examines the possibility that the characters resolve their cultural identity crisesvia methods devised particularly for such a crisis by their cultures. It is further suggested that what is unique about these novels is that the narrator and Tayo modify these traditional methods to suit their personal needs and situations and the changing society. The conclusion suggests that the characters succeed in establishing their cultural identities, and that they do so precisely because of these methods that they develop. ACHIEVING CULTURAL IDENTITY IN WINTER IN THE BLOOD AND CEREMONY In his poem, "Blackfeet, Blood, and Piegan Hunters,11 James Welch writes, "Children need a myth that tells them to be alive"(Earthboy 36). The poem's line holds key significance in the motivations of the narrator in Welch'sWinter in the Blood, and to Tayo in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. The main conflict that the characters within the novels must tackle is their loss of cultural identity. Both Welch's narrator and Silko's Tayo had just begun to develop a knowledge of the values of their congenital cultures when they were ripped from their environments by events that create psychological crises in their lives: inWinter in the Blood, the narrator's father and brother, his closest male relatives, die, and in Ceremony, Tayo must participate in a war where he witnesses the death of his cousin. These major psychological events hurtle the characters into an alien culture that demands that they shed, and even revile, their native cultures. The myth that tells Tayo and the narrator to be alive—their sense of who they are—has been declared a myth by a dominant culture, and consequently these characters, at the opening of the respective novels, feel little need to live. The crises that Tayo and the narrator must resolve are not only general psychological crises but are also particularly devastating events in terms of their native cultures. This critical approach differs from the critical approach taken to date, critics have written about the respective cultures in the novels, or about the crises that the characters face; none have written about how these characters use their cultures to resolve their individual crises. Tayo is Laguna: the Laguna center their religion and society around the creation, perpetuation of life, and the feminine, and although death is an important part of that cycle, the Laguna have a horror of deliberate destruction. Laguna have never waged or taken part in war; as a culture it could be characterized as pacifist. Yet Tayo chooses to enter a war voluntarily in order to accompany his cousin. This entrance into war creates a crisis particular to his specific culture. The same is true for the 2* 3 narrator. The narrator believes, for most of the novel, that he is both Gros Ventre and Blackfeet, and later finds that he is wholly Blackfeet; the author tends to meld the two cultures within the text, probably because the author has both Gros Ventre and Blackfeet heritage, and because at the time that he wrote the novel, he had an equal amount of education in each culture. Further, Gros Ventre and Blackfeet cultures are quite similar: both are masculine and focused on athletics and bravery. For Blackfeet cultureand Gros Ventre culture, the death of a relative is probably the most devastating event an individual can face. The Blackfeet culture required a great deal of mourning, especially from a relative of the same sex. Walter McClintock, an amateur anthropologist who resided with the Blackfeet at the turn of the century, noted that "...extreme manifestations of [grief] were only shown by men towards men and not towards women" (150). Furthermore, in the past it was important for the Blackfeet to make a great show of grief for the dead, by taking such extreme actions as cutting off the first joint of their little fingers, cutting off their hair (which held far greater significance for the Blackfeet than it does for a white people), cutting their horses' manes and tails, gashing their legs and arms with knives and other sharp objects, etc. (McClintock 150-152). The narrator continues to live in numbing grief as he is left without any chance to achieve resolution for his brother's death in a cultural or personal sense, especially because of his degree of involvement with Mose's death. In order to resolve their main conflicts, and resume "normal" lives, the narrator and Tayo must develop some cultural identity. They could choose to develop a white or Native American- (Laguna for Tayo, Blackfeet for the narrator) oriented cultural identity, but their choice of a Native American-oriented identity is more empowering to their cultural development. However, it is even more important that they feel a part of the culture to which they choose to belong (whether they choose white or Native American cultures)— ie., they are not alienated. What is unique about these two novels—and what makes them so similar—is the approach of the main characters to managing their crises. When Tayo and the narrator finally choose to re-orient themselves within their native cultures, they follow patterns established by their respective ethnic groups for resolving a psychological crisis— but theymodify these traditional patterns for their modem, and specific personal, needs. This approach differs greatly from other Native American novels in which the main character simply returns to her or his native culture and leaves the white world behind. In Momaday’s House Made o f Dawn, for example, Abel returns to the reservation and leaves Los Angeles behind. At the novel’s close, he is running toward the dawn and singing a prayer from the Nightway, which is the dead center of Navajo culture. Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich have written about characters in their fiction who have already successfully dealt with this integration problem, such as Vivian TwostarCrown in o f Columbus, or Ida George in A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. As Dorris observed in his essay on the progress of Native American literature, Native Americans are "by necessity culturally adaptive”; Tayo and the narrator must bridge that gap in the middle between the dominant white Euro-American culture and the traditional beliefs of their tribes that (in the novel at any rate) are largely stuck in the previous century or the beginning of the twentieth century (Dorris 156). Paula Gunn Allen said that in the recent past, Native Americans ofall tribes had to ”...somehow come to terms with a whole different technological universe. And that conflict means How do I keep my sense of what I am? If I am a Native American, how do I stay connected to my tradition, to my way of seeing the world? And...it’s a constant fight to keep in mind for yourself who you are" (Coltelli 13). If one extends Allen’s statement from dealing with a different technological universe to dealing with a different cultural universe, one has highlighted a part of the core of Tayo’s and the narrator’s psychological crisis. Malcolm McFee, an anthropologist who did fieldwork on the Montana Blackfeet reservation in the late fifties, sixties and early seventies of this century, focused his studies on defining the differences between what he referred to as "white-oriented” and "Indian- oriented” residents of the reservation. He also attempted to carefully identify the 5 characteristics of the individuals who belonged to the white-oriented or Indian-oriented group.
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