full title  Ceremony

author  Leslie Marmon Silko

type of work  Novel, but incorporates poetry

genre  Native American story; postmodern

language  English (with inclusion of Laguna Pueblo words)

time and place written  Mid-1970s, New Mexico.

date of first publication 1977

publisher  Penguin

narrator  Third person narrator limited to Tayo's perspective, in addition to third person limited and omniscient and first person narrators in the poems

climax  The night at the abandoned mine.

protagonist  Tayo

antagonist  whites; and Emo

setting (time)  The main present of the text is set just after World War II, but the text ranges in time from a mythical past through the 1920s and World War II up until that present.

setting (place)  The majority of the novel is set on and around the Laguna Reservation, in the Southwest of the United States, although portions are also set in a mythical land, and in the Philippines.

point of view  Primarily third person limited

falling action  World War II

tense  Past

foreshadowing  As time in the novel runs in a circular fashion, all events are at once foreshadowed and remembered.

tone  Somber but hopeful

themes  Storytelling; contact between Native American and white cultures; tradition; water and drought

motifs  Non-linear narrative structure; combination of poetry and prose

symbols  The Gallup Ceremonial

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