Thursday, May 14, 2009

Daniel Blog 7

During this section Tayo seems to be going through major change at first but at the end he reverts back to his old self. The section starts off with a story about a guy who believes he's a coyote and then goes through what I believe is a scalp ceremony to cleanse him of the "witch" magic. I think this is presented as a way to connect what Tayo is about to go through to past Native American ritual. To show that the purpose of the scalp ceremony is to attempt to cleanse one's mind. Tayo goes on to listen to Betonies story about his grandfather Descheeny. The story about the little Mexican girl could be showing how Indians treated other races badly and that they are getting it back in return from the whites. " 'Sometimes I have to shake my head,' she'd say, 'because human beings deserve exactly what they get.' " (Page 151). In this reading Silko also presented a lot of her views on Indian Society. Silko does this through Helen Jean, a Native American women who used to live in Towac. After Helen Jean lives in Laguna for awhile she realizes how bad Indian society is. She degrades the veterans for being drunks and she also dislikes the Native American women for going along with the drunk men. "After spending all her life at Towac, she didn't need to be wasting time there, in the middle of nowhere, someplace worse than the reservation she had left." (Page 166). Helen feels that the veterans are wasting their lives and after she goes along with it for awhile she realizes she has been wasting her life as well. Silko uses the character Helen to be critical of Native American Society.

Quotes:
"White people selling Indians junk cars and trucks reminded Tayo of the Army Captain in the 1860s who made a gift of wool blankets to the Apaches: the entire stack of blankets was infected with smallpox." (Page 158) - I see this quote as a metaphor for it is comparing white people selling broken trucks to Indians to white people infecting Indians with disease. Tayo feels that white people cause all the problems even after he talked with Betonie. As we debated in class the other day I don't feel white people are causing all the problems and that Native Americans hold blame too. But the smallpox blankets that totally messed up and the Native Americans couldn't help that at all.

1 comment:

  1. Daniel
    Thanks for your post.
    Why would someone give the group the blankets? Was it malicious or misinformed?
    Interesting insight about why Silko creates Helen's character...anyone else have thoughts on that?
    Ms. Champagne

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