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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Silko employs a distinctive style in Ceremony, drawing from Pueblo Laguna tradition to intersperse prose and narrative writing with poetry. Many oral histories and legends, including those of Indian American groups, take the form of poetry. By including these unconventional excerpts, Silko maintains the Laguna Pueblo traditions, not entirely adhering to the more classical western narrative style utilized in many novels.
In addition to interspersing her narrative with poetry, Silko makes heavy use of flashback to fragment her story, switching on the turn of a dime between the past and present. This narrative fragmentation imitates the psychological effect trauma has on the human body, jolting the reader from scene to scene—akin to the impact that remembrance has on Tayo's distressed mind. Almost anything can trigger a traumatic flashback, from a car backfiring to a bird screeching to a firework exploding. Silko mirrors this hairpin trigger mental state in her writing, swapping alternately between nostalgic reminiscences of the past, detached musings on the present, and fearful recollections of wartime. All of these become jumbled together in the reader's consciousness as one consumes the narrative, emerging in bits and pieces. Silko forgoes a linear narrative, instead permitting a slow trickle of information and emotion to emerge in uneven fits and starts, paralleling the same mechanism within Tayo's subconscious.
Related Themes:
