Author: Leslie Marmon Silko
Setting: Laguna Beach, New Mexico shortly after World War II
Point of View: Third person point of view
Plot:
-After Tayo returns home from World War II he must understand/learn how to cure himself from all his anguish. He must also learn how to bring rain back to his community.
-Tayo has developed PTSD due to his loss of Rocky and seeing/hallucinting of his uncle Josiah in a crown of Japenese soldiers tht he had to kill.
-He spends some time in a Veterans Hopsital before he returns back home. He lives with his aunt and gradama because his mother fled after she had an affair with a white man.
-At the house Tayo struggles with feeling guilty for his dead uncle and Rocky and also for muttering a prayer for a drought while in the Phillipines which he thinks is the cuase fro the 6 year drought on his reservation.
-Tayo finds out that his friends foro mthe war also have the same stress disorder and relive it with alchohol. This does not really help him because suring this time his friends reminice about the days where they were given mroe improtnace when in the war. Tayo thoguh thinks about the tremendous dicimnation that the native amreicans recive from the whites.
-Just as Tayo wishes to return back to the veterans hospital his grandmother calls Ku'oosh, a medicine man. He preforms a ceremony but both fear that it will not work.
-Tayo revets back to his past. He thinks about the summer before he and Tocky enlisted in the army. Tayo helped Josiah take care of the herd and catlle that NIght Awan urged him to buy. Tayo hears about the water ceremony and does it and the next day it rains.
-Ku'oosh sends Tayo to Betonie who knows what happens when the white culture and the native american culture mix. Betonie must find a new ceremony and Tayo agress.
-Tayo goes back home and begins to look for the calttle. He finds the cattle and returns home and spends the summer with Ts'eh. Ts'ehtells Tayo that the white police and Emo are after him.
-He wuickly learns that Harley and Leroy have also turned against him. He ends up at a mine and realise that he must spend the night there in orde rfor the ceremony to be complete.
-The ceremony is complete and Tayo returns to Ku'oosh's hosue for one more night.
Themes:
1. The differences between cultures
2. Storytelling and its importance.
Despite the occasional typo, I think you did a good job of summarizing here, Saloni, even if the analysis was a little light. Hey, it's fourth quarter, right? You hit a good portion of the major points and didn't distort the plot at all based on what you were interested in (which is, incidentally, what I do all the time). I like seeing everyone rehash the story though, because sometimes each perspective gives me a tiny little insight; for example, you talked about how Laura fled after sleeping with a white man, abandoning Tayo in the same bullet point as when you discussed Tayo's return from the war. This made me consider Tayo's own abandonment of his tribe when he left for the war: did he abandon Josiah as he was abandoned?
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