The Ceremony Part Three

New beginnings 

          There comes a time in everyone's life where they are willing to find love wherever it may be. Whether it's old or young love people live to find love and cherish it. In The Ceremony, Josiah, Tayo's uncle finds love to this woman by the nick name of Night Swam. When seeing this Mexican women at Lalo's store, right then Josiah knew that this women was his everything. "By late July Josiah divided his time between the cattle, which were past Flower Mountain then, still heading southwest, and this woman"(Silko 78). His love for cattle didn't matter as much when he met this women. Before he ever met this women his first priority was to take care of his cattle, finding food for them and water for them to drink but now it's her that he cares about most. The Night Swan resembled the ocean whenever she made love to anyone. She was the symbol for the season of spring and the how it is the start of new beginnings. Racist as Josiah's sister, Auntie is he didn't care about what she thought as well as a lot of other people. "I try to tell him to stay with our own kind; but he doesn't listen to me. That woman is after anything she can get now"(Silko 85). The age that the Night Swan and Josiah are at Auntie thinks that the Josiah's girlfriend is not in it for the right reasons. Auntie thinks that the Night Swan is trying to find anything she can get since she's getting old. "He held out the note. She smiled, but she did not look at it, She looked at him" (Silko 90). Little does Josiah know that his nephew Tayo made love with his lover when giving her a note written by Josiah. And that's the society that we live in today. We get so caught up in love that the torture it is giving to one another whether it's family or friends is horrendous. That's when the society of divorce and cheating on a wife or a husband comes in ruins oneself's life.

Night Swan's rocking chair 

       

Abandonment

          After realizing why the Night Swan made love to Tayo that night before he went to war was because she wanted to make a statement to him. This was a new beginning for Tayo when he finally realized after the war his abandonment that was given to him. After his mother, Laura gave Tayo up and had to live with Auntie Thelma he started to feel insecure and ashamed of himself. "He didn't remember much: only that she had come after dark and wrapped in a man's coat-- it smelled like a man-- and there were men in the car with them: and she held him all the way..." (Silko 60) Laura having Tayo with a man of a different race made Tayo not a normal kind. Tayo felt abandonment from his mother and never knew why until after he came back from the war and looked back on the healing process he went through with the Night Swan. "Right as the sun came up, she walked under that big cottonwood tree, and I could see her clearly: she had no clothes on. Nothing. She was completely naked except for her high heel shoes. She dropped her purse under the tree"(Silko 65). Although Tayo's mother was a prostitute and an alcoholic Aunt Thelma told this to Tayo as a kid. It was like Auntie was blaming her shame on Tayo. There was never a time where Auntie would tell Tayo something good about his mother. "Auntie, he said softly, what did she look like before I was born? She reached behind the pantry curtains and began to rearrange the jars of peaches and apricots on the shelves, and he knew she was finished talking to him"(Silko 65). The way Auntie talks about Laura to Tayo is very poorly. She never likes to talk highly of her sister and that's because she got stuck with taking care of a kid that is not even her own race. The reason why Tayo's mother's abilities are not spoken from Auntie is because she wants Tayo to feel the abandonment and the "hatefulness" that she gave to her own child.

Cottonwood Tree