Mixed Heritage and Eyes in Tayo’s Search for Self and Cure

In Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony the color of Tayo’s eyes comes up frequently. Tayo’s eyes are an outward representation of the deeper characteristics beneath his surface. His eyes signify that he is of a mixed ancestry, but more than that, they signify that Tayo is a mixed up person. Tayo’s whole existence is two-sided—not just because he’s half-white and half-Native American but also because what people expect him to be and do is only half of who he really is and what he does. He’s of the new generation but he respects the old way. All these things that are a part of his inner self are visible on the outside in his eyes. By coming to terms with his differences in appearance, Tayo will be able to be cured from the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder he suffers with after fighting in World War II, and in the end, discover who he truly is.

It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. This means that by just looking into the eyes of another person, you can learn a lot about who they are. Tayo’s eyes look physically different from those of the other Laguna Pueblo people around him, and so looking into them reveals his mixed heritage. When Tayo and Rocky meet with the Army recruiter, he doesn’t believe the two are brothers because Tayo looks obviously different: “The Army recruiter looked closely at Tayo’s light brown skin and his hazel eyes” (Silko 66). Hazel eyes are a “light greenish-grayish brown” color that in Tayo’s case came about because of his mixed parentage (“hazel”). His eyes here show his connection with two cultures, but his inability to truly exist in either alone. Being this mix of two races, two eye colors, two worlds, really disconnects Tayo from the people around him, especially Auntie.

Besides being lighter skinned, Tayo’s eyes are the only physical difference between him and say Rocky or Harley. But these physical differences cause an emotional rift separating Tayo from the rest of his group. Being half-white brings about contentions and hostilities from almost everyone around him—from Auntie who nearly neglects him as a child, and from Emo whom Tayo tries to kill, to Rocky and Harley who are just trying to understand. His eyes are a big clue that Tayo is not a “full-blood.” Tayo gets a lot of reactions because of his ancestry and people think he shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the Native American Culture.

When Old Grandma is worried about Tayo’s condition and wants him to see the medicine man, Tayo’s own Auntie, who brought him up, even thinks this is wrong: “You know what people will say if we ask for a medicine man to help him. Someone will say it’s not right. They’ll say, ‘Don’t do it. He’s not full blood anyway’” (Silko 30). It seems Auntie is worried what other people would think, but that is actually exactly how she thinks, too. Tayo doesn’t only get these feeling from his family, but from complete strangers as well, “he remembered how the white men who were building the new highway through Laguna had pointed at him. They had elbowed each other and winked” (53). Most people in the novel, white or Pueblo or Mexican, see this mixing of blood as a bad, negative, and almost nasty thing.

Tayo’s eyes, a symbol of his mixed ancestry, separate him from the Native American culture and the white American culture simultaneously, but oddly enough, his eyes, his heritage, connect him to these two different worlds. Because of who Tayo is, because he is half-white he has a connection to the white world that his immediate family and friends can never understand. He resides in neither world alone, and with his eyes observes them both as an outsider while he also has the benefits of an insider.

Tayo was raised on the reservation by his Auntie, Rocky’s mother. Since childhood he’s been taught the legends and stories and ancestries of the Laguna people from the beginning of time. He is immersed in this Native American world, but not allowed to fully be part of it by his Auntie because he is impure in her eyes: “since he could remember, he had known Auntie’s shame for what his mother had done, and Auntie’s shame for him” (53). One would expect a child having roots in white culture would not appreciate the ceremonies and legends of the Native American culture, but Tayo respects and understands these important stories probably even more than the full-blooded Pueblos— at least more than Auntie’s own son Rocky does, and probably more than Auntie herself. He loved to hear Old Grandma tell the old legends, and he believed them:
“He never lost the feeling he had in his chest when she spoke those words, as she did each time she told them stories; and he still felt it was true, despite all they had taught him in school—that long long ago things had been different, and human being could understand what the animals said” (87).

Tayo can see why these stories are important. The past provides insight into the future. The past is what makes people who they are in the present and who they will be in the future.

Symbolically, as well as literally, eyes represent seeing and vision. They can represent hindsight, or foresight or how things are perceived as they are occurring. Because Tayo’s eye color, hazel, is the result of a white father and a Native American mother, he can see both of the perspectives. He participates in things of the white culture and also in things of the Native American culture. Tayo is part of neither culture, but really part of both, so he can understand the prejudices more. This view as an outsider with knowledge of the inside is how Tayo becomes aware of the Lie.

Deep down everyone knows brown-skinned people are somehow worse than white people, they do worse things, they are the only ones that steal, “only brown-skinned people were thieves; white people didn’t steal, because they always had the money to buy whatever they wanted” this is the Lie (177). And Tayo realizes that “only a few people knew that the lie was destroying white people faster than it was destroying Indian people” (190). He is one of them. He sees how prejudices doesn’t make people better than others, but just makes hatred.

Emo is a fine example of how racism and prejudice breed hatred and violence. Emo fights and murders and nothing good ever comes from him. Hatred begets hatred, violence begets violence. Tayo is normally peaceful, but when driven to hatred by Emo’s racist remarks, Tayo stabs a broken bottle into Emo’s stomach. He hates the whites, he hates the Mexicans, he hates the Japanese, and he hates those with mixed blood. Because of this negativity coming from Emo and others like him, Tayo is never part of the group.
Tayo’s light skin and eyes separate him from his immediate family and friends, but they also provide a greater connection between him and some other important characters. Tayo is not, in fact, the only character in the novel described as having these light eyes, a result of the mixing of two cultures. Night Swan, Josiah’s girlfriend, has hazel eyes too, “she was an old cantina dancer with eyes like a cat” (81). Betonie’s Mexican grandmother had green eyes while his Native American father most likely had brown eyes; because of this Betonie has hazel eyes. When Tayo first meets the old medicine man he looks him over “then Tayo looked at his eyes. They were hazel like his own” (109). Both Night Swan and Betonie help Tayo find his cure. Because they have this connection through their light eye colors, these characters are able to see the world similarly.
From what I can tell Night Swan is not actually from mixed origins, she is Mexican. Night Swan is interesting because she is not white or Native American, but Mexican, the third race of people that play an important role in this novel. Whether or not she is the product of “interracial breeding” or not, she still manages to teach Tayo a few things about it and about who he is, after they make love. Night Swan says something of great significance to Tayo and to this novel, a key quote in the entire book:
“‘They are afraid, Tayo. They feel something happening, they can see something happening around them, and it scares them. Indians or Mexicans or whites—most people are afraid of change. They think that if their children have the same color of skin, the same color of eyes, that nothing is changing. . . . They are fools. They blame us, the ones who look different. That way they don’t have to think about what has happened inside themselves’” (92).

Tayo, Betonie, Night Swan and others like them are evidence that things are changing. Tayo has been taught to believe that this sort of change is a bad thing, but Night Swan and Betonie try to help him realize that change can be good and that just because people say you are one thing doesn’t mean that you have to be the thing they say. This helps Tayo accept himself the way he is and to find his cure.

Betonie also comes from mixed ancestry. His grandmother was a Mexican woman who also had light eyes. Betonie is a crucial part in Tayo’s journey for a cure and is a crucial part in Tayo finding out his place in this messed up world. Without Betonie’s guidance Tayo would never be able to come to terms with his illness—PTSD from serving in WWII—and cure it with the Ceremony. Then frankly we wouldn’t have a novel.

Betonie helps Tayo see how the Native American, Mexican, and white worlds coexist. Betonie sees past the lie that “all evil resides with white people” (122). He believes the stories about the creation of Indian people and the creation of white people. Betonie helps Tayo understand that he doesn’t have to be scared of the white people or their ways: “I tell you, we can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place” (122). Understanding how the two worlds are just two parts of a whole is a very important concept. When Tayo begins to understand this better, he begins to understand himself better, and therein lies his cure.

In the beginning Tayo’s mixed blood makes him insecure. His peers in the rising generation don’t understand how or why Tayo believes in the stories. But the stories are what keep Tayo connected in the end. Though he looks different on the outside, he is still just a human being. His differences make him able to comprehend things that his friends and family could never hope to understand.
 
Works Cited
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Deluxe ed. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.
“Hazel” merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2011. Web. 3 May 2011.

Irony and Expectations in “The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” though extremely short, as far as stories go, is figuratively filled to the brim with Irony.  Irony pulses through Mrs. Mallard’s veins by her afflicted heart.  It seeps in through the open window and the view that gives the promise of spring.  Life and death, love and bondage, these themes play off each other in unexpected ways.  Chopin seems to foreshadow one outcome and then plays out another; she sets up very clear expectations and then doesn’t quite follow through. The eventual outcome does not meet the expectations of the readers, because irony is deeply embedded in this fine story.

            The first line of the story sets up the irony nicely: “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart condition, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (157).  This sort of beginning is straight forward and readers are led to expect the outcome of really only one possible scenario: Louise Mallard will take the news badly and her heart will fail her.  But Kate Chopin masterfully uses irony, and the expected outcome is not how the story ends.  If it were the story would be pointless, as would this essay.

            At first, Mrs. Mallard takes the news exactly as we, the readers, would expect her to.  She weeps “at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,” as any woman would who had just received such terrible news.  She glances out the window and sees “tops of trees . . . all aquiver with the new spring life”.  In a story about death, it is interesting that the setting would be springtime.  She, Mrs. Mallard, believes and we as readers are led to believe that Mr. Mallard is dead.  The spring image of “countless sparrows . . . twittering in the eaves” does not quite seem to give the right mood of life ended, of death.  Spring implies new life and rebirth.  In this case, it symbolizes Mrs. Mallard’s new life without her husband. (157)

            Instead of dying, like one would expect, or dwelling in sadness, Louise starts to think a little differently on her new life alone: “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully”.  And we get another reference to her heart: “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously”.  This is the moment where the story takes a dramatic and ironic turn, this is the moment where Louise Mallard comes to her realization that without her husband she can be “free, free, free!” (157).

            As this turn takes place, we get yet one more mention of Mrs. Mallard’s heart as its’ “pulse [beats] fast, and the coursing blood [warms] and [relaxes] every inch of her body” (157).  Now instead of being her weakness, ironically her heart is what relaxes her, courses blood through her and ultimately keeps her alive.  Instead of killing her this weakness makes her strong enough to hold onto her new vision.  She abandons her sadness, at least in this moment, for she knows that she will “weep again when she [sees] the kind, tender hands folded in death,” but she does not “stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her”.  But she also realizes that she can become free from that “powerful will bending her” to her husband’s will.  Only through death does she realize that she can truly live. (158)

This is not the way a widow is expected to think minutes after hearing the news that her husband has died.  Louise sees her marriage as bondage, and ironically thinks that it “was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life may be long” (158).  Little does she know that the dream of today, freedom from the “bondage” of her marriage, will only come to pass by way of yesterday’s desire, that her life will be short. 

            Mrs. Mallard conceives that “a long procession of years” awaits her that will “belong to her absolutely” (158).  The word procession here is ironic in and of itself.  Procession means “continuous forward movement” which definitely makes sense in this context, but I’d like to suggest another reason why Chopin may have chosen this word instead of progression or succession or any other of its synonyms (“procession”).   Procession isn’t used extremely often in common vernacular, and when it is the word “funeral” usually precedes it.  Ironically, this type of procession is in her future; It will not be her husband’s funeral, but it will “belong to her absolutely” (158).

            When Josephine, Louis Mallard’s sister, tells her that she will make herself ill, Louise replies, emphatically, “Go away. I am not making myself ill”.  We are told that she is in fact “drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window”.  The scene outside of spring represents something that she can never obtain, but it is not the elixir of life, for in five very short paragraphs, Louise Mallard’s life will be over.  At that moment, however, “there was a feverish triumph in her eyes” as she concocted her story that only lasted an hour. (158)

No, she was not making herself ill, and that is what is ironic.  Maybe if she had been making herself ill she would have been prepared to see her husband alive again.  But she was making herself well, she was freeing herself: “Free! Body and soul free!” (158).  Unfortunately, her body and soul wanted freedom so badly that they couldn’t take it when they say Mr. Mallard alive and well and unaware that he had ever even been presumed dead.

The most ironic thing in the entire story is the very last sentence.  It reflects the opening sentence about Louise Mallard’s heart affliction.  After she has seen her husband and is dead, the story closes like this: “When the doctors came the said she had dies of heart disease—of joy that kills” (158).  The eventual outcome, Mrs. Mallard’s death almost meets the expectations of the readers, but not in the expected way.  Irony weaves its way through the story and emanates from the spring day outside.  Mrs. Mallard’s heart did fail her in the end.  She did not get the new life she expected and the disappointment killed her.  She didn’t die from joy but from melancholy, ironically enough.

Othello's Weakness

At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Othello we are given evidences to the great warrior Othello has been in the past.  These are given through the way he speaks and how others speak to him and of him.  Unfortunately, these strengths as a general do not transfer over into his personal life.  The entire play is an evidence of Othello’s weakness in marriage as a husband.

Even though Iago hates Othello, he still respects Othello as a great general.  Why else would Iago be so jealous that Othello chooses Michael Cassio to be his second-in-command?  It is not just Iago who respects him, apparently his strength is well known.  Othello himself boasts that Bronatio can accuse him of whatever he wants because the “services which [Othello] has done the signiory shall out-tongue his complaints” (1.2.20).  This means that the governing body of Venice recognizes all the fine military services Othello has accomplished for them and that even if Brobantio’s accusations were true, they would defend Othello.

Othello used his strength as a war general to gain his wife.  He told her war stories to woo her: “These things to hear would Desdemona seriously incline” and “she’d come again, and with a greedy ear devour up [Othello’s] discourse” (1.3.170-174).  If it weren’t for his strength in battle, Othello would have never won Desdemona, would never have married, and wouldn’t have found his true weakness that eventually led to several deaths including his own and Desdemona’s.

Othello’s biggest weakness in marriage, I believe, is that he doesn’t put enough trust in his wife.  When two people get married, they are agreeing to put each other above everyone else.  Othello fails at this, as he always goes to Iago first for advice and not to his wife, Desdemona.  He takes all his information second, third, fourth hand from Iago instead of just asking his wife and getting the firsthand account.  This is just really confusing.  Is it that Othello doesn’t trust his wife?  He probably trusts his wife at the beginning, or he wouldn’t have married her, but he is so scared of being hurt that he won’t take any risks.  He’d rather get false information from “honest” Iago than take a risk and confront his wife.

Othello does a little foreshadowing in Act 3. Sc. 3 before all heck actually breaks loose:

“Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul

But I do love thee! And when I love thee not,

Chaos is come again” (3.3.100).

Othello is slightly frustrated with Desdemona at this point, but Iago hasn’t been in his head yet.  When Othello says “chaos is come again” I don’t believe he’s plotting her murder and his suicide at this point.  What I think he means is that his life would be chaos without her in it.  It’s just a romantic little thing to say.  Unfortunately, when he no longer loves her, chaos does come, out of Othello’s own weakness in putting too much trust in the not-so-honest Iago and not his guiltless wife.

            When Iago plants the idea in his mind that Desdemona is cheating on Othello with Cassio, Othello is too quick to believe him.  He tries to act cool, to give his wife the benefit of the doubt—“Make me see ‘t, or at least so prove it That the probation bear no hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on, or woe upon thy life!”—but his needing solid proof with no room for doubt and his death threats to Iago last a very short time.  Very quickly, Othello goes mad with jealousy and vengeance towards his innocent wife.

            It’s unfortunate to watch a person who is so strong at giving orders and commanding respect become so gullible and desperate.  Othello’s past cannot redeem him from how he reacted to rumors and false accusations.  He treated his marriage like a battlefield, his wife like the enemy.  If Iago says she’s sleeping around, she must be and if she is I must kill her—perhaps this is what Othello thinks as he carries out his devious plan.

Othello puts far too much trust in the one person who is vying for his demise.  Iago is the antagonist; he’s the driving force that makes everything fall to pieces.  Yet, Othello trusts his word absolutely.  He does not believe his own wife when she says she is innocent.  Instead, with his veins pulsing with rage, he smothers her to death.  Only after she is dead do the pieces begin to fall into place in Othello’s mind that Iago is dishonest and his wife, Desdemona, was true.  By then it is way too late.