Discuss the construction of Tayo in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Codi in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams. How does the construction of character help to develop the main themes of each novel?
Lesmlie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams are both heavy with emotionally driven themes ranging from racism to the bonds that exist between family members. Though each theme is deserving of individual attention, due to space constraints this essay has distilled them all into a single overarching concept; the search for connection. Tayo and Codi's development as characters is the driving force revealing this desire for (and necessity of) connection with family, community and their own place in time and space. Spun through all these sub-themes is that which is the antithesis, that sickness or state of being which led to this disconnection or estrangement that each character seeks to rectify.
In Silko's Ceremony, the theme of connection is in no way understated or subtle. the narrative is liberally sprinkled with references to threads and webs – obvious references to the overall concern with the 'fragile world' described by Ku'oosh with its implications of 'strength inherent in spider webs' (Silko, p.35). The estrangement or disconnection, which is the antithesis of Silko's connected world, is described by Shumaker as indicative of 'Euroamerican culture' which 'works to separate things'(2001). This is only half the story, however, for while Tayo's childhood featured teachers who told his cousin 'don't let the people at home hold you back' (Silko, p.51) part of his treatment with the medicine man Betonie, includes the idea that the witchery people 'want us to believe all evil resides with white people' and that such a belief leaves them 'ignorant and helpless as we watch our own destruction' (Silko, p.132).
Kingsolver's Animal Dreams places its emphasis on a smaller scale of connectedness. While Silko has Tayo exploring the vastness of a connection to everything, Codi in Animal Dreams is, in the words of De Reus, on a 'quest for acceptance, love, and identity'(2010). Codi's quest is for the sense of connection her sister had; 'I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Halie was living it' (Kingsolver p.225).
This statement is the thesis for the novel's construction of Codi's character as an extended metaphor for the driving theme of the importance of connectedness in the narrative. Codi's opening statement is 'I am the sister who didn't go to war' (Kingsolver p.7). The first information presented to the reader about Codi tells us that she is defined by comparison to her sister, the only connection she has to begin with. When she arrives in Grace, she describes it as being 'made of things that erode too slowly to be noticed,' and having trees that 'could adapt to life on Mars if need be' (Kingsolver p.8). Even here, when she is completely free from true connection with the place, she can see its power, its ability to endure.
The physical nature of this connectedness, centred as it is in the construction of the place as much as the people who live there is markedly different from Tayo's initial brush with this theme. In fact initially Tayo is unable even to situate himself in time, moving from his bed in the 'now' into the past where he is in the Philippines, and back to the present again (Silko p.5-12). He is alone, there is nothing in these initial pages that Tayo uses to define himself, in contrast to Codi, who's existence is initially defined by her relationship to her sister.
Within the continuum of relative time inhabited by both characters, things are coming to a head dramatically, as time itself and the effects of change wreak havoc for the respective protagonists in their quests. For Tayo – the ceremony around which his rehabilitation (and the rehabilitation of the land) will be built must be a new creation. As Jahner points out 'Tayo himself must search for them [the new rituals]' (1979 p.41) because hand in hand with connectedness, is the theme of change which at once led to the initial estrangement and must now be balanced, acclimatised to, in order to reclaim that much desired connection. As Betonie says 'It is important to all of us. Not only for your sake, but for this fragile world' (Silko, p. 36).
As a half breed, a product of old myth and new existence, Tayo is perfectly situated in spite of his own internal turmoil (or possibly even because of it) to be the instrument of building the new ceremony; as Jahner puts it, of 'searching for new links between prototype and contemporary action' (p.41 1979). Codie too represents a half way point between old and new, although as with everything it is not something which separates her from her society, but something they respect and find useful; 'I was respected as an expert on city people' (Kingsolver p.206).
Kingsolver uses memory to fulfil the same role as the story in Silko's Ceremony, just as Tayo's world is formed by the story; 'Thought-Woman, the spider, named things and as she named them they appeared (Silko p.1), so Codi's universe is shaped by memory 'if you remember something, then it's true' (Kingsolver p.342). In effect, they may be saying the same thing, for as Codi points out 'memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin' (Kingsolver p.48) – an intimation, when seen in the light of the novel's conclusion, that the recollection (the story you tell or remember) is in effect more important than the actual event.
Therefore as each protagonist progresses through time and space, establishing and re-establishing the stories and memories which will sustain them, they follow closely parallel paths.
Tayo's first brush with true connection reflects Silko's pervasive idea of a universal web, in this instance connecting Tayo's words and the reality he creates with them; 'the words of the story poured out of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles and stone extending to hold the corporal up' (Silko p.12). It is this sense of universal connection between cause (and what constitutes cause) and effect that Tayo must try to come to grips with, and unlike Codi, he must do it without the growing feeling of personal connection to the people in his life. For while Codi in Animal Dreams moves forward towards a reconciliation with her past and her place in her immediate society, Tayo's growing connection with the land actually pulls him further out of touch with the people around him, those who are affected by the witchery.
In this way, as each novel explores the theme of connection and its importance, Codi and Tayo embody the different emphasis each author places on connection and its price. Tayo's quest is, in effect, a messiah quest in which he will use his new found connection to the ceremony to save everyone from the witchery, sacrificing his established place within his social circle 'Emo has told them you are crazy, that you live in the cave here and think you are a Jap soldier. They are all afraid of you.' (Silko, 232). In comparison, Codi is pulled back into connection with her life without personally having to chose to sacrifice anything. Her sister, Halie, dies in Niceragua, but as Halie is a character we hardly know it seems more like the ending of a codependency than an actual death. Codi too helps to save the town, but unlike Tayo, she does not have to do it alone – indeed the towns survival is closely tied to her ability to let go of her own disconnectedness and rejoin a community that never really held her in the low regard she thought it did. 'Someone apparently thought I had succeeded in this endeavour. I was going to be named something like teacher of the year. Teachers and kids all voted, secret ballot' (Kingsolver p.290)
Finally, no narrative work can strive for connection without an obstacle to surmount, some sickness or state of being which causes the undesirable disconnection or estrangement. According to Mayo (2001), Silko's emphasis here is on learning the correct way to interpret and synthesise knowledge of the world. Tayo must overcome his childhood indoctrination 'don't let the people at home hold you back' (Silko p.51) against his own culture, he must overcome the witchery; 'They will try to stop you from completing the ceremony' (Silko p.125). His estrangement is a sickness, reconnection is the cure.
This is another point where Kingsolver's Animal Dreams takes a more direct approach to a theme, being more grounded in the physical world. Sickness (of people, and of the land) as a cause or catalyst for disconnection is treated directly, most notably in the ironic illness afflicting Codi's father. Shumaker explains that 'while Doc Homer's memories are fragmented and peeling away from any solid foundation, Codi is reassembling hers' (2001). For Kingsolver, this links directly back to memory as the constructor of reality – as Doc Homer's Alzheimer's progresses, he loses contact with reality, for example when he receives the phone call about his daughters abduction he believes at first the caller is talking about a local girl going into labour (Kingsolver p.247). The connection is reiterated with multiple references to America as being a 'nation of amnesiacs' (Kingsolver p.240), unable to construct a stable reality for themselves or behave in a 'sane' manner because, like Doc Homer, their memory fails them.
The search for connection, and its antithesis, those sicknesses or states of being which lead to alienation and estrangement form the central themes of Silko's Ceremony and Kingsolver's Animal Dreams. Tayo and Codi's development as characters, is the driving force revealing this desire for (and necessity of) connection with family, community and their own place in time and space. This essay has tracked a number of points of convergence for the themes, and the approach to them with reference to the construction and development of the protagonists – most notably the search for connection, the linking of past and future through the character and finally the importance of narrative (be it the story, or memory) in determining reality.
