Male and Female Principles In Silko's Ceremony

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being punished for those prayers, and feels unable to understand his own, native language which before he could understand perfectly.

In Indian life, the female principle, however, can also sustain the male principle of activity, even when this male principle is temporarily thwarted as it is in Tayo's soul. The contrast between the Reed woman and the Corn woman gives a story and a mythic structure to explain drought beyond personal blame for Tayo-drought and rain are the natural, cyclical parts of life. At the end of the book, Tayo is healed by a vision of a goddess. (221) She is fertile and exists in a realm of beauty. And even, in one of the strongest and darkest example of female power in the form of a witch, makes Tayo feel better about his inaction and failure in white society. Laughing at his frustration and his inability to embody white ideals in war, the witch says that Indians created whites in their own imaginations, and that whites are weak beings with no sense of ...

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