Ceremony

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Pages 1-67

Reading Check

1. Who are the World War II veterans on the reservation?

2. What do the veterans use to self-medicate?

3. What did Tayo curse for Rocky’s death?

4. What does Emo keep as a souvenir?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why does Emo hate Tayo? How does his attitude toward Tayo compare to the attitude of other Laguna Pueblo?

2. Why can’t Ku’oosh help Tayo?

3. What happens when warriors don’t participate in the Scalp Society, and what does this suggest about how the Laguna Pueblo view individual trauma?

Paired Resource

City of the Sick

• This 1953 short documentary discusses the treatment of mental illness at the Columbus State Hospital post-WWII.
• Content warning is added here for the documentary’s discussion and portrayal of electro-shock therapy and other controversial treatments used on people with mental health conditions, as well as offensive language used to describe neurodivergent people and people with mental health conditions.
• This ties into the theme of Alienation and Isolation in Post-WWII America.
• How does City of the Sick’s depiction of psychiatric treatment contrast with Tayo’s treatment in the veterans’ hospital? Why do you think this disconnect exists?

Pages 68-128

Reading Check

1. Who was Josiah’s lover?

2. Who does Hummingbird create to help him on his journey?

3. Where did Tayo live with his mother as a child?

4. What does Betonie believe created white people?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does the Western approach to cattle breeding and rearing parallel the Indigenous experience of colonialism?

2. What do Night Swan and Tayo have in common?

3. Why is Tayo afraid of Betonie at first? What does this suggest about his mental state?

4. How does Tayo feel about the traditional stories of the Laguna Pueblo?

5. What is the significance of Betonie’s eye color?

Paired Resource

Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Pueblo Revolt Story

• Acoma Pueblo storyteller Emmett Garcia talks passive resistance as survival, storytelling, and adaptation in the face of assimilation and genocide. Garcia also touches on the difficulty Indigenous warrior societies had in comprehending the wholesale slaughter and salt-the-earth approach of modern Western warfare.
• This relates to the theme of Adapting Tradition to the Present.
• How does the concept of passive resistance relate to the adaptation of tradition? How does this means of cultural survival keep the stories of the Laguna Pueblo alive?

Pages 129-192

Reading Check

1. What does Betonie tell Tayo to look out for on his journey?

2. Why are Harley, Leroy, and Tayo thrown out of the bar?

3. Who is the man that has stolen Tayo’s cattle?

4. What animal saves Tayo while he is trespassing on the ranch?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why is Tayo hesitant to accuse a white man of stealing? How is this an example of irony?

2. Why does Tayo believe that white people suffer more than Indigenous people?

3. How does Tayo envision his friends’ future?

Paired Resource

An Interview with Leslie Marmon Silko

• This interview with Silko focuses on her second novel, The Almanac of the Dead. Silko explores storytelling and Indigenous perceptions of time as they relate to Ceremony for a large portion of the interview.
• This relates to the theme of The Power of Storytelling.
• Ceremony was one of the first major works by an Indigenous American author to be published by a major US publishing house. How does the publication of Ceremony relate to the importance of stories? How does Silko feel about white Americans finally taking an interest in Indigenous stories with Ceremony?

Pages 193-244

Reading Check

1. What does Tayo find in the woman’s home when he returns with Robert?

2. What is the mystery woman’s name?

3. Where do Harley and Leroy abandon Tayo?

4. Why does Emo want to get Tayo alone?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Tayo’s lover think the destroyers want to do with his story? Why would they want to do this?

2. What epiphany does Tayo experience at the place where Harley and Leroy abandoned him? How does it relate to his trauma?

3. How does Tayo feel about Harley and Leroy’s funeral? What does this suggest about their cause of death?

Recommended Next Reads 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• This nonfiction work aims to present the history of the United States from the perspective of Indigenous people. Ortiz examines United States/colonial policy toward Indigenous peoples and discusses how policies/ideas like Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery have erased Indigenous peoples from US history.
• An Indigenous Peoples’ History provides a sociohistorical framework for the conditions on Tayo’s reservation and the circumstances that led Silko to write Ceremony.
• An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States on SuperSummary

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

• Published in 1968, Momaday’s novel marked the beginning of the Native American Renaissance. Like Ceremony, it features an Indigenous (Pueblo) veteran protagonist, Abel, returning to his reservation in the North American southwest after World War II.
• Shared topics include Alienation and Isolation in Post-WII America, reconnecting with one’s culture as a means of healing, the legacy of colonization and Indigenous genocide, and PTSD.
• House Made of Dawn on SuperSummary