Myth as a Means of Expression

“There was no telling what Coyote had done to him…Then they found the place where Coyote got him…He was suffering from thirst and hunger, he was almost too weak to raise his head…This is him all right, but what can we do to save him?” (Silko, 140) This quote, expressed by Silko in her novel Ceremony, parallels perfectly with Tayo the protagonist’s struggles after returning to his native reservation after fighting in World War II. Upon analysis, one realizes that the Laguna myth of the Coyote does not serve as a metaphor for Tayo’s plight, but allows the reader to intuit specific ideals about this plight and experience them as a result of their affect. When the character of Coyote is contributed to war, and the man to Tayo, this affect can be better sensed. In the myth, Coyote caused the man to run asunder in his path, disrupting his life, and causing him “thirst and hunger.” This sense of “thirst and hunger” was experienced by Tayo after returning from the war. His participation in WWII caused him mental disarray, making him vastly different from his civilian and even veteran counterparts, causing him to long for a sense of belonging and companionship in his home, a place in which he feels dissimilar and separate. He thirsted for it. He hungered for it. It may also be safe to intuit that Tayo feels this sense of absence or misrecognition within himself, “speaking a different language”—as did Coyote’s victim—than what he had previously spoken, before the war. Using a character description from Blanchot, Tayo “is outside salvation, he belongs to exile, that region where not only is he away from home, but away from himself.”

Upon being found, the Coyote victim’s family searched for a holy means by which to cure him, just as was done in Tayo’s case. “They ran to the holy places, they asked what might be done.” (Silko, 140) The use of intertwining myth and Tayo’s narrative displays the Laguna philosophy of healing, whether it be medicinal, spiritual, or both, and allows a link between historical Laguna methods of rehabilitation with their modern, identical practices. Tayo’s Laguna culture views holy healers as a means to embodied salvation, and Tayo’s situation is better understood when keeping this historical, spiritual, and cultural frame in mind, as is expressed through the Coyote myth.

As we have deduced at this point in our course, the expression of a secondary source’s experience is a difficult task, primarily as a result of the lack of subjective emotion in regards to their experience. Silko, however, found a useful tool in myth as a means through which secondary sentiment can be expressed and felt by others because it provides a spiritual and historical background in which the experiences have occurred, and the mind frame with which they are felt. Because myth has no specific link to any one source, it may be used as a universal narrative with which unlimited life experiences may be paralleled, and its aesthetics used to intuit concrete sentimental and emotional affect.

The Experience of Jazz

As we all know by this point, it is extremely difficult to express secondhand experience. This, however, did not stop Toni Morrison from striving to achieve this goal in her novel, Jazz, a narrative set in the 1920s New York, dealing with a myriad number of events and emotions. As can be agreed upon by many, one of the most significant constituent events of the novel occurs when Joe shoots Dorcas. There are many theories about why he committed such an act, one being that he gained a strong sense of desire as a result of the emotional separation between him and his wife. In either instance, Morisson did not simply account to us what this experience would have been like, she told us what this experience was. Joe’s desire for Dorcas was not simply like enjoying a piece of candy, something that can be savored for a while and then forgotten, Joe’s desire was concrete. Joe’s experience was this: he had become emotionally detached from his wife as a result of her feelings of regret of not having children, he meets Dorcas and finds something in her that rekindles old feelings of love in his heart, she rebuffs him, he seeks her out, finds her, and kills her, and now she is forever with him. That is Joe’s experience, and there is no other simple way to put it. Morrison understood that the emotions Joe was feeling should not be generalized to other situations. Joe’s desire had a specific hunger, a specific flavor, primarily in the mode of belief. As we have discussed in class, belief is not based on reason or science. Shooting Dorcas was obviously not a rational action to keep her love and his emotions, but he believed it nevertheless. “You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden…Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” (Morrison 133-135) As can be seen, emotion (pleasure/pain, experience, aesthetics) have no place in the realm of reason, but have everything to do with motive founded in belief.

As can be seen from the referenced chart on the categories of both belief and reason, aesthetics plays a large role in the former class. Morrison conveyed the experience of Joe shooting Dorcas by implementing the simultaneity of two artistic modes at once, music and narrative. By lending the work and various characters themselves a “rhythm”, “beat” or “instrument-like quality”, we are able to better ascertain the emotions of the characters themselves while going through their own experiences. For this reason, our newly found definition of Joe’s experience would have to be altered slightly to include his emotions leading up to and at the time of the shooting. Joe’s experience was this: He felt himself aging with the emotional detachment between him and his wife as a result of her feelings of regret over not having children, he “can’t stand the quiet” (Morrison, 49),  he meets Dorcas and swears he “became new” (Morrison, 130-135), she rebuffs him, he seeks her out, finds her, and kills her, “wanting to stay right there…catch her before she hurt herself,” (Morrison, 130), forever feeling her love.

Morrison’s implementation of “beat and rhythm” while striving to express the experiences of other individuals serve a myriad number of purposes. It allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the personalities of the characters themselves based on the instrument in which Morrison has lended them qualities. For example, Joe has a very upbeat personality and friendly demeanor, and can be best characterized as a drum or even playful sax, while Violet’s varying violent and mournful demeanor seem to me characteristic of a piano. This instilled me with the understanding that art may borrow qualities of other modes of art to serve the same primary function and in fact bolster its assertion. And it is through this emotional emphasis brought upon by the simultaneity of these modes that greater subjective understanding of the character and their motives can be gained, thereby allowing Morrison as an author to better express their experiences, and we as readers to better understand these experiences as well.