Quest; Folklore or Legend; Magical Realism; Postmodern
It's no surprise that Ceremony doesn't neatly fit into any one category or genre. After all, Leslie Marmon Silko is pretty much the most hipster author this side of the Mississippi. She didn't give her novel chapters because she didn't want it to conform to the standard format of the novel. So it makes sense that Silko would try to avoid other Anglocentric conventions, like that of "genre," in the telling of this Laguna story.
That being said, Ceremony has similarities to several genres, most notably the quest. (Check out our discussion of this under "Booker's Seven Basic Plots.") While some critics argue that Tayo's journey isn't exactly a standard European-style quest, we can definitely say that he's a man on a mission.
One of the most notable characteristics of Silko's novel is the inclusion of traditional Laguna stories, which are set apart from the rest of the novel in the style of poems. The retelling of stories, handed down through generations by word of mouth, put Ceremony squarely into the category of "folklore," at least in part.
But wait . . . there's more. Because the magic of the folklore affects Tayo's narrative, some critics also call Ceremony a work of magical realism. The "magical things" that happen in the stories start to appear in Tayo's otherwise realistic life. In fact, part of his healing process involves recognizing that the magic of the stories is, in fact, very real.
The combination of all of these different genres tempts some critics to call Ceremony a postmodern novel. We can certainly see their point. After all, Silko definitely makes use of a lot of postmodern conventions, like fractured, non-linear narratives and textual experiments like bricolage and pastiche.
Bricolage is what we might call a literary mashup. It's when an author tinkers with a whole bunch of different techniques and structures in order to create something new—like, for example, when Silko tells the story of a soldier's racy night out with two ladies using the form of a traditional Laguna folk tale. Silko uses lines of poetry, oral storytelling, novelistic prose, an entry from a medicine man's handbook, a picture, and even blank space to create this weird, chapter-less thing. We guess we'll call it a "novel," for want of a better word.
Pastiche is what we might call "intertextuality." It's like cutting and pasting quotes from different texts and putting them next to each other. The story that these mashed-up quotes tell is both a retelling of old stories and something new.
Silko has a very good reason for making such extensive use of bricolage and pastiche.The essential theorybehind these techniques—that we can "quote" existing literature in order to create something new—reinforces her message that diverse cultural elements can be combined to form a new identity. Cool, huh?
Like many postmodern texts, Silko's novel can be seen as a response to the horrors of WWII. But unlike many works of postmodernism, she isn't arguing that the awfulness of this war is unrepresentable. In fact, she's saying the opposite—that we have to represent this tragedy in literature in order to heal ourselves.