Character Clues
Character Analysis
Relationship to Animals
Pay attention to the way characters treat animals in Ceremony. The "good guys"—like Josiah, Ts'eh, and Betonie—know that it's important to treat animals with respect, because they're part of life, too. Josiah teaches Tayo that killing flies is wrong, for example, because Fly once helped human beings by convincing the "mother of the people" to end a drought (XI.65). Ts'eh is careful not to squash any ants when she's working with her plants. And Betonie makes sure Tayo knows there's nothing to fear about the Bear People. Characters who are in tune with nature (Josiah, Robert, Tayo, Ts'eh, and the Hunter) perform the Ritual of the Deer, thanking the deer for its sacrifice and letting it know they hope it'll come back next year.
We know a character is bad, however, when he treats animals with neglect or cruelty. Emo stomps on ants and buries the squashed melon so the flies can't eat it. The white ranchers on Mount Taylor hunt for sport and abuse cattle in Texas roping tournaments. What gives?
Tayo starts as a little boy killing flies like the white teachers at school taught him to, but he learns from Josiah, old Ku'oosh, Betonie, and Ts'eh the Laguna and Native American lessons of treating animals with respect. He feels guilty for the times he mistreated animals and worries that "the earth and the animals might not know . . . he was not one of the destroyers" (XXIV.74).
Sure, he cursed at a few flies while on the Bataan Death March, but he feels really, really bad about it. Tayo's interactions with animals, and his worry over how to treat them, reveals his progression from alienation within white culture to healing within Laguna culture.
Physical Characteristics - Eye Color
The color of a character's eyes is super significant in this novel. Hazel eyes are a symbol of interracial procreation and change. But they also serve as a tool of characterization, since they suggest that a hazel-eyed individual character is more progressive and accepting of change.
The Night Swan and Betonie, who both have hazel eyes, each explain to Tayo that things are going to change whether we like it or not, so we'd better be prepared to change too. Ultimately Tayo comes to embrace this perspective. Betonie's grandmother, a Mexican woman with hazel-green eyes, is also a champion of the idea that things are changing. The color of these characters' eyes mark each of them as societal outsiders—mistrusted by those conservative, reactionary types—but we know they're cool. We bet Kelly Clarkson would think so, too.
Ts'eh's eyes are "ocher," which is a golden shade of brown. We know that yellow and golden things are particularly special (see our discussion of "colors" in the section on "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory"), and this definitely applies to Ts'eh. We know as soon as Tayo meets her that she's going to be a positive force in his life.
Sex and Love
We think Sigmund Freud would agree with us when we say that, in Ceremony, a character's attitude towards sex and love tells us a lot about them.
Let's start with Emo, to take an extreme example. Emo loves to tell stories about his one-night stands with white women, but his sexual partners are only important to him because of what they stand for—white privilege. He doesn't really think of women as people; they're more like props to him. He tricks them into going to bed with him and doesn't even really care if they're conscious during the process. (If they pass out, it makes for a better story.) Yep—Emo is a soulless, sadistic, misogynistic creep.
But on top of that, Emo's sex life shows us how he's trapped in a vicious cycle of envy and insecurity. His liaisons aren't really about the sex so much as getting even with white men. "Get[ting] [his] hands on white women" is payback for all the terrible things that whites have done to Native Americans (VIII.10).
On the other hand, Tayo's sex life reveals him to be a deeply spiritual character. First of all, he can't stand Emo's stories of sexual conquest. They're not only offensive, they're actually harmful, because they promote "The Lie" that white people are better than Native Americans.
For Tayo, sex is a spiritual encounter. In fact, it's as much a part of the ceremony as Betonie's chanting or old Ku'oosh's cornmeal. Tayo's first sexual encounter, with the Night Swan, can be seen as a kind of initiation into the spiritual quest he's about to set off on. It's his first lesson in the inevitability of change, and it means he is "a part of it now," even if he doesn't understand what that means yet (XI.60).
And Tayo's relationship with Ts'eh isn't just about getting laid; it's another step in the healing process of the ceremony. When he sleeps with Ts'eh for the first time, he thinks of rivers, downpours, and damp leaves, images that reconnect him to nature, which is what the ceremony is all about. And when he wakes up the next morning, he smiles for the first time in ages. Sex situates Tayo along his process of healing. (Somebody cue Marvin Gaye.)
Sex also tells us a bit about several minor characters. Josiah's healthy and happy relationship with the Night Swan, for example, shows us that he's way above the pettiness and racism we see from people like Auntie.
Finally, the sexual encounters of Tayo's mom and Helen Jean reveal the desperation of Native American women who can't make ends meet and must resort to prostitution.
Names
When the woman finally tells Tayo her name, she says: "I'm a Montaño." (XXV.91) It's no coincidence that Tayo's mysterious, mesa-hiking lover should have a last name that sounds like the Spanish for "mountain." And when she stares off at the Black Mountains and speaks about her brothers and sisters, we get the definite feeling there's something magical going on. Ms. Montaño is both flesh-and-blood lover and cosmic mountain goddess.
The other name the woman gives Tayo is her nickname, Ts'eh. Some critics have pointed out that "Ts'eh" bears a certain resemblance to "Ts'its'tsi'nako," the Laguna name for Thought-Woman, the spider. The name "Ts'eh" also sort of looks like the Native name for Mount Taylor, Tse-pi'na, "the woman veiled in clouds" (XI.17). Ts'eh's connection to this folkloric figure and the mountain reinforce the idea that she isn't just a character—she's also an archetype, or a symbolic figure that can appear in different works of literature and even across cultures.
Decidedly non-native names, like Rocky, Harley, and Pinkie, let us know that these characters want to fit in with white people. Rocky chooses to go by a nickname rather than his Christian baptismal name or the Indian name given to him by his great-aunt, because his ultimate goal is to assimilate as much as possible into white American society.