Character Analysis
Old Grandma is a lot like the family's old mule: blind and stubborn. But although she has her annoying qualities (she's team Auntie when it comes to ragging on Josiah for going out with a Mexican woman, for example), old Grandma is ultimately a likeable character. She's a lot more compassionate and caring than Auntie. She worries about her grandson Tayo when he's sick and insists that he get treatment from a medicine man. And she's less hung up on what everybody in the community thinks about her family. If someone tries to gossip about her, she just laughs it off and says, "I know a better one than that about her!" (XI.29)
Like many blind characters in literature (Tiresias, anyone?), Grandma is capable of great insight. Her ability to "see" truths that are invisible to others makes up for her lack of physical sight, and her advanced age gives her the wisdom of perspective. It's Grandma, for example, who observes that the stories we read in Ceremony are repetitions of older stories: "It seems like I already heard these stories before," she says, "only thing is, the names sound different" (XXIX.17).
When old Grandma is stunned by a flash of light so bright even she could see it, she asks the obvious question about the invention of the nuclear bomb: "Why did they make a thing like that?" (XXV.220). We think this innocent question is actually pretty profound.
All of Grandma's astute observations make us think that maybe there's some wisdom to her belief in magic too: "Back in time immemorial, things were different, the animals could talk to human beings and many magical things still happened." (XI.41)