Response to Course Material #5

In class lately, we've been reading Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. And it is so hard. But I'm also convinced it's brilliant. I really like it, too. Everything about it, really: the story, the nonlinear storyline, the characters, the culture. It's all pretty fascinating. It's just so hard to understand every part of it. Going through in annotations, we can write so much in a page. And it our group, we've been having trouble deciding if we're making brilliant observations or just reaching for meaning because there is so much of it. And then Ms. Holmes chimes in with some tidbit of info that would have taken us years to recognize. We also read some articles for the forum assignment. Mine were on cultural background of the Pueblo people and some essays by Silko. The cultural background one was great, it gave me a lot of info that helps understanding some of the motifs and symbols in the novel, especially the directions and the sunwise cycle. Overall, Ceremony is crazy difficult but I'm really enjoying it and I can't wait to get a clearer picture of the meaning as we keep annotating!