Hero and Ceremony
The Monomyth The monomyth is a recurring, underlying theme that many writers follow not only intentionally but unintentionally as well; it follows the hero throughout the novel and explains the success of many mainstream novels. The monomyth is in its entirety he hero’s journey, beginning with the departure, then the initiation and ending with the return.
In the novel of ceremony there is no real sense of time there are many flashback’s but there still is a monomyth and it also fills many of the categories to be one. Our hero in ceremony is Tayo even though he is not the average hero with great strength or intelligence but a hero who has an inner battle with himself and stress; he falls into the category of a romantic hero.
The refusal in the monomyth has 6 step’s and ceremony manages to cover 5 of them , the first being the refusal and in ceremony it is not as a genuine refusal but a morale one that he wishes to continue to be accepted and not belittled by just being native American by the white people, during the war he was accepted and considered a hero by white people but when his uniform was off and he was returned home he was thought less of just because of his ethnicity so the real refusal here is his refusal to return to blatant racism even if it is not direct.
A hero must also have a rescue from without that lets the audience see that even heroes are mortal and require help or rescue at one point to appeal to pathos or emotion. Tayo’s issue or battle with post-traumatic stress that causes him to drink to try to escape the sadness and memories of all his friends and loved ones death in the war, he is from without and also has a personal identity crisis that troubles him throughout the novel.
The crossing of the threshold in the novel is not marked by a arduous task or magnanimous event but subtle and gentle , after meeting the “the woman” in the mountains who help’s Tayo with catching Josiah’s cattle or “the cattle of his dreams throughout his and her meeting by the last meeting Tayo feel’s much better about himself and his heritage, Tayo officially crosses the threshold after freeing the cattle of Josiah from a white man’s ranch but shows him the bill of sale and the cattle are wrangled to the woman’s house, so Tayo gets Robert and they head to the woman’s cabin and when they arrive the cattle are corralled in old Indian fashion and the house is abandoned and a few months after that Grandma claim’s he’s cured but Tayo’s true cure come when he puts an end to the ceremony, which is when Emo comes chasing him and torture Harley, a little before this. Tayo runs into a uranium mine and notices from the patterns on in the mine that it is the final stage of his ceremony.
Master of two world’s is when the hero realizes that there is nothing separating the new world from old world and is has a better understand and in ceremony this step is very clear when Tayo is finally cured and even a bit before that he is at peace with his old memories and sense of loss and his major self-realization that renders knowledge is after having relations with the woman in the mountain’s he knows that the land and people you love are never truly lost because they had existed in the first place. The hero’s final step is the Freedom to Live, Tayo with his new found knowledge of himself and the land is finally able to live at peace with himself and calm his inner demons to no longer cause nightmares and be able to live his life as a regular Indian now accepted by the tribe.
