Nothing can stay the same. Cultures, Individuals and nature. These things all have phases as explained by Betonie in
Ceremony in fact he may be a symbol in the book for the changing of culture. "shopping bags poked out; piled to the tops of woolworth bags were bouquets of dried sage and the brown leave of mountain tobacco wrapped in swaths of silvery unspun wool." Silko Pg. 120 Betonie's home is a completely different place for Tayo. He is at first unsure how to react, Tayo is used to a traditional Indian. As medicine man Ku'oosh is very traditional, Betonie is not. Tayo is realizing that in this quote, "and what do I make of all this? He nodded his head slowly up and down. "Maybe you smelled it when you came in. "I the old days it was simple. A medicine person could get by without all these things. But nowadays..." Silko Pg. 121 The "things" Betonie is referring to are all of the new world items Tayo is seeing scarred throughout Betonie's house. He is saying how he needs all these things nowadays in order to be a successful medicine man. The culture is changing. As Tayo heals, nature has played a big roll in his life. At first the nature he describes is very dark and deeply moving. However, tward the current stage in his healing he is describing more and more beautiful depictions. For example, "Any way, I couldn't help any one who was afraid of me." "He started humming softly to himself, a song that Tayo could only hear only faintly, but that reminded him of of butterflies darting from flower to flower." Silko Pg. 123 This is interesting
because instead of triggering his P.T.S. this reminds of him something more beautiful. This is symbolizing the shifting in his state of mind. Individuals change through out their life. This makes life change through time. It is a circle that will not change until life on this planet ceases to exist.
Tayo has unfortunately gone through a lot of negatively impacting things during his lifetime. He blames most of those things on himself. One of the things Tayo is burdened with never being able to fit in. At the reservation he is too "white", outside the reservation he is too "Indian" Although for some reason, Gallop was one place he seems to fit in even and Ironically could be where Tayo was conceived. "They don't understand. We know these hills and we are comfortable here." there was something about the way the old man said comfortable, it had a different
meaning" Silko Pg. 117 What is that "different meaning? Even if the whites pushed these people to a different type of land, they still come here and some live here despite all of the failure and poorness of this town. This is what Tayo began to figure out. Tayo has seen more death and destruction than any human should in the Baaton death march. In this quote he talks about witches, the root of all evil. These witches are a possible cause for all the destruction tay has seen. "The witch stood in the shadows beyond the fire and no one ever knew where this witch came from, which tribe? or if it was a man or woman. but the important thing was, this witch didn't show off any dark thunder charcoals or red ant-hill beads." Silko Pg. 135 This which could be a metaphor for Tayo's P.T.S. Or it could be evil in general. Either way it is a dark presence which is somewhere within Tayo. Out of all of this he seems to be healing. which is naturally beautiful. He "He blinked back the tears, but he didn't move. He was tired of fighting. If there was no one left to trust, then he had no more reason to live" and "if you can't trust me you should go home before it gets dark. You can't be too carful these days. Silko Pg. 122 He is somewhat still in pain, but Sometimes one has to resurrect the pain in order for it to go away. It is only human nature.
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