Graduation Year
2020
Document Type
Senior Thesis
Degree
Bachelor of Arts
Primary Major
English
Thesis Advisor
Carlos Rodriquez, MA
Abstract
Restoring the Web asserts that N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony are novelized emergence myths, detailing the emergence of their respective protagonists' identities. Abel and Tayo's journey employ the framework of the "monomyth" of separation, initiation, and return. Explored by the essay are separation from self, family, and community. Community includes the earth and their relationship to the natural world that has left these men on the "edge of oblivion." Navajo healing ceremonies, invoking the supernatural, initiates their emergence journey, a journey of discovery, in which their identity is (re)constructed. As with all heroes who have suffered injury and overcome challenging circumstance, Abel and Tayo return to their communities with the ability to help others. Theirs is a story of hope, the antidote for what Silko calls "the disease of despair."