INTRODUCTION

“The storytelling is not only a way of life; it is also a continuation of life in

the community. So the storytelling in that sense is an act of showing that there
was not anything lost, nothing was dead, nobody was gone; in stories everything
is held together regardless of time”.
The storyteller in a community passes down the spiritual inheritance among the n
ative people. Leslie Marmon Silko construct new voices of her own by the re-tell
ing the tribe stories. Silko’ storytelling is open to varied voices, because her l
anguage in the story is always bound up with others. Silko’s story is relativized
with the other stories suggested by the Pueblo divine image. The web – like story
stretches his antennae to other stories. Every story is a part of a big story. A
s a result the meaning of a story cannot be exhausted and completely carried out
by the teller itself. So the story cannot be the private property of the storyt
eller. For Silko the story is the way to look at one self, the background and fu
ndamental nature in the community. Through story Silko might hope to deliver a c
ommunal sense to the story listeners and speak out the tribal justice. In Silko’s
work The Storyteller, she presents a strongly polyphonic text, because there are
many people’ voices in Silko’s story. The voices are gelatinized and thus dialogic.
No authoritative voice works as a norm from the pluralism in which all have leg
itimate voice. Although Silko’s voice builds the communal sense, this might be jus
t one of the voices, a one for storytelling. Leslie Marmon Silko is a storytelle
r constructing new voices of her own by re-telling the old communal stories.

LULLABY
"Lullaby" is one of the most noted pieces in Storyteller. The “lullaby’ of the title
is a song for the newborn as well as the dying in this story.
The story opens to Ayah sitting under a tree, caught in a reverie of memories.
She is organically connected to her environment, its rocks, trees, creeks and we
ather more than the box-car shack she lived in most of her life. Though at the b
eginning Silko reveals that Ayah is waiting for her husband Chato, a man beaten
by age and senility, driven by a lifetime of service to people who used and then
abandoned him, the story as a hole is composed of Ayah’s memories. She remembers
the birth of her children. She remembers, with most pain, her son Jimmy’s death th
rough a war that means nothing to her. She remembers two children taken from her
home to be cared for by Anglo health care and social workers. She remembers wit
h bitter resignation watching Chato learn to accommodate to the people and cultu
re around him-learning English and Spanish, working for years as a ranch hand on
ly to be asked to leave when age and disability sustained through work kept him
from being as efficient as another could be..She remembers cleaning and dying wo
ol with her grandmother and mother, the joy that she felt with her children and
she finally remembers her strength and pride that she once felt.
Three experiences caused Ayah the most pain: Jimmy’s death, the confiscation of Da
nny and Ella and Chato’s service to the people who do not share the Navajo way of
life and principles they follow. All of those things led to a slow alienation be
tween Ayah and Chato. She resented Chato’s subservience, his accommodation and his
 impact on their lives-if he had not taught her how to sign her name and if he w
ere not so intent on abiding the rules, he would not have allowed them to be tak
en from her.
Ayah’s only escapes from these problems are her memories and her connection to the
land and life.

TRADITION AND CHANGE

In all her writing, Silko is concerned with the ways in which Native American tr
aditions can be adapted to the contemporary circumstances of Native American lif
e. Her characters are often caught between traditional and modern way of life. H
er characters are struggling between two worlds. The world of traditions, spirit
ual world full of memories, songs and old stories, and the modern world cruel, c
old, white, world without emotions and full of temptations. Ayah founds consolat
ion in her memories. Through her memories she escapes into her world where she l
ives her old life that is maybe strange for modern people, but for her it was al
l that she needed. Ayah’s memories are actually traditions that live inside of her
and remind her of happier times. Ayah recalls such traditions as her mother wea
ving blankets, while her grandmother spun the yarn from the wool.

“So she thought about the weaving and the way her mother done it”.

“And while she combed the wool, her grandma, sat beside her spinning a silvery str
and of yarn around the smooth cedar spindle”

This memory is evoked by Ayah’s use of the old army blanket that her son Jimmy had
sent home from the war .Looking down at her worn shoes in the snow, she recalls
the warm moccasins Native Americans once worn. At one point of her husband’s deat
h Ayah falls back on the singing of the traditional lullaby sung by her grandmot
her. The story suggests that at such a profound event as the death of a loved on
e, such traditions serve an important purpose, even in modern life. Through Ayah’s
memories Silko is trying to represent the old Native traditions that though tim
e are being lost, how modern time and society influence on everyone’s life and all
the good things are being lost due to the modern view of life. She represents t
hese traditions in order to explain them, to show how much good they bring and h
ow they can help people in changing their everyday life.
RACIAL AND CULTURAL OPPRESSION

Native Americans throughout the history in a lot of ways were under the oppressi
on of the white people. First they took away their land, destroyed the nature, a
nd then they tried to destroy them as a nation. When they were finished with kil
ling, that for them was justified, they found other ways to oppress the Native p
eople. Because of the different skin color and different world views, different
culture, the Native people suffered many injustices. They were considered stupid
, wild, ignorant, and even crazy. The difference in race and in culture for whit
e people was enough reason to feel superior. They considered their world view is
better, their way of living life is better and instead trying to maybe teach t
he Natives their way of life and along the way maybe accept some of their custom
s, all they did is that they tried to destroy them along with their “strange “ custo
ms. Silko in this story through her characters is showing that oppression whethe
r racial or cultural or both can led to a destruction of someone’s life.

All of the major tragedies in Ayah’ life are precipitated by the intrusion of whit
e authorities into her home. The cultural oppression of Native Americans in gene
ral is indicated through personal loses Ayah has suffered at the hands white cul
ture. It is a white man that who informs Ayah and her husband Chato of their los
s, symbolizing the larger racial issue of Native Americans dying in service for
nation that has oppressed them. Cheating Ayah into signing away her children als
o has much deeper implications into Native American history. The near genocide o
f Native Americans by the U.S. government in the nineteenth century was in part
characterized by the practice of tricking the Native Americans into signing “treat
ies” that worked to their disadvantage. Finally, the rancher who employs Chato is
another symbol of oppressive white authority. When Chato breaks his leg on the j
ob falling off a horse, the rancher refuses to pay him until he is able to work
again. And when he determines that Chato is too old to work, he fires him and ki
cks the old couple out of their home to make room for the new workers. These act
ions add class oppression onto the condition of racial oppression from which Aya
h and her family suffer
LANGUAGE BARRIERS

Language as a bearer of culture is central to Ayah’s sense of loss throughout her

life. The language barrier between Ayah and the white doctor who eventually take
her children away is an important factor in Ayah’s experience. Because she does n
ot speak their language, she has no idea why they have come to her home. The lan
guage barrier caused by her inability to understand English-speaking white peopl
e adds to Ayah’s experience of being taken advantage of by the white people. When
a white man comes to the door to inform them that their son Jimmy has died in th
e war, her husband Chato has to translate it to her.
“A man in khaki uniform trimmed in gold gave them yellow piece of paper and told t
hem that Jimmy was dead. All of this was told to Chato because he could understa
nd English. Chato looked at her, shook his head and then told her “Jimmy isn’t comin
g home anymore”.

The white doctors took advantage of Ayah’s inability to understand English by bull
ying her into signing the paper that gives them the permission to take the child
ren away.
“They were wearing khaki uniforms and they waved papers at her and a black ball-po
int pen trying to make her understand English.

Ayah did not know what she is doing. She learned from her husband to write her n
ame in English. She was proud of that. She signed those people only to make them
go, because they looked so cold. The ability of the doctors to essentially tric
k her into signing away her children thus hinges on a language barrier in severa
l ways. It turns out to be worse for Ayah to know a little bit of English than n
ot to know any English at all. This incident becomes a rift between Ayah and Cha
to. Chato has learned to speak English, in order to accommodate himself better i
n a world dominated by whites, and so she blames Chato for the theft of her chil
dren by the white authorities.

“She hated Chato, not because he let the policeman and doctors put the screaming c
hildren in the government car, but because he had taught her to sign her name”/

The strong association with language as a bearer of culture and the loss of lang
uage as the loss of culture is most visible in Ayah’s few brief visits with her ch
ildren after they have been taken away from her. When Danny and Ella are first b
rought to visit her, Danny is still fluent in his Native Navajo and he is able t
o maintain a connection with his mother. But the last time they came to visit he
r, the almost complete loss of their native language signifies that they have be
come so assimilated into the culture that they cannot communicate with their own
mother. With this language barrier Ayah’s sense of alienation from her own childr
en is so strong that she does not even say goodbye to them.
DEATH AND LOSS
Ayah’s life is characterized by a series of traumatic losses of her family members
at the hands of the white culture. Loss of traditional culture, loss of native
language and loss of family are each brought about her encounters with white cul
ture. Her son Jimmy dies in a war, fighting for the U.S. government, the very go
vernment responsible for the destruction of his native culture. Ayah lost her tw
o youngest children, Danny and Ella when they were taken away to a government in
stitution. Their removal from the family home leads to their alienation from the
ir native culture and language, as well as their family
Juxtaposed against these traumatic losses is the burial of two Ayah’s babies who d
id not survive. For Ayah, it was easier to accept the death of two of her babies
when she was able to bury them in a traditional way on their native land than t
o accept the theft of her children by the white culture.

“It was worse than if they had died; to lose the children and to know that somewhe
re, in a place called Colorado, in a place full of sick and dying strangers, her
children were without her”.
 By contrast, the burial of the two babies becomes an enactment of tradition and
ritual that allows Ayah to heal from loss. The death of Jimmy and the removal o
f Danny and Ella from her home are the most painful losses because they represen
t not just the loss of loved ones to death, but the loss of an entire culture to
the hands of the white culture.
While the story ends with Chato’s death this is not the most crucial loss Ayah exp
erience in her relationship with her husband. Rather it is their encounters with
the white culture that led to alienation between them. Ayah blames Chato for th
e loss of their children, and he becomes a stranger to her. Nevertheless Chato’s d
eath at the end of the story is the final episode in a series of losses Ayah has
suffered at the hands of the white culture.

MOTIF

The blanket is a key motif in this story because it links Ayah with her grandmot
her as well as her dead don Jimmy. The blanket mixes images of traditional Nativ
e American culture with modern American culture in a way that becomes meaningful
to Ayah.
As she sits against a tree watching the snow in the beginning of the story, Ayah
wraps an old army blanket around herself for warmth. The blanket is a reminder
of her son Jimmy, who had sent it to her while serving combat in war. Ayah recal
ls the day the white man came to their door to inform them that Jimmy had died i
n a helicopter crash. Although the blanket comes from the U.S. Government, whic
h is responsible for Jimmy’s death, as well as the death of thousands of Native Am
ericans in the nineteenth century, it takes on great significance for Ayah. The
army blanket comes to hold great sentimental value, as it is a tangible reminder
of Jimmy, whose body was never recovered.
Jimmie’s army blanket also reminds Ayah of happier times, sitting outside while he
r mother wove blankets on a big loom and her grandmother spun the yarn from raw
wool. She remembered how those blankets were soft and warm and how she slept in
cold winter nights covered with those blankets. The traditional hand-woven blank
et made from scratch by the women in the family also serves as a metaphor for th
e passing of the oral tradition between generations of women-just as her mother
and grandmother wove blankets in a traditional way, so Ayah carries o tradition
of weaving a tale in a style of the oral tradition.
The old army blanket becomes even more significant in the end of the story, when
Ayah wraps it around her husband as he lies curled up to die in the snow. Wrapp
ing him in the army blanket given to her by Jimmy, while singing a traditional l
ullaby, Ayah combines elements of Native American tradition with important perso
nal associations from modern life. The singing of the lullaby is actually a meta
phor of traditional blanket-weaving with the oral tradition of song and storytel
ling. Ayah symbolically weaves the modern white culture with the traditional Nat
ive American culture. The motif of the blanket is important element of this stor
y because it expresses Silko’s concern with the ways in which the Native Americans
can combine traditional with contemporary culture in order to create meaningful
lives.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF THE LULLABY BY ERICA TAIBL AND SARAH MADSEN HARDY

Erica Taibl and Sarah Madsen Hardy wrote essays based on the Silko’s story Lullaby
and her way of writing and trying to put the oral tradition on the pages.
In her essay Taibl is concerned with mixed voice and discourse in the Lullaby.
She wrote:

“Silko’s book The Storyteller uses mixed genres and voices in an attempt to put an o
ral tradition on the page. Silko strives to teach readers how to read this type
of work, which is multi-voiced and culturally diverse. The story Lullaby harbors
many examples of this multi-voiced, mixed discourse. In Lullaby the stories and
memories of the protagonist enter into dialogue with the reader and initiate th
e creation of meaning through the act or ritual of reading. Silko’s special talent
in Lullaby is in drawing the reader’s attention into the text through the anticip
ated discussion. One that is grounded in a western tradition and then turning th
at discussion around so that it might express multi-cultural goals. The resultin
g voice is a mixed discourse, blending a unique Native American voice and a West
ern Anglo voice that engages readers on many levels. As Ayah’s tracks are filled i
n snow until she no longer knows where she is going or from where
she has come from, so are the readers, as the disengage from a strict Anglo or t
raditionally western, interpretive tool and encounter the text both as Native Am
erican and contemporary American.
Silko once said “a great deal of the story is believed to be inside of the listene
r and the role of the storyteller is to draw that story out of him.
In the case of Lullaby the listener is the reader and he must fabricate his or h
er own meaning of the text. The mixed discourse as a tool enables meaning making
in a diverse population of readers and initiates the great challenge for Nativ
e American writers, which is to teach readers how to teach this kind of work bot
h on traditionally Anglo and Native American levels. The ritual of reading or th
e inter action of the reader with the written words is likened to the storytelli
ng events and it is the event that creates meaning. Silko strives to help that m
eaning-making experience.
In order to grasp the ides of a mixed discourse in Lullaby reader may enter the
text at the end of the story with the song or lullaby. The voice of the poem is
neither the protagonist’s nor the narrator’s. The voice is one of the traditions, th
e great story of the world. In many ways it is representative of everyone’s story.
Readers locate the story of Ayah’s within the universal story of the poem and as
they do, they discover that the voice also leaves room for the reader to read hi
m or herself into the poem”.
In her essay Hardy wrote about blending between Anglo and Native language and cu
lture in the Lullaby. In her essay she wrote:
“In Lullaby Silko lets English-speaking readers inside the mind of a woman who is
thoroughly enclosed within traditional Native American belief system and is high
ly suspicious not only of the main stream Anglo society, but of those, like her
husband, who try to straddle the two worlds. The majority of the story involves
the sundering of Ayah’s connections to her family members by the intrusion of a la
rger and more powerful Anglo-American culture. At each point, the English langua
ge is significant in breaking the bond that ties Ayah and her family together th
rough their Navajo cultural heritage. In Ayah’s mind the destructive power of Angl
o culture is represented most clearly by English. Ayah has lost her family and s
he is alone in the world in which being together through the perpetual cycle of
birth, life and death is no longer so. The family is wrenched apart by the belie
f system and power associated with English language”.

YELLOW WOMAN
The short story Yellow Woman in Storyteller is especially intriguing text for it
represents Silko’s challenge of how to blend traditional motifs into her contempo
rary Native American consciousness and transform the story into a culturally com
municable text without violating its traditionally respected cultural meaning.
Yellow woman stories are the traditional tales about a woman called “Kochinnenako” a
nd told in Keres, a tribal language of the Laguna and Acoma Pueblos in New Mexic
o. The stories are told in several different versions yet always Kochinnenako as
a central character of each story. According to Paula Gunn Allen the name Yello
w Woman “means Woman-Woman”, because yellow is the color for women in the Keres trad
ition. Allen explains that Keres women painted their faces yellow on certain cer
emonial occasions and that they were painted yellow at death so that the guardia
n at the gate of the spiritual world will recognize that newly arrived was a wom
an. Therefore stories of Yellow woman are not merely traditional Indian tales in
which the main character happens to be a woman. Silko’s Yellow woman and traditio
nal Yellow Woman stories historically and intertextually represent Yellow woman
as a character that epitomizes multidimensional aspects of Pueblo womanhood and
the meaning of being a woman in the history of Pueblo community. Considering Si
lko’s “Yellow Woman” frequently anticipates the non-Native American audience, the sphe
re of intertexuality extends from historical to cross-cultural, whereby Yellow W
oman as a representation of Native American womanhood can respond to the womanho
od of different ethnicity and culture in the contemporary American society.
Although the Yellow Woman stories are told in diverse ways, they often share com
monalities. The stories are usually about Yellow Woman and the community to whic
h she belongs and her separation from her own community. Yellow Woman’s separation
is sometimes caused by being stolen by a member of another community and at oth
er times by leaving the community of her own will. In the case of “Buffalo Story”, t
he source of Silko’s version of “Yellow Woman” Kochininako chooses to leave her commun
ity and at the end of the story she even refuses to return to where she came fro
m.

THE SOURCE OF SILKO’S YELLOW WOMAN

The source for her Yellow Woman Silko found in the story called “Buffalo story”. In
the Buffalo Story people in Yellow Woman’s village were starving because of a long
time of dry weather and she decided to go out in search for water. On the shore
of the river, she met the Buffalo Man and he took her to the Buffalo people, th
e people of his community. After a while Kochininako was found by her husband, w
ho left the village to search for his lost wife. Yellow Woman’s husband kills Buff
alo Man and his people and eventually kills Kochininako, too, because she expres
ses her willingness to be killed in order to remain there with Buffalo people. T
he people of Kochininako’s community deplore her death, yet later go to the east w
here they find the bodies of the dead buffalo, which enable the people to surviv
e.
Silko’s choice of Buffalo Story as a source of her Yellow Woman is original, in th
e way that she clearly makes a distinction for the cause of Yellow Woman’s situati
on in the story; whether or not there was some extent to which the Yellow Woman’s
motivation influences the action in the story, that is, whether she was stolen b
y Buffalo Man or it was her decision to let it happen. Compared to the other ver
sions, in the Buffalo Story Yellow Woman had more chance to choose her actions,
her love for the Buffalo Man and her decision to stay with his community, and it
is in a such subjective viewpoint that Silko’s originality comes into play when s
he represents Yellow Woman in her storytelling.

SILKO’S YELLOW WOMAN

Silko’s Yellow Woman is not about the Yellow Woman; it is actually about the woman
who knows about the Yellow Woman. The narrator knows that she is not the Yellow
woman but does not know how she is related to the Yellow Woman, a woman in a wo
rld of myth.
The narrator, a young mother living with her family in an unnamed Pueblo village
, elopes with a man named Silva. The story follows the narrator’s internal process
of interpreting and making sense of her escape, and the model she finds to rati
onalize her predicament is the traditional Laguna figure of Yellow Woman. The na
rrator explains her adventure to herself as a process of becoming part of the tr
adition that lives in the Yellow Woman stories. She imagines that her mother and
grandmother “will raise the baby” and her husband Al “will find someone else”.
Al will find someone else, and they will go on like before, except that there wi
ll be a story about the day I disappeared while I was walking along the river”
.
Silva is a cattle rustler, and the disintegration of their interlude begins when
the couple encounters a white rancher on an isolated trial. He accused Silva of
robbing the cattle. The narrator left not knowing what really happened went bac
k to her family and real life.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SILKO’S YELLOW WOMAN AND THE BUFFALO STORY
Although Silko follows the basic plot line and asserts that she does not “change t
he spirit or the mood or the tone of the story” the story does change as the inter
nal reality of the narrator develops. The plot of Silko’ Yellow Woman does not alw
ays follow the traditional sequence in which consequences are often resolution o
f the problem by reuniting and harmonizing her community. The types of actions a
re identical in both stories, but the consequences differ and these differences
bring more ambiguity to our interpretation. For instance, in terms of pattern of
action from discordance to harmony, discordance takes place in both traditional
and Silko’s story, but the consequences are different. In the traditional story d
iscordance arises between Yellow Woman’s husband and Buffalo Man. Buffalo Man, his
people, and the Yellow Woman are killed by her husband whose deed however event
ually rescues starving people by providing them with buffalo meat. This brings h
armony to the community.
In Silko’s story through discordance is represented conflict between Silva and a w
hite rancher, placing the context in a contemporary social reality of racial con
flict. Silva, who has been “hunting” cattle from a Texas rancher and selling it for
money is accused of stealing meat by the suspicious white rancher who has been l
ooking for “the thief”. Then there is fight discordance between them, but the incide
nt does not bring any resolution to the story of Silko’s Yellow Woman. To avoid in
volving the narrator in the fight between two men Silva tells her to go back. Ur
ged by “something ancient and dark” in his eyes the narrator runs off.

“I slapped my horse across the flank and the sacks of raw meat swung against my kn
ees as the horse leaped up the trail.
Silko’s language, her description of this scene never clarifies the consequence of
that conflict. Nothing turns to be certain except that the narrator heard “four s
hots were fired”. She assumes that they were shots from Silva’s gun and not the whit
e rancher’s because the narrator previously stated the rancher “must have been unarm
ed”. The conflict that eventually brought the harmony in the traditional tale was
left open-ended in Silko’s story. Buffalo meat, the material prosperity, which sav
es people from starvation in the Buffalo story, can be compared to the raw meat
that Silva got from the rancher in Silko’s story. However Silko does not give any
importance to this material profit. Silko does not seem to be interested in the
relationship between the narrator, a contemporary Yellow Woman and material gain
which has been so
important in traditional story. Silko instead emphasizes the narrator’s spiritual
gain: memory of experience. Before she returns to her family the narrator thus s
tates:

“I came back to the place on the river bank where he had been sitting the first ti
me I saw him. The green willow leaves that he had trimmed from the branch were s
till laying there wilted in the sand. I saw the leaves and I wanted to go to him
-to kiss him and to touch him-but the mountains were too far away. And I told my
self, because I believe it, he will come back sometime and be waiting again by t
he river.
The memory of the narrator’s experience with Silva opens up a new dimension in her
consciousness, both as Native American and as a woman. The Yellow Woman that wa
s previously viewed by the narrator as just another character or a story of anci
ent times, she become a part of her memory and ahs strongly connected with her s
ense of womanhood which is actualized through her physical as well as emotional
experience with Silva.

SILKO’S STORY WITHIN A STORY

Silko in Yellow woman expresses the consciousness and subjectivity of woman livi
ng in a contemporary Native American community by interweaving the past with the
present, myth with reality and communal memory with her individual imagination.
The source of her imagination and creativity is communal memory; her originality
in Yellow woman is achieved when her communal consciousness is interlinked with
her individual process of storytelling. According to Silko, this process is to
create “an elaborate structure of stories within stories”, whereby “each word that one
is speaking has a story of its own”. It seems that this comment suggests cultural
intertextuality between the traditional Yellow Woman stories and Silko’s Yellow w
oman. As every single story is told and collected as another piece of communal m
emory, the whole story of the community is to be restructured and revised. By ex
ploring “stories within stories” Silko remarks that story becomes a story that “inform
s contemporary Pueblo writing and storytelling as well as the traditional narrat
ives”. Silko’s Yellow Woman can only be a piece among many Yellow Woman stories that
have already come in the past as well as those that are yet to come.
Silko speaks of it in this way:
“This perspective on narrative of story within a story, the idea that one story is
only the beginning of many stories and the sense that stories never truly end-r
epresents an important contribution of Native American cultures to the English l
anguage”.

CRITISCISM OF SILKO’S YELLOW WOMAN

The sense of open-endedness and fluidity that are seen in Silko’s “Yellow Woman” come
from her sensibility as a contemporary storyteller who creates her stories antic
ipating that her story will never truly end. Every story changes, as no meaning
is expected to be absolutely fixed in oral tradition. Meanings and messages chan
ge from time to time as the sensibility of the audience changes. What is to be r
emembered is decided by the community-the audience-who are situated in a differe
nt historical context, as Silko expresses:
“The old folks at Laguna
would say, “If it’s important you’ll remember it”. If it’s really important, if it really
 has a kind of substance that reaches to the heart of the community life and wha
t’s gone before and what’s gone later, it will be remembered”.

Silko’s Yellow Woman is a product of her paste heritage and yet at the same time b
ecomes another source of imagination, whereby stories of yellow woman continue.
It is perhaps not before the ending of the story that the narrator of Yellow Wom
an finally understands what her grandfather had told her when he was alive about
feeling, what it means to be a Yellow Woman, the narrator finally internalizes
the meaning of the relationship between Yellow Woman and herself-what it cultura
lly means to be Yellow Woman-deeply inside her consciousness:
“I followed the path up from the river into the village. The sun was getting low,
and I could smell the supper cooking when I got to the screen door of my house.
I could hear their voices inside-my mother was telling my grandmother how to fix
Jell-O and my husband Al was playing with the baby. I decided to tell them that
some Navajo had kidnapped me, but I was sorry that old Grandpa wasn’t alive to he
ar my story because it was the Yellow Woman stories he liked best”.
As Silko states, “storytelling is an ongoing process, working on many different le
vels”. Yellow Woman is not a woman character who exists only in the past heritage
of Native American women’s culture. Through Silko’s storytelling with her contempora
ry sensibility, Yellow Woman has gained new life and a new voice and survives in
the consciousness of the contemporary Native American community. However, the s
tory has not been completed. The story of Yellow Woman, the story of Native Amer
ican womanhood, is still evolving through communication between the storyteller
and the audience in cross-cultural settings in the contemporary American society
. The discourse, which is generated may only amount to a piece of a story within
stories, but becomes a source of the vitalizing the on-going, never-ending
process of dialogic communication between tradition of American literature and N
ative American oral tradition.

TONY’S STORY

The third and one of the most popular stories of Silko in the book The Storytell
er is Tony’s Story. In Tony’s Story Silko is describing a relationship between two w
orlds-Pueblo community and the state of America. Pueblo community has its own la
ws and traditions, but it is constantly aware of the great state and its influen
ce. In this story the old Native traditions and influences of the contemporary s
ociety are presented in two characters. Leon and Antonio, two Native American ci
tizens, influenced by different things and for that they are completely differen
t characters.
Tony is a Native American, who spends all of his life in the pueblo. All of his
life he is connected to the nature and the old traditions and ways of his people
. Leon is also a Native American but he is also a war veteran. He is a man who g
ave his youth for his country, but his country did not give him anything. The co
p in this story represents the state, the people who judge people by their skin
color and the way they live their life. He represents the threat for people beca
use of his behavior and the way that he treats people. In this story Tony and Le
on are fighting against the threat the cop represents but in different ways.
THE SOURCE FOR SILKO’S TONY’S STORY

Silko based her Tony’s Story on an actual killing that happened in April 1952.
Nash Garcia, the first New Mexico state policeman to die in the line of duty, wa
s ambushed and murdered in the wilderness of Black Mesa, some twenty seven miles
of Grants on the Acoma Indian Reservation. Witnesses identified William Felipe,
thirty one, an Acoma World War veteran, as one of the Indians in a pickup truck
which Garcia was seen chasing. When William was arrested without resistance at
his home he readily confessed saying “I knew they’d get me. They always get them”. He
implicated his brother Gabriel, twenty eight, said they both had been drinking h
eavily and admitted returning to the scene Saturday night, at which time he drov
e Garcia’s police car, with the body inside, some six miles further into the Mesa,
where he sat fire to both car and body. Monday morning, William led police to t
he charred remains. There were nine bullet holes in the car; Garcia had been wou
nded at least twice and had been clubbed to death with rifle butts. Monday night
on April the fourteenth Gabriel Felipe was arrested in Albuquerque.
In September 1952, the brothers were brought to Federal Court since the crime wa
s committed on the United States property-an Indian reservation. After a brief f
ive-day trial, the jury needed only two hours to return a verdict of guilty and
could not find no grounds to recommend leniency. Both brothers were sentenced to
die in the electric chair.
Some critics also say that Silko found the source for her story in Simon J Ortiz’s
story “The Killing of the State Cop”, Simon J Ortiz was seven years Silko’s senior an
d there are reasons to believe that Simon’s story triggered Silko for writing her
own version of that story.

SILKO’S TONY’S STORY

The story takes place in or near a pueblo, a Native American reservation, where
Tony, the protagonist, has lived all his life. The pueblo in a way represents a
world of its own. It has its own administration, its own laws and even its own p
olice force. But it is also in America, and through the story we are constantly
reminded of the larger world outside-the gas station, Grants and not least the s
tate policeman.
In the very first scene of the story these two worlds meet head on. It is San Lo
renzo’s Day, a festival which pueblo celebrates with processions and a funfair. Th
e following day there is to be a ritual Corn Dance. The purpose of this is to he
lp the corn grow. Tony meets his old friend, Leon, who has been away in the mili
tary. Leon is drinking from a hidden bottle-drinking is forbidden in the pueblo.
Suddenly a state cop pushes through the crowd and without saying a word punches
Leon in the face. Leon’s reaction to the assault surprises Tony and shows the dif
ference in their outlooks. Leon has been influenced by his period in the militar
y. He has become a “troublemaker” as Tony puts it and talks about rights and justice
. On the other hand Tony has never left the pueblo. His source of wisdom is “the s
tories that old Teofilo told”. Because Leon is more dominant of the two, it is his
viewpoint that is on the spot. Tony’s understanding of why the state cop is bothe
ring them is never stated clearly. But we have hints through the story. After th
e assault on Leon, Tony has a dream in which the state cop takes part in the Cor
n Dance. This connection is confirmed later when the cop follows them on the gas
station. After describing the drought again Tony says:

“…..and then I knew why the drought had come that summer”

He gives no further explanation, but we understand that the cop and the masked f
igure of the Corn Dance are for him the same thing. They represent something thr
eatening-a non human.
The oppressive heat of the drought is referred to several times during the story
, and we may think it is just a part of the setting. But by the end we realize h
ow drought is vital in Tony’s understanding of his own story. The drought has an a
ctive influence on events.
In the final fatal meeting with the policeman, we can see that Leon and Tony are
taking part in different stories.
In Leon’s story they are being harassed by a racist policeman and Leon brought a r
ifle along to defend himself.
In Tony’s story, however, they are dealing with an evil spirit referred to as “it’ and
Tony is wearing an arrowhead for protection. As cop raises his billy club to be
at Leon, Tony sees him as masked figure with a human bone, as in his dream.

“He raised his billy club slowly. I like to beat Indians with this. He moved towar
d Leon with the stick raised high and it was like the long bone in my dream when
he pointed it at me-a human bone painted brown to look like wood, to hide what
it really was; they’ll do that, you know-carve the bone into a spoon and use it ar
ound the house until the victim comes within range”.

Tony, without really knowing what he is doing, shoots the policeman.

“He was motionless on the ground and the bone wand lay near his feet…He was on his b
ack and the sand between his legs and along his left side was soaking up the dar
k, heavy blood-it had not rained a long time and even the tumbleweeds were dying”
.

Tony then pushes the body into the car and sets fire to it. He tells Leon not to
worry, that
“It is killed. They sometimes take on strange forms” .
And with the policeman dead, Tony, watching the car burn, notices that the heat
waves from the fire “shimmered up towards the sky; in the west, rain clouds were g
athering”.
In Tony’s dream vision a sacrifice is needed to regain the harmony. The evil force
is annihilated and the order is restored. The pueblo will again be blessed with
rains.
THE DIFFERNCE BETWEEN LEON AND TONY
Leon an Indian war hero returns to a civilian life only to find himself alienate
d from his Native culture and ignored by the white world which has eagerly enlis
ted him and lavishly praised his heroism. He becomes an alcoholic with almost in
evitably tragic results. Leon lives in a real life, life influenced by the tradi
tions of the white society, because of the time he spent in war. We can imagine
that in the multiethnic environment of the military he has learned a thing or tw
o about standing up for himself. He forgets the Native traditions, which is show
n in the final meeting with the state cop where for Leon they are harassed by a
racist policeman and to defend himself he brought a riffle.
On the other hand Tony never left the pueblo. All of his life he was surrounded
by his people, their traditions and his source of wisdom are the stories that th
e old Teofilo told. We do not know what these stories are, but we can guess they
are old stories handed down through the generations, perhaps about the spirit w
orld. The influence of those stories we can see in Tony’s view of the policeman. H
e refers to him as “it” and sees him as something unnatural, on human. For Tony they
are not dealing with a man, they are dealing with an evil spirit and to defend
himself he wears arrowhead for protection. Tony’s dream vision makes him to believ
e that by the killing of the evil spirit, in this case the policeman, the pueblo
will regain its harmony.

MURDER-REASON OR WITCHCRAFT
In Tony’s Story, the two Indians, the ex-serviceman, Leon who has returned with a
sharpened sense of justice and the pueblo bound Tony, sticking to the old tradit
ions, are contrasted throughout the story, but they are also members of the same
community and share a number of views and values. We can see that in Leon’s comme
nt in the very beginning:

“It’s good to be home again. They asked me to dance tomorrow-it is only the Corn Dan
ce, but I hope I haven’t forgotten what to do.

And Tony’s saying:

“I was happy because Leon was once more a part of the pueblo.

So why the policeman killed and what was causes the drought?
Silko explains this not by letting Leon forget his steps in the Corn Dance, but
by letting Tony see the policeman as a witch in a dream.

“The stories of witches ran with me. That night I had a dream-the big cop was poin
ting a long bone at me-they always use human bones and the whiteness flashed sil
ver in the moonlight where he stood. He didn’t have a human face-only little, roun
d white rimmed eyes on a black ceremonial mask”.

When Tony sees the policeman the next time he understands:

….and then I knew why the drought had come that summer. Leon shook me. He’s behind u
s. The cop’s following us. I looked back and saw the red light on the top of the c
ar whirling around and I could make out the dark image of a man, but where the f
ace should have been there were only silvery lines of the dark glasses he wore”.

Tony sees the policeman’s face as a mask and remembers when he was little and his
parents warned him not to look into the masked dancer’s eyes. He could not stop lo
oking then at something which was explained as being dangerous, neither can he s
top looking now.
Both Tony and Leon feel uneasy about the policeman, but they have the different
ways of dealing with evil. Leon talks about it. He brings the matter to the trib
al council and all the time keeps referring to his rights.

“He can’t do it again. We are just as good as them”.

Tony has his dream and does not talk about it.

“But I knew that cop was something terrible and even to speak about it risked brin
ging it close to all of us; so I didn’t say anything”

Tony sees the policeman not as a human being. He confuses the raised stick with
a long bone in his dream. He shoots the policeman and the story ends with a foll
owing statement:

“….in the west, rain clouds were gathering”.

For Tony the policeman was an evil force and that evil force brought drought to
the pueblo. In order to regain the harmony in pueblo the evil force must disappe
ar.
If we accept that the evil force can take on a human form and cause drought by u
psetting the harmony in pueblo, Tony’s killing is logical and justified, if not it
is a hideous crime and he is no better than the evil policeman he killed.
Dr Betty Bell, a Native literary critic and writer said that Silko in this story
was obsessed with the notion of balance. She said that the fact that the police
man’s body was burned in the real life and in the story proved that Tony thought h
e was a witch. She also said:

“It had to be totally destroyed. The policeman had beaten Leon just as the drought
has beaten the earth and “it” had to be dealt with. The fact that the story ends wi
th rain replenishing the earth demonstrates Silko’s agreement and the earth’s accept
ance of Tony’s act.
At the end she said that often insanity has been used to discredit native spirit
uality.

CONCLUSION

“And as we move away, we can see ourselves turning into memories. We are these mem
ories. As of this moment, we’ll remember each other as we’ll remember a distant word
disappearing into blueness more blue than it used to be”.

So many languages are disappearing. Our knowledge and appreciation of diverse cu

ltures, natures and history are being lost. As time moves on, more and more thin
gs are lost.
In Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko there is a recurring theme of loss that is
subverted as the writing attempts to preserve what is at stake. By telling stor
ies, she tries to keep the memory of homeland and the tradition of oral culture
alive. Her writings advocates cultural endurance and through stories of Pueblo C
ulture she creates a clear connection of the people to the land. Silko tells sto
ries about storytelling to show the culture and its identity.

“They passed down an entire culture by word of mouth, an entire history, an entire
vision of the world which depended upon memory and retelling by subsequent gene
rations”.

Oral culture was the story of the people; it was what kept them alive. It is har
d to maintain life without culture, because culture is a way of life. Silko is t
ransforming an oral culture to one preserved on paper. The reader can trust Silk
o’s word because of the ancestry within them. She was raised by the stories of the
Laguna Pueblo culture and she honors the many generations that have passed on i
n her writing.
Many of Silko’s stories are centered on interdependence of mother and child which
represents the need to take care of the future because their culture is always u
nder attack. An example of this can be seen in Silko’s story “Lullaby”. She tells how “L
aguna culture has been irrevocably altered by European intrusion-principally by
the practice of taking the children away from Laguna to Indian schools, taking t
he children away from the tellers who had in all past generations told the child
ren, an entire culture, and an entire identity of a people”. Though the Americans
may have believed that they were civilizing the Indians in these schools, they w
ere destroying their culture. The Indians were forced to speak English and to cu
t their long hairs resulting in a suppression of their Indian language and tradi
tions.
When an Indian returned from fighting in an American war he was changed. Leon in
“Tony’s Story” is stunned when Tony kills the white policeman who had been harassing
them. Perhaps the Indians were seen as savage people for killing the white man,
because that was the only way they could prevent the cultural invasion of white
supremacy; they were riding their culture of the white devil. Americanization fo
r Silko is a synonymous to a cultural loss.

While reading Silko’s “Yellow Woman” it can sound like a bad story. The woman was far
away from her family, forced to journey with an unknown man. These things are ba
d but good came out of it. Yellow Woman was not hurt by these experiences. She h
ad forgotten her past and was trapped by her culture and in the story we can see
the change, she needed the Experience to learn what the past means to her cultu
re. When the man left, she was free to go, but she chooses to stay. What we see
in the society in a negative way tends to be strictly labeled as a bad thing, bu
t in Silko’s stories these principles are reversed. It is important to open our ey
es to more than one side of life and to awaken to a deeper understanding of the
world. We need all the stories to avoid isolation of people and events; in this
way we create collective memory.
Our culture tends to erase bad moments in the history or at least we try to forg
et them. We need to remember. By remembering, we create recognition of what is l
ost, recognition of what can be reclaimed. We are saving by witnessing the past.
Silko keeps the stories for those who come after us, but most importantly for t
hose who were before us so we can remember them. In Silko’s stories we learn about
the Pueblo culture and its issues. She is not just writing for the benefit of t
he indigenous people, she is writing to inform the West of the new ways of knowi
ng, hopping to break the barrier of conventionalism and stereotypes.