Complete 6 pages APA formatted article: A Critical Analysis of Autobiographical Evidences in Ceremony. A comparative analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s life and her novel, “Ceremony” will reveal that her real-life experiences constitute the most part of the novel. In this regard, some critics claim that Silko’s novel is an unusual marginalization of autobiography with fiction. Though Silko’s novel has a male protagonist, Tayo, who suffers from PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder), the protagonist embodies a huge number of facts and figures from the author’s personal as well as community life. Silko herself publicly has confessed that she had been suffering from depression and post-stress traumatic disorder while writing the “Ceremony”. Though Silko lacks the experiences of fighting in a war, her own experience with depression and her contact with the Native American veterans of the Laguna Pueblo community help her depicting “Tayos struggle with mental illness even more realistic and sincere” (Goldberg 1). Her portrayal of Tayo’s absurd feelings, ennui and psychosis essentially appear to be the depiction of a severe case of psychological disorder. Even Silko claims that the novel is a “ceremony for staying sane” (Velie 34). Apart from these traces of the author’s psychological disorders, the novel reveals an abundance of Silko’s personal and community-life experiences.

The “Ceremony” begins with Tayo, the protagonist, under the care of a sanitarium, bereaved by fear, guilt and psychotic disorder which have been induced by his traumatic experiences during the war. Most of the novel describes Tayo’s struggle “to overcome his awful psychological trauma and this struggle becomes intertwined with the journey of rounding up Josiah’s cattle and stopping the drought” (Goldberg 1).