Leslie Marmon Silko Yellow Woman (Essay Sample)

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Leslie Marmon Silko ‘Yellow Woman’
Leslie tells of the plight of a young Laguna Pueblo woman who forma the habit of temporarily disappearing to communicate with the spirits. The story begins when the woman meets a man along the river and goes off with the man in the pattern of a traditional myth of Kochinianko which depicts the ‘Yellow Woman’ who disserted her clan and tribe to loiter about with a powerful ‘Whirlwind Man.’ The author traces the blurring boundaries between myth and reality that the society of the Native Americans have come embody in their everyday life and experience (Silko 45). Ancient myths seem to permeate and penetrate every quarter of the social and mythical experiences of the Native American social life and the narrator gives very vivid accounts of the mythical tutelage. Societies are defined in terms of their traditions and some these traditions are carried in myths, folklore and stories which the community a character and identity. However, some societies tend to live longer in their past and hold to the traditions more than they are willing to assimilate new ideas of the industrial and progressive world and the Native Americans are such a depiction in the anthology.
The Laguna Pueblo community have thrived long through the years on the basis of making social reference to their oral traditions because they give meaning to their social and economic experience in the Americas. Historically, this community have felt great advancing along the lines of their traditions and have proven considerable impervious by the overall influence of civilization and progress. Through the eyes of the author, we can pay witness to the vicissitudes and the grotesque aura of mysticism and spiritualities that a people can embrace over the years to very extreme limit.
In the plot, an unnamed young woman awakens at dawn next to a suitor on the riverbank and takes a trail of their own footprints on a return journey. She mounts their horse and charges back to in a search for their people. On reaching the man on the riverbank, who calls her Yellow Woman, and a bit of a misunderstanding develops between the narrator and the man that they are not really mythical personalities but real people. In her desperate attempt to prove her point, she recounts of the story of the Yellow woman who went to the North and came back with twins. The narrator and the stranger make love and soon they are on the journey to the north. They later arrive in the mountains and settle at the foothills of a rock mountain. Meanwhile, the narrator is confused about the entire profile of their shared experience because it entirely trails the mythical ‘Yellow Woman.’ The author uses a wide variety of motifs and stylistics to bring about the two worlds that intertwine in the experience and welfare of the Laguna Pueblo.
Among the Laguna Pueblo, identity and social experience is entirely ambiguous because there is no clear distinction between mythical traditions and the reality of the social life. In their state of existence, nature has varied forms and embraces a wide spectrum of natural and mystic as well as mythical experience. For instance, the spiritual world, the animals and the people who inhabit the land form one profile of existential personal reality and worldview. In the story, the central character of the unnamed woman is embroiled in a double life of the real and the spiritual which is fetched from the mythical traditions of his place and space of living. A very significant contribution to this borderline existence is exhibited poetically when the Yellow woman can point to Silver from their mountain abode both the overlooking Texan and Mexican territories which means they are conjoined in geographically fictions living in a strange reality too. The story’s height of ambiguity is manifested in clearer terms when we find that Silko never even names the narrator as Yellow woman apart from the male character she encounters.
There are diverse realms of existence in the anthology to a strange degree. For instance, the narrator at one level of encounter is a young woman of the Native American origin possessing a concrete identity in a world of modern life dominated by cities, automobiles, and other amenities of modern existence. She has attained formal education and belongs to a well layered society of being a wife, a mother, a daughter and a granddaughter. At another level, she is the Yellow Woman of the Laguna Pueblo legend who has a mysterious affair with a strange man and mysteriously disappears to the mountains only to reappear later. The mysterious man seems the embodiment of a cattle rustler names Silva; the man who is trailed for allegedly making away with cattle from the Texan and Mexican ranches. At the third level of his identity, he is identified as a mountain spirit, also known as the Whirlwind man who is told to have made always with the Yellow Woman according to the legend.
Characterization and Thematic Orientation
The author has employed the use of various characters to achieve the plot and the themes of the narrative. It is peculiar that from the very onset of the anthology, mythical embodiment is not only a matter of belief and conscience but the very attribute of character. The narrator forms the key character in the play and gives readers the plot and the themes of the anthology through vivid narrations and fetish dialogues. The protagonist of the anthology is the narrator and he is employed accurately as an observer and as a participant in the narration. She is a member of the Laguna Pueblo community and is married as well as raised children. She is well aware of the old traditions of the pueblo which she was told first hand by her late grandfather. However, she is learned and leads a modern life and it is through her interpretation of the feelings and attitudes of the other characters that readers outside the community can have an informed opinion of the aspects of communal life in Laguna. She goes away with a man she met by the riverbank and is deeply engrossed in worries whether her real experiences parody the mythical yellow woman in her cultural myths and traditions. After encountering a white rancher vi...