Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)
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40 free Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, published in 1977, follows Tayo, a young man of Laguna Pueblo who comes home from combat in the Pacific unable to eat, sleep or forget. Army medicine has nothing for him. What helps is older: the old tales, the land and a ritual remade for a changed world. The novel is now a fixture of American literature courses and a landmark of Native American writing. This quiz covers the people around Tayo, from his family and fellow veterans to the healers who treat him, along with the key events of his search for his uncle's lost cattle and the traditional myths that run beside it. It also asks how Silko came to write the book, the honours it won and its place in literary history. It is written for students revising the novel, book clubs, and readers who want to see how much of it stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Leslie Marmon Silko wrote Ceremony, a novel of the dry Southwest, in a rain-soaked town in which US state?
Alaska
Alaska was where Silko began the book in 1973, in the town of Ketchikan. She said the lack of sunlight there left her fighting bouts of depression.
Q 02In Silko's Ceremony, Tayo comes home to the Laguna reservation traumatised by service in which conflict?
World War II
World War II took Tayo to the Pacific as a soldier. Ordered to shoot captured Japanese soldiers there, he believes he sees his uncle's face among them.
Q 03In Silko's Ceremony, Tayo's cousin dies as a prisoner of the Japanese during which wartime atrocity?
Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March forced more than 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners to walk to Camp O'Donnell. Tayo never forgives himself for failing to bring his cousin home.
Q 04In Ceremony, Tayo believes that cursing the jungle rain as a soldier caused which disaster back on Laguna land?
A drought
A drought has parched the reservation for years by the time Tayo comes home. An old story woven through the book describes the same punishment falling on the people long ago.
Q 05In Ceremony, which Navajo medicine man keeps old telephone books and calendars among his prayer sticks and herbs?
Betonie
Betonie uses the clutter to build new rituals that combine symbols from several cultures. He argues that ceremonies have to keep changing if they are to stay strong.
Q 06The climax of Ceremony takes place at an abandoned mine near Laguna Pueblo that once dug which mineral?
Uranium
Uranium ties Tayo's homeland to the atomic bomb. A real mine on Laguna land, opened in 1953, grew into the largest open-pit uranium mine in the world.
Q 07Ceremony helped Leslie Marmon Silko win which award, nicknamed the genius grant, in its very first year?
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellowship went to Silko in 1981, when the programme named its first fellows. That was four years after the novel was published.
Q 08Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony sets out its old Laguna stories on the page as what?
Poetry
Poetry carries the traditional stories while Tayo's own life runs alongside in prose. The book also does without conventional chapters.
Q 09The Laguna Pueblo reservation where Silko grew up and set Ceremony lies in which US state?
New Mexico
New Mexico is home to the Pueblo of Laguna, whose Spanish name means small lake. The lake it was named for has since dried up.
Q 10In Ceremony, Tayo is treated as an outsider at Laguna because his absent father was what?
A white man
A white man fathered Tayo and did not stay to help raise him. Silko, herself of mixed ancestry, said growing up neither white nor fully traditional was at the core of her writing.
Q 11In Ceremony, which fellow veteran rattles a bag of teeth taken from dead Japanese soldiers and hunts Tayo?
Emo
Emo keeps the teeth as war trophies and brags about how much he enjoyed killing. Tayo once went for him with a broken bottle over the boasting.
Q 12In Ceremony, which uncle of Tayo buys a herd of Mexican cattle and dies while Tayo is overseas?
Josiah
Josiah teaches Tayo about horses, cattle and how to live. After his death the herd goes missing, and recovering it becomes the task at the heart of Tayo's healing.
Q 13In Ceremony, which mysterious mountain woman shelters Tayo and helps him recover his uncle's stolen cattle?
Ts'eh
Ts'eh calls herself a Montano, and the book hints that she is a spirit of the mountain rather than an ordinary woman. She also shows Tayo how to gather plants and herbs.
Q 21In Ceremony, which traditional Laguna medicine man does Old Grandma send for before Tayo consults a Navajo healer?
Ku'oosh
Ku'oosh performs the old ritual, but it cannot reach a sickness born of modern warfare. He is the one who sends Tayo on to a healer with newer methods.
Q 22In Ceremony, which dancer living above a bar becomes the lover of Tayo's uncle and urges him to buy cattle?
Night Swan
Night Swan is an outsider at Laguna, as Tayo is. She tells him that people blame those who look different so that they do not have to face themselves.
Q 23In Ceremony, the Navajo healer's hogan overlooks which railroad town nicknamed the Indian Capital of the World?
Gallup
Q 14In Ceremony, which star athlete raised in the same house as Tayo enlists with him and never comes home?
Rocky
Rocky wants one thing above all, to leave the reservation and succeed in the wider world. He trusts the teachers who tell him not to let the people at home hold him back.
Q 15In Ceremony, which Catholic relative raises Tayo while never letting him forget his mother's disgrace?
His aunt
His aunt, known simply as Auntie, takes Tayo in when his mother gives him up. She treats him as one more burden and frets constantly over gossip about the family.
Q 16In Ceremony, which term do army doctors use for Tayo's illness, known today as post-traumatic stress disorder?
Battle fatigue
Battle fatigue was the army's label in the 1940s, and its doctors can do little for Tayo. The book treats his sickness as part of something larger that needs a different kind of cure.
Q 17Ceremony opens with which spider creator of Laguna tradition, who brings things into being by naming them?
Thought-Woman
Thought-Woman, also called Spider Woman, is imagining the story as the book begins. Her Laguna name, Ts'its'tsi'nako, is the first word of the novel.
Q 18In Ceremony, which animal's tracks distract the patrolmen who catch Tayo on a white rancher's land?
Mountain lion
Mountain lion tracks send the cowboys off on a hunt, and they lose interest in arresting Tayo. Earlier he had met the animal face to face and left an offering in its pawprints.
Q 19At the end of Ceremony, Tayo tells his story to the Laguna elders inside which ceremonial chamber?
A kiva
A kiva is the room Pueblo peoples use for rites and meetings, traditionally round and sunk below ground. Being heard there marks Tayo's acceptance by his community.
Q 20In Ceremony, which hard-drinking friend arrives on a burro to coax the ailing Tayo out to a bar?
Harley
Harley was where the whole book began. Silko first set out to write a comic short story about his drinking, until the minor character Tayo took over.
Gallup, as the novel shows it, lives off tourists drawn by Native culture while pushing Native people to its edges. The healer's hogan stood in the hills before the town existed.
Q 24In Ceremony, Tayo tracks his uncle's stolen cattle onto which dormant volcano sacred to the Laguna and Navajo?
Mount Taylor
Mount Taylor is known to the Navajo as Turquoise Mountain and marks the southern edge of their traditional homeland. It was renamed in 1849 for President Zachary Taylor.
Q 25In Ceremony, Tayo realises that which first atomic bomb test took place in the desert not far from Laguna?
Trinity
Trinity was detonated on July 16, 1945. In the novel, Tayo's grandmother remembers seeing a huge bright flash in the sky while he was away at war.
Q 26In Ceremony, Tayo is kept in a veterans' psychiatric hospital in which West Coast city before he returns to Laguna?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is where army doctors hold Tayo until a sympathetic one lets him go home. Back on the reservation, his family tries the cures the hospital could not provide.
Q 27In Ceremony, Tayo feels invisible in the veterans' hospital, as though his body were made of what?
White smoke
White smoke is how Tayo sees himself at the start of the book, like a ghost. His grandmother's decision to call in a healer begins his journey back.
Q 28In the climax of Ceremony, which tool does Tayo grip while resisting the urge to attack his tormentor?
A screwdriver
A screwdriver is in his hand as he watches from hiding, but he refuses to use it. By not striking, Tayo leaves the destroyers to turn on one another.
Q 29In the myth told through Ceremony, which bird journeys with Green Bottle Fly to the Fourth World to save the people?
Hummingbird
Hummingbird and the fly act as messengers for the people in the myth. Their errand runs alongside Tayo's own quest, and both stories end with the land restored.
Q 30In Ceremony, the Navajo healer tells Tayo to watch for spotted cattle, a mountain, a woman and what else?
A pattern of stars
A pattern of stars is drawn for Tayo at the end of the healing ritual. When he later finds the same constellation overhead, he knows he is on the right path.