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| New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo in winter: land, snow, and sky |
For our final blog of Friday, April 29, please post a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs about repetition in the last part of Leslie Marmon Silko's "Lullaby," pp. 1360-61. What earlier elements of the story are repeated in the concluding part? Why do you think these elements are repeated? In your comment, please use at least two direct quotations from the story.
After you post your comment, please reply in one well-developed paragraph to at least one of the other students' comments.
Monday's reading assignment:
Sherman Alexie's biographical essay: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/sherman-alexie
Alexie's poems:
"Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52923
"How to Write the Great American Indian Novel": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52775
Gloria Anzaldúa's selected writings, pp. 1445-62.
Have a good weekend,
Dr. K
In the beginning of her story, Ayah sees her feet being covered by snow and “she smiled at the snow which was trying to cover her up little by little” (1355). When Ayah walks with Chato, she notices his feet as well. “His boots were worn out at the toes and he had stuffed pieces of an old red shirt in the holes” (1360) and she laughs at this. When she is looking for Chato, Ayah is actually satisfied that the men in the bar fear her because it is “like there was nothing anyone could do to her now” (1359). In her old age, Ayah has experienced so much pain in losing her children, losing them but never knowing what happened to them. I think this repetition of looking down and watching the snow cover their feet has to do with Ayah’s acceptance of the events in her life and the way that things are now.
ReplyDeleteAnother repetition is that first Ayah remembers the day her small children were almost taken from her and she spent the rest of the day up in the hills away from the danger. Ayah recalled looking up at the sky and “it seemed to her that she could walk into the sky, stepping through clouds endlessly” (1357). At the end, after she has found Chato, Ayah again looks at the sky, which is the night sky now, and in its clarity, “ayah saw that there was nothing between her and the stars” (1360). I think this is important to the story because it shows where Ayah finds her solace. She may not be bothered by earthly events any longer, but there are still those moments when she looks up at the sky and it totally frees her from past and present pains.
I like how you brought the sky into your response. That's really important for Ayah I think. It's like her peaceful place.The sky makes her feel free from all of the hurt that she has endured I think, and it's a way of showing that she is at peace with her husband's death and the taking of her children.
DeleteIn "Lullaby," Ayah becomes maternal again before her husband dies. She sees him freezing, knowing that he is going to be taken from her, but she is at peace. She has had everything else in her life taken from her, so nothing can really disrupt her life anymore. She does not cry when her son dies, nor when her children are taken, and she does not cry when her husband dies. She takes care of him and feels "the rush so big inside her heart for the babies," (1361). Her maternal kindness takes over and she feels like being there for her husband.
ReplyDeleteI think her resolve with every person she loses is repeated because it shows the agony she has gone through in her life. She is not broken from it, but she is made stronger. It shows Ayah's ability to forgive and her ability to adapt to what life throws in her direction. The repetitiveness of Ayah's loss in life shows Ayah's resolve and ability to adapt to loss. She stays strong through life's tragedies.
I think its good that you focused on her maternal instincts being revitalized by the end of the story. Ayah does seem to have lost some of that touch when losing her children to the "White people". Really good point also about her being stronger not broken from it.
DeleteThe elements that are repeated in Leslie Marmon Siko's "Lullaby" are the snow and the army blanket. The army blanket is seen in the first scene with the main Character Ayah, which is an army blanket given to her by her oldest child, Jimmie. She and her husband Chato are informer that Jimmie dies in war. But this blanket is also the same blanket Ayah wraps around Chato in the end when she realizes he is dying in the snow. The blanket in the story seems to represent some type of security blanket uses to "secure" Ayah an ultimately Chato, in the harshest moments they experience in the story, which is death.
ReplyDeleteThe snow is a physical element that sets up the beginning scene of the story and the last scene. The sun had went down in the first scene has the snow settles, and in the last scene it is night time and a snow storm has finished passing. It seems by the end of the story Ayah is embracing the darkness in the physical realm, and in her life, because while out in the snow, she "...smelled the purity of the half moon and stars." These components, the blanket, and the snow, appear both in the beginning and end of the story, almost as part of the theme.
I enjoyed your response and agree with you that both of these elements are present in the story. I can follow your idea of the harsh world represented by the physical occurrence of the snow and the protection of Jimmie's blanket. I believe the blanket to be an embodiment of her memories because she often turns to her mind for solace in the emotional world, and to the blanket (which itself is a memory) in the physical world.
DeleteLeslie Marmon Silko utilizes repetition in her short story, “Lullaby,” in order to view the effects of a lifetime of pain has on different individuals. Early on in the story, she is sitting in the snow recounting her life and Silko clarifies, “She [Ayah] didn’t feel cold anymore” (1355). This describes the immediate effects of Jimmie’s blanket over her shoulders, but also alludes to an emotional disconnection caused by tragedies that have plagued her. She doesn’t feel the harshness of the world as she remembers the times she has had, good and bad. This is repeated near the end of the story as Ayah has found her drunken husband and they are resting in the snow when he passes out. Silko states, “He [Chato] would not feel it” (1361). Chato loses his emotional connections because of the situations he has been placed in, and the alcohol is, not only an escape, but a support for his loss of feeling.
ReplyDeleteSilko also uses repetition to emphasize the importance and symbolism of Jimmie’s blanket. She constantly refers to it as a protection from the cold. She uses it every time she wants to be warm or aid someone. It allows her to revel in her memories without worry of the interference of the outside world. This idea of home is present because Ayah had her children taken away from her and her and her husband forcibly removed from their ranch-hand home that they inhabited for their whole lives. On a broader scale, the forced relocation and theft of lands from the Indian tribes is a direct parallel to the family in the story. Their home is the outdoors, as most of the story is set there, and the only permanent protection she has from the elements, and the only thing that can’t be taken away from her, is Jimmie’s blanket.
The blanket as a repeated symbol is of "home." The blanket symbolizes how Ayah's son Jimmy won't be coming home, how Chato is excluded by Ayah from the warmth of home, how Ayah's younger children were stolen from her home and how in the end Ayah once again extends the comfort of "home" to her aging husband. It also factors into her memories of her childhood home. The blanket is a ubiquitous feature of homes in all cultures, and for Native Americans who had everything taken from them, even the ground under their feet, items such as blankets they could carry with them enabled them to carry their "home" in their heart even as their physical home disappears.
DeleteIn "Lullaby" Leslie Marmon Silko uses repetition to illustrate how the Native Americans, who tried to live in harmony with nature, go through life and cope with problems by flowing with the cadence of rhythmic occurrences such as the change of the seasons.
ReplyDeleteFirst, we see Ayah remembering her childhood as an elderly woman in both the beginning and end of the story. For example, she is noted as being "an old woman now" and then later remembering "sleeping warm on cold windy nights, wrapped in her mother's blankets." Also, at the end of the story, though she was now old, she remembered that her grandmother and her mother had sung the song. These recollections emphasize the cyclical nature of human existence. We are born, we grow up, we age, and we die. Bad things may happen to us but ultimately there is comfort in knowing that the order of things goes on, that there is nothing new under the sun. Our sufferings and our jys have been experienced by others before us and will be by others after us.
Second, Silko emphasizes the idea of going with the rhythms of life by the inclusion of music in both parts of the story. At the beginning of the story, Ayah "faced east and listened to the wind and snow sing a high-pitched Yeibechei [healing] song." This reflects on that fact that time heals wounds, even if it leaves scars behind. Later in the story, we see that in time, as Chato aged, Ayah resumes laying beside Chato to keep him warm. The story closes with her singing to him a lullaby. The comfort of this song is from its emphasis on the immortalitly of the Earth and their love and the continuous nature of the Earth's care for its children. This is seen in the lines, "The earth is your mother/she holds you...We are together always/There never was a time when this was not so."
"Lullaby" emphasizes the cyclical nature of life, how time heals wounds, and how the Native American, in tune with the Earth, relies on her rhythms to deal with life's troubles.
I really like your use of the relationship of Native Americans with nature. It is key part of their culture and is important in their personal development. Your description of the song and its emphasis on the Earth'd immortality and its love truly encapsulates the Native American beliefs, a point Silko wanted to convey through her writing.
DeleteI like how you emphasized the relationship between life, nature, and the human. It is easy to see this because she is Native American and feels a stronger bond to nature and the memories of her past. Although time might be cynical or devastating, you will heal, and you will always have your loved ones with you.
DeleteOne element repeated in Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Lullaby” is the imagery of the snow to set the setting and the mood. In the beginning the snow presents no immediate threat. Though it is cold and windy, the snow “gave off its own light” (1354). In addition, Ayah is interested in observing the snow as it tries to” cover her little by little,” almost as if it is playful (1355). However, the snow begins to bring a negative element when “the luminous light from the snow gradually diminished into the darkness” (1358). In addition, it presents a challenge to Ayah because it is “hard to walk in the deep snow” (1358).
ReplyDeleteIn the end, as the freezing cold seeped into Ayah, “sinking snowflake by snowflake,” Ayah is overtaken by maternal instinct to keep her child warm (1361). Because of the gradual threat of the snow, Ayah is able to accumulate this instinct to keep her child warm. This instinct results in her own freezing and a personal growth in Ayah.
I like how you mentioned the snow as a key for personal growth in Ayah. She is so overcome by grief in her life that snow is the color white which could present hope and security in her desolate life. The snow is also a negative aspect since it means winter, thus bringing hopelessness. The fact that you mentioned the snow as personal growth is great seeing that she never lets the snow overcome her.
DeleteI liked that you focused on the snow and how the weather played a part in the story. I think it was important to showcase Ayah's growth in this situation and how she put someone else's needs above hers. I also liked how you compared the snow in the beginning and toward the end.
DeleteI love how you mentioned how growth ties into the use of snow. I think that the snow consuming the main character Ayah ties in with her wanting to age throughout the story, and then finally being consumed fully by the snow. With snow resembling light and purity, i think that once Silko mentions darkness along with it, that she means death is finally taking over.
DeleteSilko uses some repetition throughout "Lullaby" to demonstrate how Ayah copes with the loss she has faced and what comforts her and how she uses these elements to also comfort her husband.
ReplyDeleteThe first element that popped out to me that had been repeated is the blankets. In the beginning of the story, Ayah was remembering herself being wrapped up in blankets from her mother and in one that Jimmie had sent her. It is stated that "she felt peaceful remembering. She didn't feel cold anymore" (1355). Then, at the end, she is tucking Chato in. I think this element of blankets and being tucked in is repeated because it gives Ayah a little bit of peace among all of the hardship and loss she has faced with her children, her mother, and about to be her husband. She uses what brings her comfort to also comfort her husband.
The second repeated element is a song. A Yeibechei song is repeated at the very beginning of the story. A Yeibechei song is a song of healing. The story states that she listens to the "wing and snow sing a high-pitched Yeibechei song" (1354). At the end, she sings a song to Chato: "she sang the only song she knew to sing for babies" (1361). I think the idea of songs is repeated for a reason similar to that of the blankets. The Yeibechei song was peaceful, a song of "healing," for her. She wanted to make Chato peaceful and sang for him a song for babies, a peaceful song that she remembers being sung to her by her mother and grandmother.
Chato knows the loss that Ayah has faced. Ayah uses what helps her in an attempt to help her husband, as well. Ayah was comforted by songs and the blankets. She uses both of these things in an attempt to help Chato.
The connection between the reference to the Yeibechei song and the lullaby is pretty interesting, cause I didn't pay any mind to it when I first read it. But it does seem to have that same relevance as the blankets, with the healing aspect of the former and her attempt to comfort Chato with the latter seemingly going hand and hand, as well.
DeleteI absolutely agree. The lullaby and the blankets were the biggest things I noticed repeat in the beginning and end. I love how you mentioned that the yeibechei song is a song of healing because healing was something so needed and so lacking in the lives of herself and her sick children. Even her husband was injured and old, and certainly in need of a physical healing. Not even to mention all of the emotional healing that is needed by the woman and the members of her family.
DeleteWhile reading Leslie Marmon Silko’s Lullaby, it is important to notice the repeating elements. Silko repeats themes of Ayah’s life, in order to emphasize that sometimes pain and troubles affect more than one person but in the same way. In the beginning, Ayah “felt peace remembering. She didn’t feel cold anymore” (pg. 1355). Although she might physically be cold, she is emotionally and spiritually “warmed” because she reminisces on the fond memories of her son Jimmie, while cozied up under the blanket he sent to her. This sense of serene belonging is seen again in the last few lines, “we are together always. We are together always” (pg. 1361).
ReplyDeleteIn addition, Silko emphasizes the idea that even if your loves ones are not physically with you, you can always be comforted knowing they will be with you always: “there was never a time when this was not so” (pg. 1361). That is just how nature is, the cycle of life, which is shown by Ayah’s memories from her young children, to when she cuddles up besides Chato in his old age. As the story comes to an end, she sing him a lullaby where she sing about the relationship between human and nature.
I like how you connected Ayah's peace at the beginning of the story with the "sense of serene belonging" of Ayah's lullaby at the end. The process of remembering is significant to Ayah's story because even though she is suffering presently, there is calm to be found for her in thinking of Jimmie and in singing the lullaby.
DeleteSilk uses various elements of repetition in her short story, "Lullaby." She repeats grief and the snow in the beginning and also in the end. The beginning starts with Ayah reflecting on the death of her oldest son Jimmie as she is looking at the snow and using his blanket to keep her warm, "She felt peaceful remembering. She didn't feel cold anymore. Jimmie's blanket seemed warmer than it had ever before" (1355). The blanket is a symbol of security for Ayah and she remembers grieving the death of her older son and also losing her two youngest children to the government. Grief is repeated constantly throughout the short story and because of that Silko utilizes the snow as a symbol of her loss. She lost her son in a tragic war accident, then her children to the government, and also her husband as she blames him for the loss of her children. Snow is typically associated with winter, thus the winter brings cold and is another symbol for grief. Therfore, Silko repeats the use of the snow in the end.
ReplyDeleteThe snow is mentioned again at the end of the story as she tries to find her husband. She sees him walking in the snow and begins to comfort him as the storm reaches them, "It came gradually, sinking snowflake by snowflake until the crust was heavy and deep," (1361). The snow is another depiction and premonition of her the future loss of her husband. She uses jimmie's blanket to wrap around Chato, hoping that is bring him warmth as it also does to her. The blanket is another symbol of security as she hopes it will soothe him as he dies.
She wants the things that help her to also help Chato, it seems. He knows all of the loss and hardships that Ayah does, and it makes sense that the things that bring her comfort would also bring Chato comfort. She wanted him to feel the peace that she felt when using the blanket.
DeleteI like how you mention that every time it snows something major happens in her life and that snow is a symbol for her grief she carries. Snow is a constant point in the story and it did not occur to me that she is always grieving when it is snowing.
DeleteThe concept of return is a Navajo thought that is repeated in this story. That's why this story is told as a story. It is a storyteller telling a story, or in this case, Ayah is reminiscing on her life. One repeating motif is the blanket that Ayah reflects on. It reminds her of happiness and it is brought back into present day when she wraps it around her husband. In the beginning, Silko writes, "She didn't feel cold anymore. Jimmie's blanket seemed warmer than it had ever been" (1355). In the end she says, "she offered half of the blanket to him and they sat wrapped together" (1360). The blanket is repeated.
ReplyDeleteAnother repeated idea is the weather. It is almost always snowing during the times of the story. The story begins with "the snow in the wind gave off its own light" (1354). However, in the end of the story the snow has become more powerful and begins to become a storm. However, the blanket is able to keep them warm in the snow.
In Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Lullaby” two main ideas that were repeated was the blanket from her son Jimmie and how she is going through the process of constantly losing everyone in her life. In the beginning she pulls “the old Army blanket over her head like a shawl” the one that Jimmie had sent her. She tries not to think of him and how he died and instead focuses on the working of the weaving. The blanket is something secure and safe to her claiming “Jimmie’s blanket seemed warmer than it had ever been”. In the end of the story when she is losing her husband to the cold she wraps him in it thinking it’ll keep her warm.
ReplyDeleteAnother idea that is repeated throughout the story is sadly the fact that she loses and is losing everyone in her life. She lost her son, Jimmie, to the war and her two other kids she had signed them away to the medics because she could not read the papers that were presented to her and she did not know what she was doing. In the end of the story she is in the process of losing her husband to the cold.
I agree with the repetition of loss throughout the story. I feel like she uses the blanket as a coping mechanism.
DeleteIn Silko's "Lullaby", the beginning opens up the reader to the viewing of snow. The snow represents a type of comfort. Silko describes it as "It came in thick tufts line new wool-washed before the weaver spins it" (1354). Throughout the story, the imagery of snow appears more frequently. Ayah becomes covered in it "little by little" (1355) as if she wants to be one with it.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion to this, the snow then consumes her as a whole, which is portrayed as something negative. "the luminous light from the snow gradually diminished into the darkness"(1358). Throughout "Lullaby" Silk is reminding the reader of the beauty of how it is to be born, live a life, and then die. The imagery of constant use of snow is put into the story to give the reader insight of how life can be consumed by death.
I like how you used the weather elements in the story to see a representation of comfort for the Ayah. The idea that she would like to become one with the snow reinforces the tragedy of her life.
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ReplyDeleten “Lullaby,” Ayah has had everything taken from her. She knows that her husband will soon die, but she is at peace with this. She has become immune to the fact that everyone she loves has been taken away from her or died so she becomes emotionless. “ There was nothing anyone could do to her now” ( 1359). However, when her husband is dying these emotions she hid for so long resurface. These emotions resurface and the repetition of loss so many times over and over again is shown.
ReplyDeleteSilky uses the repetition of loss in “Lullaby,” in order to show the reader her lifetime of pain and loss. But the repetition can also be referenced back to better times like when she reflects on her childhood with the blanket “ sleeping warm on cold windy nights, wrapped in her mother’s blankets”(1355). Repetition in “Lullaby,”is used to ultimately demonstrate Ayah coping mechanisms to loss and the things she reflects back on that bring her a sense of security.
In the short story 'Lullaby,' by Leslie Marmon Silko, the old Indian woman, Ayah, spends the story reminiscing on her life and all of her losses. Silko uses repetition in the end to show the effects the trials of her life have had on her. In the beginning, it is evident that everything in her life reminds her of her children. The snow she sees coming down reminds her of the way her children reached out and were fascinated by it when she was younger, and the army blanket she uses reminds her of her son, Jimmie.
ReplyDeleteThe same is true in the end of the story as well, when she wraps her husband in the blanket and remembers "how it was when Ella had been with her." This shows that even though she is an old woman who has lived a long life, when she thinks back on all of it, her children are the only thing that matter and the loss of them has shaped her entire life.
Ayah ends the story with Chato in much the same way she begins it alone, wrapped in her son Jimmie's old blanket as the snow falls. The amount of snow is even given similarities, at the beginning being described as coming down "in thick tufts like new wool" and in the end as "sinking snowflake by snowflake until the crust was heavy and deep." Their location is the only stated difference between the two circumstances, with her sitting "with her back against the wide cottonwood tree...sitting on the edge of Cebolleta Creek" as opposed to where she rests with Chato, along the side of the road leading back to the old ranch, up against "the giant boulders that had tumbled down from the red sandrock mesa...in a place where the boulders shut out the wind."
ReplyDeleteI think the symbolism here is seen in what she was thinking at the beginning of the chapter. There, she sat alone in her blanket, thinking back on how she heard of her son Jimmie's death and later the confiscation of her other two children. At the end, she tucks Chato in with her same blanket, remarking about how childlike he looks sleeping the way he is at this moment, which brings back to her memories of her daughter Ella, and "the [same] rush so big inside her heart [that she felt] for [her] babies."
One of the most obvious connections (due to the title of the work) between the beginning and ending of the tale comes in the form of the lullaby. In the beginning, the song is performed by the natural elements around the heroin: “She…listened to the wind and snow sing a high-pitched Yeibechei song” (1354). Her personification of nature as one who sings a lullaby directly correlates with the song she sings at the end of the tale, where she personifies the earth as a mother, the sky as a father, and “the winds” as one’s “brothers,” who “sing to you” (1361). This evidence supports the traditional Native-American beliefs of nature as being alive and all things as being connected.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, the traditional wool blanket is found at the forefront of the beginning and ending of the story. In fact, in the second sentence, the “snow in the wind” is compared to “new wool—washed before the weaver spins it” (1354). This also represents the idea of connectivity and harmony between all things. It establishes the idea that all things come from the earth. At the end, as her husband layed sleeping on the earth, Ayah “tucked the blanket around him, remembering how it was when Ella had been with her; and she felt the rush so big inside her heart for the babies. And she sang…” (1361). Both the blankets and the songs represent home and comfort. They represent love and family. When there is nothing else left, only those things remain.