Symbolic and Sacred Space in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Novel Ceremony

The paper focuses on various aspects of symbolic and sacred space in the novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, discussing the following issues: the Native American versus the Anglo-American attitude towards the land, symbolic geography as a map of the hero’s healing and regeneration, the hero’s journey on the mountain as Axis Mundi, sacred space as a reflection of the spirit world, the construction of barriers and fences that exclude, such as the exclusion of Natives beyond the garbage dump of Gallup, the Native American slum as a space situated between cultures, the reservation as a symbol of separation; the desert as a metaphor of spiritual emptiness and despair; the uranium mine as a symbolic rape of Mother Earth, the novel Ceremony as a ceremonial sacred space of healing comparable to a sand-painting, the hero’s return to the kiva at the center of the Pueblo community, as a way of remembering and remembering Native American identity.