Symbolism In Leslie Silko's Yellow Woman

Leslie Silko begins, “Yellow Woman” in what seems to be a story of a woman who is having an affair- this is not the true meaning. Initially, you're led to believe that a woman is falling for a man she just met. But the true underlying meaning of this story is to show how Native Americans have forgotten their true culture in modern society. Throughout the story, there are two characters from different times periods. The woman is from the modern age and the man, or spirit, is from an older time period. This is portrayed through how they each live their daily lives. She lives in a house with her husband and son, and the man lives in the mountains. The main character believes that she could not be the yellow woman from these old myths because “things like this that don’t happen now and that she has been to school.” This is the point that Silko

Unless you believe that the spirit has been killed by the white man, is a symbolic representation of the last of the Native American culture being crushed by the modern age. When she sees the jet streams in the skies and now is for sure ready to return home, and we notice that the farther she gets from the spirit the more she becomes engulfed in todays world. She is leaving this time in which he has brought her to and entering back into her own. The entire story we are given this myth of the yellow woman who is to be taken by this spirit and then she returns telling her people of something. At the beginning the woman didn’t believe that she could be The Yellow Woman from the myths, but by the end I believe she realizes that she is now a part of these myths. I believe she was to return to the native people and tell them of her story, and to show them that their culture is still strong and here. They shouldn’t change to fit in with the modern world. Because if they do then are they even Native American