Negotiating Myth and Reality
Throughout this text, the narrator is torn between what she knows to be true and between the mythical allure of the Yellow Woman. She is constantly negotiating the mythical beauty around her and the real world, which she knows she has left behind. Unlike Silva, the narrator is unable to find a balance between the mythical and the real. Though she often longs for the comfortable familiarity of her real home with her parents, grandmother, husband, and child, she cannot abstain from following the mythology—from adopting the Yellow Woman persona as a part of her own identity. This entire text is a struggle, both for the narrator and the readers, to about discerning what is real and what is mythical—a feat that is not so easily accomplished. Though the narrator ultimately concludes to abstain from telling her family of the mythical things she experienced, part of her longs to share it with her deceased grandfather, as she feels he is the only one who would believe her. Therefore, even at the conclusion of the story, both the narrator and the readers are left wondering if the Yellow Woman myth is fake or a reality.
Identity
The theme of identity is integral to the plot and characters of Yellow Woman. Throughout the entire text, for example, the titular female narrator never refers to herself by her name, though she claims to have one. She only ever refers to herself as the Yellow Woman. This might perhaps imply that the woman does not have a name because she, herself, does not know who she is; she struggles with her identity—something that is usually bound to our namesake. Additionally, the narrator becomes obsessed with discovering the true identity of Silva, the man who kidnapped her from the beach. She seeks to identity who or what he is, for things which we can identity—which we can name—are safe and familiar. The man’s lack of identity, therefore, proves to be very frightening to the narrator. As such, this story is a complicated mix of finding one’s own identity and searching for the identity of those around you; the narrator feels lost because she cannot identify the people and happenings around her and, as such, is incapable of finding her own identity.
The Ambiguity of Time
The many facets of time are featured prominently in this text and contribute to the narrator’s struggles to come to terms with the mythical happenings around her. Throughout the text, Silko uses a non-linear timeline to tell the Yellow Woman’s story. As the narrator reminiscences about the mythical stories her grandfather once told her, she begins to lose touch with the reality of time; certain events in her grandfather’s stories begin to parallel her own experiences, causing her to ponder if she somehow is the Yellow Woman he told her about. In this way, time is almost an ambiguous antagonist, prompting the narrator to question everything she know to be true. Additionally, the narrator views her experience with Silva and as the Yellow Women as a sort of prophecy; she is both living and witnessing her present and future. As such, time in this story is bent and very ambiguous. Just as the Yellow Woman, herself, struggles to negotiate the convention of time her life, so too do readers struggle to understand if this is a story about the woman’s present or her future.
