"Yellow Woman" Literary Techniques

Leslie Marmon Silko uses imagery and color symbolism in her piece titled: Yellow Woman. In the narrative, one thing that stuck out to me was that the color of the blanket the woman and Silva slept together on was red. Red is a symbol of desire, sex, lust, love, passion, and violence. It symbolizes the relationship the Yellow Woman and Silva share. It also alludes to them sleeping together the night before, and then confirmed later in the piece. I believe it also symbolizes that their relationship isn’t one of purity. I think it is also interesting that when Silva and the Yellow Woman meets the Rancher, he is on a grey horse and is described as “the white man” (p. 218). Silva is often described in the piece as dark and the horse he rides is black. The color imagery is used to distinguish between good and bad in this scenario.

Silko describes the Yellow Woman surroundings and the narrative is from the point of view of the Yellow Woman. She is constantly looking at nature and describing it. For example, in the first section of the narrative, she spent a lot of time describing the sand and the river. In the piece, she describes sweat and temperature a lot as well. For example, the narrative begins with the line “My thigh clung to his with dampness… ” (p. 213). This further alludes to the fact that Silva and the Yellow Woman slept together and that their relationship is a sexual, and perhaps even passionate, one. Also, when the Yellow Woman is in Silva’s house, she says a few times that she is cold. This is significant because this is before he rapes her. It is odd because the sex, though it is not consensual, is oddly tender amongst the fear the Yellow Woman has. She knows that he is stronger than her and could hurt her, and yet, she describes herself kissing his forehead as he sleeps.

Silko’s word choice is very interesting. At both the beginning and the end of the piece, the Yellow Woman says that she feels hungry. However, it isn’t clear what she is hungry for. Is it a physical or mental hunger? I suppose it is open to interpretation. The Yellow Woman spends time describing her family and home life. What’s odd is that when she is with Silva, it seems as if she feels she doesn’t have a lot to lose. She goes as far to say that if she were gone her family would be fine. Things would go on as before and her husband, Al, would find a new wife. The Yellow Woman describes herself as completely and utterly, replaceable. It is heartbreaking.