Bless Me, By Rudolfo Anaya

Ultima helps Antonio with his anxiety and uncertainties throughout the book. After ultima goes to live with the marez family is when Antonio becomes able to be independent and move away from the responsibilities he has in his family. Ultima shows him that he has to think for himself and make his own decisions and conclusions. In the book Ultima tells Antonio “You are growing, and growth is change. Accept the change, make it part of your strength.” This quote from the book shows the relationship between Ultima and Antonio, it also shows her helping Antonio with his uncertainties and telling him to be and stay strong while he is

Comment: Antonio puts much faith in Communion and Christianity, unlike his peers. It seems as though he believes that God will solve all of his problems, which is a false reality. Because of this, it may lead him to think that the golden carp may be a better god to worship. This will greatly decrease his self-confidence.

When he lifts his hands into the air, instead of speaking to God to save his brothers, he speaks to the presence of the river. This shows that he will have some religion dilemmas between God and the Golden Carp. In his last dream, Antonio witnesses “Tenorio capture the night spirit of Ultima and murder it, and Ultima died in agony” (244). Soon after this dream, Tenorio kills Ultima’s owl. Antonio then understood that the owl is her living soul.

This sets up the initial conflict for Antonio, he wants to believe in his mother's God, but at the same time he finds conviction and truth in what Samuel is telling him about the golden carp god. Furthermore, while Antonio is supposed to be praying to God he says, "There wasn't time to discover Him, like I could do when I sat on the creek bank and watched the golden carp swim in the sun-filtered waters" (233). I think this shows that Antonio feels a deeper connection to nature and the golden carp than he does to God and traditional values. He is more like Ultima, than like either one of his parents. The golden carp offer Antonio a way of thinking that is free and unstructured, unlike that of Catholicism.

Ultima is the towns “curandera” who is staying with the family and everyone in town thinks she is a bad witch. Antonio seems to adapt to Ultima quite quickly soon after she arrives and starts learning her way. He is seen looking up to her as if she were a mother figure and, at some point, as if she was the Virgin de Guadalupe. Antonio often finds comfort in Ultima and confides in her regarding his faith. Antonio then witnesses Ultima save his uncle when the evil twitches had done some bad witchcraft on him that nearly led him to death. Antonio then begins to see that the God he was raised to believe in is not the only one in power. Ultima comes in to place and teaches Antonio that he doesn’t have to pick one belief, rather he can identify with a little bit of both. Before Ultima’s death in the book, Antonio asks Ultima for her blessing and she is more than happy to do so because she did everything she could have to prepare him mentally to find the real

His parents have ideas which conflict each other when it relates to their precious last son’s fate. Like a hawk swooping down on its prey, Ultima, an elderly curandera comes to occupy a room in the Marez residence. To everyone else in the house Ultima staying with them is negligible, but the bond Antonio and Ultima soon begin to create is the first step into Antonio’s quest in finding his fate. “When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood.”(Anaya 1) Ultima’s presence alone lifted Antonio’s spirits, even the little things such as the llano he lived on all his life that had become mundane to him, began to glisten with great importance.

A clear theme in Bless Me, Ultima is Antonio’s struggle to find who he is amidst two sides of himself: the Lunas and the vaqueros. He fears for his future, where he believes he will have to decide between the two parts of himself, and inevitably disappoint one half of the people in his life. He fears what his life will be. He fears the river. This all changes when Ultima arrives. She teaches him to love the presence of the river, and to love his life however it may come. She shows him that the river is the lifeblood of the herbs she uses to heal and save, and that he can use his life to help others as well. But her spirit, in the owl, also shows him that life, and the river, can be very dangerous (Anaya, 14).

In the society we are brought up in today focuses on being your own person, following your own path and making your own choices but how much of that is hindered by those who brought us into this world? Parents have a tendency to be extremely involved in every step of our lives as they have the right to do so but is it in their jurisdiction to control who we are and who we want to become? In the novel Bless Me Ultima by the author Rudolfo Anaya the debate of how much jurisdiction a parent has over their children is brought up within the reader. In the novel which is told from the perspective of the character Antonio, Antonio’s parents known as Maria and Gabriel have set their eyes on what they want their children

At first glance and after reading through Amazing Grace, it seems that Jonathan Kozol is going to take us on a journey through the lives of the underprivileged, but similar to the ones you read about, or hear in the news. However, this is not the case; the real underlying theme seems to be how the life and society they live in is very alike to a life in a prison, not because it talks explicitly about prison conditions in this area, but also because their lives are portrayed as being a prison. Kozol uses the views of children and adults throughout this book to emphasize this theme through their living conditions and personal lives, background and struggles.

Antonio strived from the teachings of Ultima, she was able to influence and guide him at a young age, on page 1 of the novel Antonio begins his narration with, “When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes…” (paragraph 1) The llano was the place of his father’s people, his mother was able to see the beauty in the Luna culture but not in the llano. Antonio, unlike his parents, was able to see the beauty in the harvest of the luna and the freedom of the llano. He sought joy in gathering plants of the llano for the people, to heal the people, also Antonio’s shift in perspective enabled him to see beyond, he was able to catch symbolic meaning such as with Ultima’s owl. While his older sisters are frightened by the owl, Antonio comes to the conclusion that, “ It’s song seemed to say that it had come to watch over us.”

Rudolfo Anaya, author of “Bless Me, Ultima”, uses countless examples of folk-lore all throughout his novel. In doing so, he gives his readers great insight to the Mexican-American culture of the 1940’s during World War II, and how different the culture is than how most people are raised. The folk-lore Anaya used most effectively throughout “Bless Me, Ultima” is; the whole idea of growing up and becoming a man, beliefs of witchcraft, children losing their innocence and the characters religious beliefs and unofficial beliefs.

However, the magical aspect of this situation is that she is accused of being a witch. Many of these men on Tenorio’s side are Catholics which is the reason why they can easily believe in witches being real. Later in the story, Ultima’s owl gouges out Tenorio’s eyes which resulted in the mob of men leaving. The owl symbolizes a spiritual part of Ultima and a punishing force at work. Anaya has used magical realism to show that accusing the good with bad actions could result in punishment. Antonio embarks on a moral search on whether to choose good or evil when he learned about the golden carp’s prophecy, felt the nature’s presence with him, and experienced the accusation of Ultima being a witch. In the golden carp’s prophecy, there is a message that everybody has sinned and that people need to fix what they did wrong. The presence of the river also shows the good or evil aspect in which the nature has a presence that is always watching how they are being treated. Also when Ultima was being accused of a witch, Antonio sees the punishment that is given to people when they accuse of someone good with such bad actions. Throughout the whole book, Anaya uses beliefs and religion as way of creating magical

The central myth within Bless Me Ultima involves the golden carp, which Antonio is informed was once a god who sacrificed itself to protect the indigenous people who had themselves been transformed into carp by gods angry at their behavior during a famine. While this myth may appear to be a point of distinction between the novel and other literary traditions, according to Theresa Kanoza it also functions to tie the book to other

Throughout the book Antonio is introduced to many new ideas. The first is the experiences he has with Ultima. Ultima is a healer who learned

This brought up a conflict between Christianity and The Supernatural. Ultima’s powers throughout the novel, the concept of brujas, and the symbol of the golden carp all work together to blend new and old-world cultures. Christianity, specifically Catholicism, begin to cast doubts into the mind of Antonio. Catholicism condemns all forms of magic, but when the priest fails to stop Tenerio’s curses, and the golden carp contrast with his first communion, Antonio displays an array of internal struggle. One of Antonio’s biggest revelations partakes at the end of the novel when he realizes that he does not actually have to be split between Christianity and the supernatural, instead he is free to accept parts of both beliefs and create his own unique persona.