Bless Me Ultima Character Analysis

Thesis: one’s personal culture and sense of tradition will always be a strong part of the self, regardless of external factors which can have a profound influence on one’s life.

10). It wasn’t until he would go to school that he would start to learn how to speak English. Antonio’s sister told him that the teachers don’t let the children speak in Spanish, making Antonio scared that he wouldn’t be able to communicate with his teachers. Language shapes identity in Bless me, Ultima by showing one of the major problems that Antonio faces throughout the book. Growing up in a Spanish household and going to an English speaking school shows how he has to adapt to the different lifestyles and customs. Dichotomy is represented several times throughout the novel. For example, one cultural difference is in the American culture we regularly visit doctors to receive medical attention. On the other hand, in the Mexican culture people go to local healers, the “curanderas.” The second example is the different beliefs on the practices that Ultima uses. Many people say Ultima is doing good and her ways are ethical, while others say she is using witchcraft rather than using herbs and natural

Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima begins with an almost seven-year-old Antonio Juan Márez y Luna. His parents, Gabriel and Maria, have just invited Ultima, an old curadera, to live with them. Antonio’s older brothers, Andrew, Eugene, and León, are off fighting in World War II, leaving Antonio, his mother and father, and his two sisters, Debora and Teresa, to live in their small farmhouse in Guadalupe, New Mexico. Ultima agrees to stay with the family, and the first night that she is with them, Antonio experiences a dream in which he is present at his own birth. Ultima is the midwife, and his mother’s brothers, the Lunas family, are there and they wish for Antonio to become a religious priest or a farmer like them when he grows up, and this

was an elder lady that came to live with Antonio's family for her final years. She mentors and teachers Antonio during her final years.She shows Antonio her ability of making medicine that can help heal people.Her motivation is that she was to do good and help those that needed it.”My work was to do good,she continued, I was to heal the sick and show them the path of goodness.”(pg.260).Ultimas’ personality trait is that she is very caring for others and willing to help people on need.Ultima's character is the most complex, and although the deuteragonist, or the character second in importance, she can be seen as the heroine of the story. Ultima is a person of action, the one who performs the healings and provides guidance to others. She is the

In the novel Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, the main character Antonio Marez tells the story of his coming of age with his curandera and mentor Ultima. Rudolfo Anaya weaves a story from the child’s point of view of good and evil, of myth and reality, and of life and death. Throughout the novel, Antonio struggles with his identity, his faith in God, his family and destiny.

The novel opens with the adult Antonio Marez describing the events that occurred when he was six years old. For Antonio, his development begins not with his birth or with his first days of school, but with the arrival of Ultima, the curandera who moves in with his family the summer before his seventh birthday. It is with Ultima’s arrival that Antonio is first exposed to the magic of the world and the beauty and power of the llano.

The culture in which one is raised greatly affects their perspective of the world because of their perceived “norms”, the inheritance

“[I]magine culture as invisible webs composed of values, beliefs, ideas about appropriate behavior, and socially constructed truths” (Trumbell, 9). Everybody has a different background to correspond with how they see the world through their values, beliefs, and ideas. People act a certain way and dress a certain way because of their culture also. Someone’s culture has a significant impact on the way they view other people and the world because of how uncertain they are of their culture and their own personal and past experiences.

People in America do not fully know about the situations of the people in Iran, like weather or not they have electricity. People give Iranians a tempting stereotype of them riding camels and living in tents. “They wanted to know about more important things, such as camels. How many did we own back home? What did we feed them? Was it a bumpy ride?” (Duma 90)

Culture is a set of shared ideologies upheld by a community, and how those beliefs and values influence the way a community interacts with and adapts to the outside world. When explored further, culture can be broken down into subunits referred to as identity markers (e.g. social class, race, sexual orientation) that define an individual person’s character. Some markers are regarded as little more than simple facts, “he is in the middle class, she is black, he is gay.” While others are socially constructed, serving a greater purpose in the lives of those who they identify, forming a hierarchy of value (Harewood 2016 pg. 41). One can take great pride in their identity markers, utilizing them to drive their life in a direction deemed fitting

A Mutual Cultural Perception Culture shapes one’s perspectives and characteristics in which paves a pathway into society; however, one’s cultural position is connected by one’s decisions regardless of the importance of one’s culture in terms of introducing values and beliefs at an early stage of life. In other words, as individuals within society begin to view others and interpret the world, they may choose to follow a different path into society in which their cultural influence remains static. Some individuals within society believe that one’s culture impacts one’s perspectives and moral values of one’s physiological beliefs, one’s cultural identity; however, some individuals effected by a new environment and society may feel disconnected

(Trumbull and Pacheco 9). Various attributes of a person’s life that may determine his or her cultural identity. After analyzing several texts, the reader

difficulty balancing their identity within themselves due to the influence of both of their cultures.

This particular theory views identity as conditional and self motivated as well as being related to one’s culture. Although other theories on identity consider the personal and social identity to be separate, SCT considers the personal and social identity to be

Many researchers have wondered about the influence culture and upbringing has on people. This had led many researchers to study the different aspects of self, such as