...Marisa Tobias Dr. Romo EN7317 3 April 2017 Bless Me, Ultima: Women and Power Rudolfo Anaya’s novel, Bless Me Ultima is a coming of age story of a young boy, Antonio, growing up in New Mexico in the 1940s around the end of World War II, although it is a story of self-identity, it contains feminist tones particularly in regards to the title character, Ultima and the boy’s mother, Maria. Throughout the novel, Antonio is deeply torn between his mother’s dream of him becoming a priest and his father’s desire for him to live the life of a vaquero. However, he realizes, as a result of Ultima’s guidance and lessons about his culture, that he must make his own decisions and possibly create a way of life that might not be either one of his parents’ wish. Bless Me, Ultima, in the long run, shows the importance of Chicana women as mother figures and as leaders, Ultima and Maria are important and powerful women that break free from the traditional roles that women were expected to play during that moment in history and within that patriarchal society. Anaya is “hailed for helping the Latino way of life, traditions, and values become nationally recognized with his first novel, Bless Me Ultima (1971). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Anaya was known as the premier voice...
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...“Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya Literary Analysis Throughout the context of “Bless Me Ultima,” it is evident that there are many motifs and examples of dichotomy. I believe that Anaya uses the previously mentioned elements of literature in order to provoke his readers’ thinking and help embody a struggle of understanding the world we live in. Motifs in this novel include: family, dreams, religion, education, and the list continues. For examples of dichotomy, the idea of good versus evil is the most vivid in this novel. An important motif in “Bless Me, Ultima” are Antonio’s dreams. His dreams foreshadow major events and make him question his beliefs, especially revolving around religion. The dream that Antonio had subsequently following his witnessing of Tenorio killing Narciso, best shows why Anaya corporates them in his novel. In this dream Antonio’s guilt and young principles take over. Evil, revenge, and sin lead the end of the world as Antonio views it. At the bottom of page 176 it reads, “A new sun to shine its good light upon a new earth.” (Anaya, Page #176). Based on this text and knowledge from reading the book, we can conclude that after the earth has been destroyed and the golden carp swallows all that is good and evil, a new world is produced. Dichotomy is defined as the contrast between two things that are represented as being opposed or entirely different. What is more contradictory than good and evil? Although these terminologies are very different...
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...Austin Matheney Professor Witschi ENGL 2220 4th December 2014 Contrasting Landscapes in Bless Me, Ultima As the pages flip, and the story unfolds, the audience begins to notice that the landscapes in Bless Me, Ultima play a vital role in many different facets of the novel. Throughout the novel, there is an obvious dichotomy between the llano, the land of the main character’s father, and El Puerto de los Lunas, the land of the main character’s mother. As Antonio, who is the focus of the novel, grows older, he is forced to make a decision between the llano and the Luna. This decision is not based upon which land to dwell upon, but rather on which path Antonio should place his life: the dreams of his father or the dreams of his mother. Rudolfo Anaya, the author of the text, also utilizes other simple landscapes, such as the river and the pond, to aid in the coming of age of Antonio. Ultimately, Antonio must choose a path in life, and Anaya implements these different landscapes in order to exemplify Antonio’s struggle and development. The land of both Antonio’s father and of Antonio’s biggest inspiration, Ultima, is the llano; a beautiful landscape of rolling hills and dark plains. At first glance, this is all that the llano holds, but the llano is much more than just a beautiful piece of land to the vaqueros, to Ultima, and to Antonio’s father. The llano represents freedom and embodies the spirit of the vaqueros, or herdsmen, who are a group of people that Antonio’s father...
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...you that survives all hurt." This quote is by Max Lerner. The things that kids go through to enter maturity can be complicated. Their task is to come across themselves, and grow into the mature person they will become. There are facing some difficult journeys filled with new things, difficult situations, confusion, and a loss of childhood innocence. The novel Bless Me, Ultima, written by Rudolfo Anaya, is about Antonio Marez, a young boy who has to make his way into maturity and in doing so he deals with some things that are not common for a boy his age. Antonio becomes emotionally mature from crying about deaths to staying tough when he sees the decease, intellectually mature by showing how intelligent he becomes and physically mature by changing in size and strength. For example, Antonio is the reason for many of his parent’s arguments that occur. They fight over what Antonio would be when he is older. This is not something usual for a seven years old kid. Most kids his age are spoiled by their parents and family and all they do is play with the other kids and just have fun. However, Antonio is stuck between two fires and he is thinking about what he wants to become, due to his parents arguments. Antonio’s mother wanted him to be extremely intelligent, and she wanted him to be a priest when he grows up. She said “An education will make him scholar, like-like the old Luna priest.”(57) The reason why she wanted that is because she wasn’t very educated...
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...In the novel Bless Me, Ultima religion, family and culture play a huge part into the book, these topics make the reader understand and connect to the characters. Without those major points presented in the novel the reader wouldn’t be as interested in reading the book. Bless Me, Ultima if the type of novel of coming of age, this is represented by one of the main characters. This novel is important to Chicano literature because it was a way to fashion the culture to individuals and communities. Much of the experiences and events in the novel reveal the finding of cultures and search of identity in multiple associated spanish culture. Anotonio Marez is writing as an adult about the events he recounts that occured when he was six years old. Ultima who is a curandera, or healer, who comes to live with Anotiono and his family. When Antonio meets Ultima for the first time and shakes her hand he senses some type of power whirlwind around him. Antonio is on the brink of discovery and starting to figure out what it means to grow from a boy to a man. It all begins...
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...VargheseLauve – 6 th 2/18/07 Comparison Essay: Bless Me Ultima & The Secret Life of Bees They need to find their path in life. They have to struggle betweengood and evil. They must reclaim their past to discover their future. Antoniofrom Bless Me Ultima and Lily from The Secret Life of Bees both faceproblems but in the end, the light at the end of the tunnel shines. Althoughthere are similarities between Bless Me Ultima and The Secret Life of Bees there are, obviously, notable differences. The similarities are pretty apparent between the two books. They areboth a “coming-of-age” story and they both have a couple of plot parallels.For example, Antonio has to find his true calling and Lily has to follow hermother’s past. In both books, mentions of religion are very widespread.Religion is one of the most important factors in the books and it influencesthe story a lot. Another noted similarity is the use of allusions, metaphors,and imagery.Even though there are many similarities, there are some very strikingdifferences. The most noted of them is the difference of the gender in thenovel. Bless Me Ultima , is geared towards all readers, but The Secret Life of Bees is generally a girl’s novel. For example, in The Secret Life of Bees , Lilyfalls in love with Zachary but in Bless Me Ultima , Antonio is not shown to bein love. Also, The Secret Life of Bees takes on more feminine topics. In BlessMe Ultima , Antonio is faced with a decision that will alter his outlook...
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...their questions. In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, the main character Antonio starts to discover and question beliefs and people. Antonio’s life changes when Ultima, a healer and her owl come to live with his family. Antonio’s mother is Catholic, but his father believes the llano has all the answers. Antonio is raised Catholic by his mother, but doubts God, especially after witnessing the death of Lupito and Narciso, and learning the legend of the golden carp. Ultima shares her pagan beliefs with Antonio, but...
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...Bless Me Ultima Analysis In the novel “Bless Me Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya expresses a young child named Antonio, coming to age, making his own choices, and last understanding the ways of life. “The magical time of childhood stood still, and pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood” (chapter 1). Antonio preaches, his childhood memories and knowledge is still their, but he seen too much as a kid so he is a lot more mature than other kids his age. As being said Antonio still has a lot of mysteries to find throughout his life. As he proceeds through his life he will start growing up and seeing more things. Rudolfo Anaya expresses Antonios coming of age moments by using questions and clues to find his own answer. “The...
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... able to heal through the will of Ultima. Would you think that these two boys would have anything in common? In Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, Frank McCourt is a young boy being raised in Ireland during the depression.Growing up Frank faces many struggles between poverty, religion and prejudice because of his northern heritage. He endures it all in hopes of one day making it back to America to give his family a better life. In Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Antonio Marez is a young hispanic boy learning about his family, religion and life under the wings of a strong curandera named Ultima. Although there are some obvious...
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...In my essay i am going to talk about the book ''Bless Me Ultima'', by Rudolfo Anaya. This book is mostly about religion and the church. In the book there is a boy named Antonio, Antonio struggles to re council the complexities of his experience with his religion that leads him to think that he must make his own decisions. He becomes extremely frustrated by the failure of the church. Ultima is a curandera who helps to heal people when they are sick or who have been bewitched. In the town people accuse her of being a witch. Ultima teaches Antonio that the most difficult questions about life can't be answered by a single religion or cultural tradition. Antonio has so many questions about evil, forgiveness, truth, and the soul questions...
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...the continuation of a person into adulthood. As a child, one is innocent and oblivious to the wonders of the world around them, but they develop and learn as they age to maturity. Bless Me, Ultima is a novel centered around a young boy named Antonio, who grows and changes throughout the book, going from a boy to a man. Throughout the bildungsroman Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya uses symbolism of the goat path – along with its cohesivity to childhood innocence – to portray that the transition to adulthood is an extensive journey gained through...
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...In Bless me, Ultima, Antonio starts to understand the identities of different heritage because of Ultima’s influence. In this narrative, Ultima starts to teach Antonio things that his family cannot. She does this because she sees herself knowing Antonio more than his family knows him. Ultima thinks this way because she claimed that she is the only one that knows his true destiny and that more than anyone else Antonio comes to her for advice. Antonio’s most relevant lesson that Ulima taught him was that he should follow his own beliefs, he decides his fate, no one can do that for him even family. Antonio learns about the identities of his families’ heritages. Anaya uses Bless me, Ultima to introduce the reader to conflicting cultures in Antonio’s childhood. Antonio’s early life is based on the conflict between the two sides of his family, the Luna and the Marez. The Luna are devoted farmers who worship the earth and the moon, while the Marez are vaqueros who are devoted to horses and the sun. Because of Antonio’s three older brothers chose the life of the Marez, Antonio is expected by his mother to choose the Luna and become a priest. “You are a Luna, they chanted in unison, you are to be a farmer-priest for mother”. (Anaya 26) Ultima teaches Antonio many things about morality. "In two days we would celebrate the mass of the dead, and after mass we would take her body to the cemetery in Las Pasturas for burial. But all that would only be the ceremony that was prescribed...
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...The term culture “refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge experience, beliefs, [and] values…acquired by a group of people in the course of generations trough individual and group striving” (Texas A&M University). Bless Me, Ultima, written by Rudolfo Anaya, discusses the theme of harmonizing contradictory viewpoints of cultural traditions. Antonio’s parents, Gabriel and María Márez, have conflicting viewpoints of how one should live life. Gabriel is a son of cowboys and wants Antonio to follow the family tradition of roaming the plains, whereas María, a devoted Catholic daughter of a farmer, prefers that Antonio follows her family tradition by becoming a priest. Antonio says that “My father had been a vaquero all his life…[but] My...
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...BLESS ME ULTIMA ESSAY QUESTIONS Q11. Bless Me Ultima, in both text and film, share many similarities. The storyline develops as Ultima comes to live with the Marez y Luna family during the last of her days. Antonio, the young boy, witnesses the deaths of Lupitio and Narciso causing him to face the reality that everything living is everything that dies. Throughout the book and movie, Antonio constantly struggles between choosing his mother’s wish for him to become a priest or becoming vaquero like the men on his father’s side of the family. Each of these choices were equally honorable. There is also an ongoing battle between good and evil in the village; Ultima, representing the good being, and the evil of Tenorio and his witch daughters. In the end, as in all good stories, good destroys evil and Antonio recognizes that change has brought him peace. He understands wisdom and has a better understanding of his reality. I found that there were more similarities between the book and the movie than there were differences. Although, I noticed in the movie that the Golden Carp was nonexistent compared to the written literature. In the book, the Golden Carp was God-like to Antonio where he was constantly going back and forth between the beliefs of God and the ways of the Golden Carp. Anaya states, “The orange of the golden carp appeared at the edge of the pond. As he came out of the darkness of the pond the sun caught his shiny scales and the...
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...Bless Me Ultima was published in 1972 by Rudofo Anaya. The themes Anaya writes of are still applicable today, especially if you are an inhabitant of New Mexico. Many who live here have come to appreciate the multi-cultural influence we live with daily. Ours is a State that offers extreme geography, where we can easily attend church or seek a Shaman or Curandera. Though we are scattered among cities, small communities and isolated ranches, the spirit of the people still shines in times of trouble. Rudolfo Anaya writes that, “The supernatural and ordinary reality are worlds that exist side by side. I don’t believe the truth is out there, I believe it is within. To discover the truth and power within is to walk in the supernatural.” The novel Bless me Ultima has several examples that reflect Anaya’s comments. My favorite is a conversation between Antonio and his father. “Understanding does not come that easy, Tony—““You mean God doesn’t give understanding?’ “Understanding comes with life, “ he answered, “as a man grows he sees life and death, he is happy and sad, he works, plays, meets people—sometimes it takes a lifetime to acquire understanding, because in the end, understanding simply means having a sympathy for people,” he said. “Ultima has sympathy for people, and it is so complete that with it she can touch their souls and cure them---“ “That is her magic—“ “Ay and no greater magic can exist.” “But in the end, magic is magic, and one does not explain it so...
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