“I could not tell him that I wanted the castle of the giants to be forever, that I wanted the goat path and the hill to be for always” (Anaya 143). Symbols of childhood are valuable because they lead to 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 …show more content…
For instance, Antonio had a dream where he saw his brothers at a brothel in his small town. Antonio recalled that they “led me over the goat path, across the bridge, to the house of the sinful women” (Anaya 70). When Antonio left the goat path behind, it symbolized how he disregarded disregarding something innocent and guiltless. Antonio notices that his brothers had become adults when they returned, showing that traumatic experiences such as war can lead to loss of childhood. To continue, Antonio’s father, Gabriel, reminds the brothers of when they had built their house together, and that Gabriel “‘would get off work on the highway in the afternoon, and far down the goat path’” he would “‘come and help’” (Anaya 184). The goat path represents the past, when Antonio and his brothers were young and possessed the purest form of innocence and childhood. Gabriel’s realization that the brothers had lost their determination to work hard contrasts to how the brothers once acted in their childhood, proving the impact the war made on the brothers’ conversion into