Bless Me, Ultima - Rudolf Anaya's Novel - Research Paper Example

Bless Me, Ultima The novel Bless me, Ultima by Rudolf Anaya is a significant component to Chicano literature. The story capitalizes on the theme of magic, herbs and religion especially related to occult. The setting is in Guadalupe, New Mexico. During the period of the Second World War, Antonio Márez comes to meet a spiritual healer (curandera) named Ultima who makes use of her expertise to stop the three daughters of the antagonist, Tenorio Trementina from practising witchcraft. Antonio is a young boy who faces many deaths and has to face issues related to religion and morality. His childhood is disturbed owing to the conflict between his mother trying to make a priest out of him and his father who was ready to help him find his own choice of career. After meeting Ultima he understands that there are other forms and concepts of gods too and is also gradually disillusioned regarding religion. Bless Me, Ultima’ is a journey of a young boy from innocence to maturation and knowledge. His connection with the real and spiritual world focuses his insight into the relation between God and man. Bless Me, Ultima is actually the novel which tells us about the conflicts inside the mind of Antonio, or whom we get to know as Tony, a seven years old boy. This mental conflict is more agitating than the explicit conflict between magical powers in the novel. This disillusionment is reflected by Antonio when his mind is torn apart between the understanding of Christianity and the ambiguous forms of dark gods. According to Britee, “a disillusionment with the whole of Christianity is revealed” (Britee, 25). The bilingual atmosphere in which he grows up poses another threat on the understanding capability of Antonio. The Spanish-American community in the novel is just a symbol, which actually represents the whole idea of American cosmopolitan culture. There are conflicts among cultures and a sense of rootless existence is what disturbs the protagonist the most. Ultima is branded as a witch but finds a home in Gabriel house where she is respected and loved. She becomes much closer to Tony and this relationship helps him to resolve his religious conflict. Soon after, he witnesses a death and gets too frightened; this incident reveals his innocence. Incidentally, the owl protects him as he hides in the dark bush. Tony is comforted by Ultima and she gives him an herbal medicine. She explains to Tony about Lupito who suffered from ‘war sickness.’ Tony often contemplates about Lupito for not getting salvation after his death. Though he is a young boy, he has religious quest and understands that a dying person should get absolution.   Tony’s mother Maria wants Tony to become the next Luna priest when he grows up, as he is fascinated about the legend of ElPuerto. Gabriel does not like this idea and says that priests do not keep their holy vows and live a conjugal life. The conflict, which Antonio goes through, is a reflection of the tension experienced between the cultures of Chicano and America. He has a spiritual quest, which leads him to understand the world around him in a matured way, despite his initial innocence. Ultima teaches him how to learn form the past and gain strength and power to move on in life instead of suffering in desperation. The author, to identify the conflicts within Antonio and his sense of intuition, has used a dream sequence. The dreams represented windows to his inner self. When he speaks about his dreams to Ultima, she shows him how to strike a balance between the conflicts within himself, the same conflicts that are reflected in his dreams. For instance when he views the conflict between the Luna and Marex families are reflected in his dreams as sweet and salt waters, Ultima explains this as “the sweet waters of the moon which falls as rain is the same water that gathers into rivers and flows to fill the seas. Without the waters of the moon to replenish the oceans there would be no oceans. And the same salt waters of the oceans are drawn up by the sun to the heavens, and in turn become again the waters of the moon …..the waters are one, Antonio….You have been seeing only parts, …. and not looking beyond into the great cycle that binds us all” (Anaya, 113) The reconciliation was important to mature the innocent mind of Antonio which was filled with unknown fears –“the solution to conflicts lies in Ultima’s way of seeing resolution by placing opposites in a system of balances or continuity”. Also, Hume observes that Anotonio’s “dreams, and later his fiction and poetry will be his magic, through them the ethnic magic will live on. He enters the ongoing flow of magic and translates it into new idiom” (Hume, 123). Magic, herbs and dreams are the essence of Ultima’s activities besides her wisdom about the matters related to life and fantasy. Antonio is introduced to this experience during his interactions with the wise lady. However these interactions finally help him grow and become creative in the long run as soon as he learn how to brings his surroundings to harmony. He learns how to bring two opposite forces together and create a harmonic balance. Ultima teaches Tony about the herbs and its healing process. Tony accompanies her to collect these herbs from the banks of river Pecos. Tony often dreams of himself as a priest and so, Ultima identifies the religious conflict which occurs in this young boy’s mind. Tony is encouraged by his mother to become a priest and is blessed by Ultima. Antonio’s brothers come back from the war. He soon realizes that his brothers are of no use to his family because they have changed after the war. The brothers make fun of him and his blessings and Tony believes that they can never fulfill their parents’ dreams. In school, Miss Maestas promotes him to third grade. Samuel, his classmate tells him about an Indian myth that native itinerants became carps who live forever and therefore, God gave the responsibility of supervising the river to a golden carp. Tony was fascinated but, at the same time he questioned himself whether he should believe it or not. One fine day Tony sees the golden carp and shares his experience with LaGrande. Then again, when his mother’s youngest brother is treated by Ultima, he witnesses the conflict of good and evil. He dreams that Ultima is explaining the invisible forces that bind all. Antonio was immature at the beginning of the novel and by the end, we see him able to judge his surroundings. Ultima is a main factor behind this. Her arrival in Antonio’s life teaches him how to find the beauty in nature and this is how becomes able to see the harmony in life for the first time. Although not becoming a priest as his mother wanted, Antonio lives a spiritual life with Ultima’s help – “Anaya weaves myth and legend into his tale of family life and follows Antonio’s spiritual quest to reconcile the existence of evil with god. In this process Antonio learns of the existence of other gods and forces such as sorcery.” (Foerstel, 228) The presence of indigenous mysticism in the novel is something, which makes it more beautiful, and Anaya is very successful in portraying the essence of American culture. According to some critics Anaya intentionally used some Aztec cosmological information in this novel although the author has denied the assumption completely. Like many other stories of realization and awakening of the wisdom, Antonio passes through epiphanies one after another. He learns to judge this world with the experience he gets from this epiphany. “Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was almost seven. When she came the beauty of Ilano unfolded before my eyes, and gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth” (Anaya, 1) – this was what sounds very much like an epiphany which told Antonio to look upon every object surrounding him with an altogether new perspective. Calderon presents the definition of epiphany from Joyce’s viewpoint as, “epiphany is a sudden spiritual manifestation when the artist instantaneously and irrationally gains new knowledge out of proportion with the common-place object or event which produces it” (Calderon, 43) Anaya also makes use of the “moment of epiphany as a vision or recognition of the timeless spiritual forces of the Southwest.” (Calderon, 43) There is always harmony even amidst an apparent disenchanted atmosphere. In Bless Me, Ultima, the young boy is experiencing something similar especially on the arrival of the folk healer Ultima. This is the transformation phase of the boy from his innocence to manhood or knowledge. The symbol of Ultima’s owl signifies the soul of Ultima and it also protects Tony. Owl has always been related to superstitious belief and here also it shows the magical powers. The owl symbolizes the connection between Tony’s real world and the spiritual world of Ultima. As observed by Swift and Urgo, the novel contains ‘Primeval creatures’ which have a curcial role to play in matters related to human lives - “Ultima’s owl deploys a power beyond human understanding and becomes the old woman’s magical helper in her fight against evil” (Swift and Urgo, 131). The other symbol is the golden carp, which signifies faith and ‘is the core of all religions.’ Tony does not like the idea of accepting the carp in his beliefs as he feels that he is betraying his God but later realizes that he could actually find answers through this magical fish. The above instances of Antonio’s interaction with his inner self as well as the wise healer, Ultima, show how he was exposed to other forms of God around him besides Christianity and thus came out of his inner conflicts, reconciling the conflicting forces within himself. He therefore grew into a mature person from the innocent boy who interpreted the objects and incidents around himself in his own terms. Works Cited 1. Anaya, Rudolf A. Bless me Ultima: a novel, California: University of California, 1972 2. Britee, Fiona Margaret, A study of selected works by Mexican-American and French-Canadian writers with a view to determining similarities and differences in the experiences of these two minority cultures, Texas: Texas A&I University, 1989 3. Calderon, Hector, Narratives of Greater Mexico: essays on Chicano literary history, genre, and borders, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2004, http://books.google.com/books?id=QrC2DhzoMi0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Narratives+of+Greater+Mexico:+essays+on+Chicano+literary+history,+genre,+and+borders&ei=CGAAS5gygcKVBILCtIMP#v=onepage&q=&f=false 4. Foerstel, Herbet, Banned in the U.S.A.: a reference guide to book censorship in schools and public libraries, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, http://books.google.com/books?id=4e0OfSKBp8oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Banned+in+the+U.S.A.:+a+reference+guide+to+book+censorship+in+schools+and+public+libraries&ei=HGAAS93nHJOkkASs-v39Dg#v=onepage&q=&f=false 5. Hume, Kathryn, American dream, American nightmare: fiction since 1960, University of Illinois Press, 2002, http://books.google.com/books?id=Eu8CxAKylsAC&pg=PP1&dq=American+dream,+American+nightmare:+fiction+since+1960&ei=Q2AAS8bYB5X6lQTPv4XXDg#v=onepage&q=&f=false 6. Swift, John N. and Urgo, Joseph, Willa Cather and the American Southwest, NE: U of Nebraska Press, 2004, http://books.google.com/books?id=pdiNpuURfssC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Willa+Cather+and+the+American+Southwest&ei=XmAAS7zrHZCUkATf-rCpDw#v=onepage&q=&f=false Read More