Destiny and Uncertainty in Bless Me, Ultima

Bless Me, Ultima
Rudolfo Anaya
Topic 1
Rahasah Laborde
Mr. Amoroso
Period 3
1 Laborde
Imagine knowing that your destiny was chosen for you while you long before you would be able to choose it for yourself. Not only that, and to be so young and confined by feelings of uncertainty, what would you give for a moment of clarity? In Rudolfo Anaya’s, Bless Me,
Ultima , Antonio Marez is the is the one who has to constantly search for understanding. Many of the questioning seems so begin when a peculiar character named Ultima is invited to live with the Marez family because of her fast approaching death. She is the catalyst that urges Antonio to look for answers in unlikely places and see the world not only for what appears to be. Even though Antonio’s

Another character in Bless Me, Ultima that is quite influential on Antonio’s concept of
God is Florence. Florence is a friend who is constantly questioning the priest and God. He does this because he does not want to believe in a God that would let him suffer the way he has (by taking his parents and letting his sisters work as hookers). So he chooses to see the world for only what you can see instead of having such an indifferent god be ‘responsible’ for all the tragic events in his life. And Antonio acknowledge this, that he asks the same questions and looks to
God for the answer but is left clueless. Florence means a lot to Antonio because he has also seen how harsh life is and how God didn’t seem to intervene, watching two deaths prior and the effect evil witchcraft on his family and that of a friend. That is why when Florence drowns in the river and Antonio sees comes to the edge of losing his faith. This is why in his dreams he ask “is there no God in Heaven”(243) and “my god, why have you forsaken me,”(244) because he views
Florence as pure and good but his life was still not spared. At this point Antonio’s view