Bless Me Ultima Research Paper

Water and Fire

“The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood” (Anaya 1). The transition from childhood to adolescence is dotted with self discovery, and the experiences that the earth provides shape individuals in this search. In Rudolfo Anaya’s novel “Bless Me, Ultima,” the protagonist Antonio is faced with the challenge of growing up, and through his key experiences, he finds out a lot about himself. Author Rudolfo Anaya uses dueling allusions from Catholicism and traditional Chicano culture to demonstrate how his novel “Bless Me, Ultima” is an example of a religious bildungsroman.

Over the course of the novel, Anaya places important people, symbols, and moments that define Antonio’s personal religion and show how the novel represents his spiritual growth. At the beginning of Antonio’s life, Ultima has him “choose” the objects that will define his future and he chooses “the pen and paper” (Anaya 54). Since the old Luna priest was a scholar, this key moment represents the beginning of Antonio’s spiritual journey because it shows his initial position: aspiring priest. Antonio assumes the mindset that his family puts on him and believes that he will “hear the confessions” of the people in his town (Anaya 9). These

events represent the first stage of Antonio’s religious development because they show that his starting point is largely based upon his mother’s family and wishes.
As Antonio ages, though, he begins exposure to new ideas that shape his viewpoint on his native religion and cause him to question his future. For example, when Ultima moves in with his family, Antonio is exposed to “the labyrinth of a time and history that [he] did not know” (Anaya 40). When narrator Antonio looks back on his spiritual journey, he knows that Ultima’s inclusion in his life was “both the beginning of time and understanding” for the rest of his life (Holton 26). By looking solely at Antonio’s religious odyssey, the integration of Ultima’s curandera beliefs and practices is the tipping point to his personal exploration. When Ultima places her hand on Antonio’s head, he feels a whirlwind and “its evil was left imprinted on [his] soul” (Anaya 55). This event is a key component to his development because it introduces the religious struggle between good and evil, and it makes Antonion question whether the powers of each religion are the same. Prior to this event, Antonio believed wholeheartedly in his Catholic faith, but Ultima’s tipping point shows a transition to a new chapter of his spiritual journey.
The next key step in Antonio’s religious endeavour is marked by the introduction of the golden carp. In the Aztec creation story, the “Fourth Sun” represents the time in which a great flood came, and all the people turned into fish (Maestri). Similarly, in “Bless Me, Ultima,” Samuel tells of how one god turned the people into carp fish to forever survive in the stream (Anaya 80). In order to protect those new carps, the god asked to be turned into a golden carp (Anaya 81). This new knowledge is vital to Antonio’s spiritual formation because it introduces a religion that is foreign to him. Prior to the carp and Ultima, Antonio had only been exposed to Catholicism, but these encounters open his eyes to many other possibilities and bring him in touch with his Aztec roots. His original perception of Catholicism is that God is unforgiving and sinners must confess, but the golden carp “was willing to sacrifice himself to save erring mankind” (Holton 36). Antonio sees the carp as a better god than the one he has at the moment. In addition to this discovery of sacrifice, when Antonio finally sees the carp, “the beauty had burdened [him] with responsibility” (Anaya 119). While throughout the book, Antonio looks to gain knowledge when he goes to his first confession, in reality, he is exposed to this when the golden carp makes him acknowledge responsibility. The carp marks Antonio’s religious transition because now he knows that there are many possibilities to choose from.
Now that Antonio is exposed to two different “religions,” he starts into a stage of confusion and questioning. Naturally, he leans towards a comparison between the two: God’s “burning pit of hell” and the “drowning” that the golden carp had brought (Anaya 137). Both of these religions cause Antonio to struggle with his spiritual identity and wonder “why couldn’t there be a god who would never punish his people” (Anaya 137). Antonio’s questioning of both religions shows how he is developing himself and moving along his religious journey. This uncertainty also pushes Antonio to to think about the Virgin and wonder if she could be a god that is better. Now that Antonio has been exposed to new experiences, he has deepened his questioning of his own religion and looked to new sources.
A large contributor to Antonio’s sense of personal religion is innocence and forgiveness. In the same way that Ultima and the golden carp influence how he views these concepts, so does the day that he witnesses Rosie’s house and the death of Narciso. After witnessing these grave events, Antonio feels ashamed and “somehow lost [his] innocence and let sin enter [his] soul” (Anaya 167). The evil that he witnesses causes him to feel very distant from the God that he once held so dear and leads him to spiritual questions like whether his first communion will actually give him “the knowledge of God” (Anaya 179). He wonders whether he was wrong all along. Through the exposure of “evil” in this section of the book, Antonio furthers his religious identity and begins to form his own personal perceptions.
The next major event that shaped Antonio’s spiritual journey was his first communion because he realizes the faults in his Catholic religion.

As he takes communion, he laments over not being able to just “sit and discover Him” like he had done in the presence of the golden carp (Anaya 221). All of the questions that he hoped would be answered by communion are left unheard and only result in silence. “The God [he] so eagerly sought was not there, and the understanding [he] thought to gain was not there” (Anaya 222). From this experience, Antonio has a spiritual change of heart and begins to accept that his “god” can be the Catholic as well as the god that he found in the golden

carp.
The cumulative events in Antonio’s life compel him to assume a position of religious balance. After interacting with the many non-secular gods in his life through Ultima and the golden carp, he agrees with Cico’s viewpoint of “many gods” (Anaya 237).