Recently, there has been a constant barrage of news regarding the war against ISIS by the United States of America. No matter what news source is on the air, one of the stories is practically guaranteed to bring up ISIS. The main cause between the two groups fighting, and the consequential reporting afterwards, is culture. This is not a one time instance of this being the cause for war. Cultural differences leading to conflict has been a staple of human history ever since the early years of civilization. No matter how far back you go, wars fought will always be because of cultural differences. Different cultures will always lead conflict.
One of the primary conflicts in the novel, Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, is the struggle Antonio,
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Both sides of Antonio’s family have completely different beliefs, which includes religion. The Luna family is very religious which is why they want Antonio to be a priest, while the Marez family does not care about religion and would rather explore the world. These differences in fundamental values cause Antonio to have a dilemma of what path he should follow. Evidence of the two families difference in religion is shown in the quote, ”...we who were baptized in the water of the moon which was made holy by our Holy Mother the Church are saved. Lies! My father shouted, Antonio was not baptized in the holy water of the moon, but in the salt water of the sea!” (120) The quote is an argument between Antonio’s father and mother, which takes place in his dream. In the dream, Antonio’s father calls out his mother’s claim that he was baptized by God and should serve him. He insists that he was “baptized” by the sea, meaning that he wants him to explore the land like his forefathers the …show more content…
With the introduction of Ultima into his life, Antonio starts to question the existence of a god. He sees the curandera’s magic and mysterious healing methods and immediately becomes enthralled by her. He becomes her apprentice in an effort to learn her ways. This causes him to drift away from his belief of God, since Ultima’s magic causes him to think that there is nothing stronger than it. Upon witnessing the Golden Carp, a reference to a Pagan deity, Antonio states, “...the power of God failed where Ultima’s worked…” (114) Not only does him witnessing it causes him to believe in the existence of more than one god, but it also makes him believe that Ultima’s magic is superior to the power of God. Antonio has been exposed to so much of Ultima’s ways after becoming her apprentice that he now argues with himself over the existence of God, and if he is actually as powerful as believed. This goes against his existing culture, which is very
Townsend organizes her narration of these events around the life and role of Malintzin. She takes the attention off of Cortes because she wants...
Antonio, the young boy, wants answers to the questions that have been nagging at him since he was introduced to religious ideology. He does not understand why Ultima, a close elderly friend and a healer, can save his dying uncle from the curses of evil while the priest from El Puerto with his holy water and the power of God can not lift the curse from him. He wonders whether God really exists or if the “Cico's” story of the golden carp is true. Bless Me, Ultima, is a compelling story that deals with Antonio's family, beliefs, and dreams.
“Look! He pointed to the church where the priest desecrated the altar by pouring the blood of dead pigeons into the holy chalice…When the golden carp appeared Cico struck with his spear and the water ran blood red. What is left? I asked in horror… The magic of Ultima! I insisted. Look! He pointed to the hills where Tenorio captured the night-spirit of Ultima and murdered it, and Ultima died in agony”(244).The passage is one of Tony’s dreams, where all the things he believed in were crushed. This loss makes him feel lost, not knowing what to believe in anymore. Tony also shares his feelings with the reader through the questions he asks Florence in his
Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima is a magical-realism novel about Antonio, a young boy at the mere age of six turning seven, realizing the many cruelties the world has to offer. As he matures, Antonio is conflicted while trying to choose between the career expectations from his two divergent families and attempting to figure out a true religion. Anaya depicts hidden messages to help the reader comprehend a perceptive insight of Antonio’s inner schism through symbolism.
On two separate occasions, the magic of Ultima prevailed where God’s power failed. Once when Antonio’s Uncle Lucas was under the curse of the Trementina sisters’ and a second time when brujas from a long time ago put a curse on a bulto, a ghost, and forces it to haunt the Tellez house. This further causes Antonio to question the Christian God. “Why can’t the power of God work against the evils that beset the family of Tellez…” (226).
In the novel, Bless Me Ultima, written by Rudolfo Anaya, two different religions are introduced. The religion of Catholicism is the religion originally practiced by the novel’s main character, Antonio. Throughout the novel, the religion of the Golden Carp is introduced and causes a crisis of faith for Antonio. Antonio must learn to choose between the conventional values of the Church and the modern beliefs of the Golden Carp by comparing and contrasting the two religions.
...elf and where he fit into this life that he had. She made him believe that many things were sins against God, and he would be punished if he so much as thought about them, but she never told him why they were sins and why people continued to do them; so he went on a quest for knowledge to find out what it was his mother along with other people were trying to keep him away from. Maria loved her family, and made sure that she provided for them, but when it came to religion she could only teach them what she had been taught all her life, which provided a biased opinion, in that she believed the the Catholic religion was what was right, and anything else would be a sin against God. She tried to protect Antonio, but everyone knows there is no protect from life, it comes and engulfs us into this whirlpool of situations and tragedies, and we are merely pawns in its game.
Anaya uses extremely vivid imagery to show us that Antonio’s way of dealing with his conflicts is through his dreams were he settles the conflict between the Catholic God and the Golden Crap. “I held my bloodied hands out to touch [my brother’s foreheads],'; Antonio tries to save his brothers from hell because they had sinned at Rosies the “house of sinful women.'; With the words “Bloodied Hands,'; Anaya shows that Antonio is trying to sort out the conflict of Narciso’s death, while Narciso was trying to warn Ultima about Tenorio.
He questions whether he belongs to his mother’s family, the Lunas, who live as farmers, or his father’s family, the Márezes, who freely wander the land. His care for his family demonstrates his maturity at attempting to always do the best he can for everyone. Although his parents each want him to follow their families’ paths, they remain absent from Antonio’s true journey of understanding his own thoughts and beliefs, leaving him “frightened to be alone” (Anaya 7); the lack of parental support through his personal conflict leads him to have trouble knowing how to address his confusion, but it also causes Antonio to develop an independence that most people do not possess. He sees hope for finding answers from the moment he meets Ultima when he “knew she held the secret of [his] destiny” (Anaya 13). She chooses him and sends him to save as she helps lead him on his path. Through assisting her, he gains new experiences that contradict his traditional Christian teachings, which encourage him to be open-minded and bold as he challenges everything he believes. The Belly of the Whale demonstrates Antonio’s heroism by highlighting his courage to discover answers to his questions, even after he finds “only silence” (Anaya 233) at his first communion, as he realizes that he cannot find the peace in God that he
In Rodolfo Anaya's novel, Bless Me, Ultima the author uses different settings in order to develop Antonio's sense of good and evil.
Bless Me, Ultima uses the struggles Antonio must face and the deaths he encounters to show that innocence is destroyed as one grows older, but is replaced with experience that brings maturity and wisdom. The loss of Antonio’s innocence has been shown through the deaths of Lupito, Narciso, Florence, and most importantly, Ultima. As Antonio has matured, he has discovered new understanding and knowledge that will guide him through the rest of his life. Antonio has discovered that he can make his own decisions, and he is no longer a child. Therefore, one must be aware that losing one’s innocence is an important part of life. When one’s innocence is lost, it triggers newfound maturity. It is essential to understand that one doesn’t need a trial to lose their innocence, but with this loss comes responsibility, wisdom, and understanding.
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya is a coming of age story about a young boy named Antonio Marez. The novel takes place in New Mexico where Antonio tries to fulfill his parent’s expectations while struggling with religion. Through Antonio, Anaya defies the some of the principles in religion and expresses her interpretation on the system of beliefs. Antonio’s religious confusion suggests that man should be able to choose his own religion and destiny. In the Bless me, Ultima, Antonio experiences conflict in his religious beliefs because of the deaths he witnesses, the new ideas that he learns, and his open-minded mentality.
In the novel, Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, a boy goes through many more experiences than any child in the hot summer days in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He witnesses the deaths of his close friends and family. This boy expresses his emotions and grief through his dreams, only to wake up with fear and confusion in his mind. Antonio’s life is filled with dreams that foreshadow future incidents, as well as influences Antonio’s beliefs of religion and ideas of innocence.
[Note: In this written work Antonio thinks of himself as an innocent person and believes that the world is doing wrong to him .He also believes that his rights have been snatched from him and no one in this world is more miserable and sympathy deserving than him.]
Most importantly it is cited that the most severe and dangerous conflicts will arise between none other than people with different cultural entities, specifically those along the fault lines between civilizations. Reason for this being that they are all in search of the identities and as Huntington has already said that there is no way you can love what you are if you do not hate what you are not , hence the arousal of the conflicts. In their search of identities they hate what they are not so that they can have a deeper love for what they are.