“In the dark mist of my dreams I saw my brothers. The three dark figures silently beckoned me to follow them. They led me over the goat path, across the bridge, to the house of the sinful women. We walked across the well-worn path in silence. The door to Rosie’s house opened and…” (Anaya 70) This excerpt from the novel Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya, is one of the numerous dreams the protagonist Antonio Márez experiences. The story is set during World War II in Guadalupe, Mexico, a town rich with Mexican culture and overflowing with legends. Antonio attempts to discover his religion and family roots as he struggles to cope with school. When he witnesses four tragic deaths, Anaya vividly depicts the shattering of his innocence. Even with worry enveloping him, six-year-old Antonio manages to sleep with the calming hoots of Ultima’s owl. And he has magical dreams. Antonio’s dreams add to his characterization by providing readers with an insight into his mind, explaining his internal disharmony, and foreshadowing future events. Antonio’s dream of Rosie’s house, a local brothel, reveals his conflicting thoughts in becoming a priest and forebodes the sinful ways of his brothers. From the beginning of the novel, there has always been a certain assumption that Antonio will become a priest and follow in the footsteps of his mother’s family. His mother, who is a continual source of guidance and support, relentlessly reminds him that his future lies in priesthood. “You will be like my brothers. You will be a Luna, Antonio. You will be a man of the people, and perhaps a priest” (9). Furthermore, when the family goes to visit El Puerto, the town of his mother’s relatives, Antonio is reminded again of this family duty. Uncle Juan comments... ... middle of paper ... ...erything I believed in was destroyed. [I cried], ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!’” (244) Thus, readers understand that Ultima’s death has the greatest impact on Antonio as she guided him through the pitfalls of his youth. Her death truly brings an end to the chapter of his childhood. As an avenue to predict the future and gain insight into his mind, Antonio’s dreams provide more depth to his character. His dreams reveal his dilemma with priesthood, the sinful ways of his brothers, his struggles in coping with death. His dreams reveal the real Antonio, usually hidden behind the expectations of tomorrow. As Paracelsus wisely puts it, “That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it...We do not know it because we…are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.”
Doña Guadalupe is a woman of great strength and power, power and strength which she draws from her devout faith and her deep and loving compassion for her family, and power and strength which is passed down to her children. “‘Well, then, come in,’ she said, deciding that she could be handle this innocent-girl-stealing coyote inside. On going into the long tent, Salvador felt like he’d entered the web of a spider, the old woman was eyeing him so deliberately” (360). Doña Guadalupe is a very protective woman, which is extremely speculative when it comes to her children, this is especially true when it comes to boys, because she has not gone this far only for all of her hard work to be ruined by a no good boy. This shows how protective she is, she loves her family, and especially her kids so much that they themselves must pass her test before being able to pass on to her children. “The newborns were moving, squirming, reaching out for life. It was truly a sign from God” (58). Doña Guadalupe is also a very devout and faithful person. She sees God in everything and in everyone and by that fact, what she sees and who she sees is true, and she tries to be a model of clairvoyance for the family. “Doña Guadalupe put the baby’s little feet in a bowel of warm water, and the child clinging to his mother. He never cried, listening to her heartbeat, the same music that he’d heard from inside the womb” (57). Finally, Doña Guadalupe is very passionate which allows for a great model upon which her children follow. This further shows how she is clearly th...
Throughout the novel Bless Me,Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Antonio’s Parents had an adamant ideal of how they wanted their children to live their lives. Maria, his mother, wanted her children to follow the way of her Luna family. Gabriel, his father, wanted his children to travel to California with him. Maria wanted Antonio to become a priest. “Her own dream was that I should grow up and become a priest” (Anaya 5). His father had a dream to move to California. “My father’s dream was to gather his sons around him and move westward to the land of the the setting sun, to the vineyards of California”(Anaya 14). His parents had two different ideas on what they wanted their children to do which stirred up the pot in the house because of it. As a young child growing up he was very conflicted on how he wanted to live his life especially because he didn't want to disappoint his parents. This made a confliction within Antonio’s Identity. Another dream of his mother is that Antonio gets
In the novel, Bless Me, Ultima, Antonio learns about his relationship with his universe. Through the teachings of Ultima, he learns to see with his heart and to appreciate all the magic that nature beholds. The river of life is never ending like the river that binds the llano to Guadalupe. All that Antonio has experienced is symbolized in the river and the life that surrounds it. Ultimately, it is his teacher and friend, Ultima, which teaches Antonio that life is a cycle and that understanding oneself brings peace and harmony. The river also serves to bind the past, present, and future. Antonio learns that his future is tied to his past and that his destiny will be guided by an understanding of his heritage and “the magical strength that resides in the human heart”.
He is often unsure and very confused and often needs the help of others such as Ultima, or the other family members to clear everything up for him so that he may get closer to understanding life. Antonio’s father although he may not be such a guy to talk he does give insightful advice.”Understanding comes with life” (248). His father tell him that as he gets older he will not longer struggle in finding himself and that it will get more and more easier . Antonio also questions things and never finds answers, and even when he does get answers they never really help him figure out whom he really is just what others want him to be.” The answers he get are only a part of the whole according to Ultima.” You have only been seeing parts… into the great circle that binds us all”(121). Antonio’s undeceive, unsure, characteristics cause him to get in the way of himself and not looking beyond what is already shown to him. His own personality however can lead him to great
Ultima has proven to Antonio many times that when all else fails or doesn't prove effective, her constant presence and power is all that he needs to get through anything. Whether it be through the physical force of her healing powers, her amazing ability to triumph when all else seems lost, or her ability of effect all parts of one's life positively, she is more than just a regular healer. She is the rock to everyones life, the constant, the one person who never lets one down ever, no matter what.
Throughout the novel Antonio struggles with his identity, as a result his beliefs are put at test by his heritage. In the beginning of the novel the roots of Antonio’s struggles is established through one of his dreams. In his dream, a flashback to the day of his birth, he views the differences between the families of his parents. In his father’s side the Marez who are descendants of the sea, they are the restless vaqueros who roam the llanos to seek for adventure. On the contrary, the Lunas, his mother’s side, are the people of the moon that are religious farmers that whose destiny is determined to work for the land. The control of newborn Antonio’s future is fought by each side of his families. His mother's dream is for him to become a Roman Catholic priest and his father'...
Anaya quickly changes the plotline from a light, amusing play that made the reader forget about the darkness enclosing in, to having “the skylight of the auditorium [grow] dark with snow,” creating a sense of entrapment leaving the reader lingering in the past while being forced to continue forward. The auditorium provided shelter for the darkness of the outside world while it was undergoing a storm, or a battle. Battles are usually part of greater scale warfare, normally chaotic and not very well contained, resulting in a lot of casualties. Tenorio has declared war on Ultima and will not rest until she is dead. Sometimes, people have no choice but to participate in the war; whether they are so passionate about the topic being disputed over that they cannot ignore what is happening and join, like Antonio and his direct relatives that are determined to protect Ultima, or they get drafted. If they get drafted, people can occasionally get out of it by proving that their religion conflicts with the actions one would do in battle. There is also a lot of controversy on the topic of morals and whether it should be morally correct to end someone else’s
In order to find a copy of the newspaper to use as a clue in his investigation, Professor Laurana goes to visit the rector at Santa Anna. Towards the end of their conversation, Laurana and the rector speak about the rector’s decision to become a priest...
He has an especially hard time with the death of Narciso, as his “rage and protest filled [him]. [He] wanted to cry out into the storm that it was not fair that Narciso die for doing good” (Anaya 178). The unjust deaths push Antonio to search even harder for the answers for his philosophical questions, now that people are in danger. Antonio’s Road of Trials is heroic because it demonstrates how pain and loss threaten to overtake him, but he bravely refuses to back down. Although he is always trying to understand new beliefs, the Goddess, the Virgin Mary, remains in the most special part of Antonio’s heart. She represents Meeting the Goddess, as Antonio is now seeing her through mature eyes: “I fastened my eyes on the statue of the Virgin until I thought that I was looking at a real person, the mother of God, the last relief of all sinners” (Anaya 47). As he begins to discover the meaning in both his old and new beliefs, he begins to accept his spiritual questions. By understanding the fact that they cannot always be simply answered, he enters his Apotheosis and ascends as he achieves wisdom and
In his dream after the death of Lupito, he is met by his three brothers. Tony tells his brothers that they have to be with their father, because he is planning on moving westward. Tony’s brothers say that he is to be a farmer-priest, because he is a Luna, so he cannot go with their father. Tony says that he must bless the river where his father will be moving to, and when he says that, he hears Lupito’s soul crying for help. Then, the novel states, “I swung the dark robe of the priest over my shoulders then lifted my hands in the air. The mist swirled around me and sparks flew when I spoke. It is the presence of the river!” (28). One of the possible fates for Tony is to become a priest, and he is leaning towards God for help in this lifelike situation. Though the presence of the river is guiding him, if he takes the position of a priest, he is choosing God over other things, such as the golden carp. Tony also does this in another dream. In this dream, Tony’s brothers try to convince him to enter Rosie’s house, which is a sinful place. As his brothers try to persuade him to enter, Tony says, “No!... I cannot enter, I cannot think those thoughts. I am to be a priest” (73). Even after his objections, Tony’s brothers still try to get him to enter, saying that he is a Márez and that he will eventually enter, so why not do it now. In this case,
In essence, Antonio shows that he is unsure if he truly believes in his religion because of his acceptance of other beliefs, the new ideas that he learns, and the deaths of Narciso and Lupito. Antonio’s experiences lead him to believe that he is in charge of his destiny and he has the ability to choose what he wants, not what his parents want. In the end, Antonio determines his religious values based on what he believes in, so he tells himself to “[t]ake the Ilano and the river valley, the moon and the sea, God and the golden carp and make something new” (247). Antonio’s encounters with religion represent those who follow their religion but are not content with it. All in all, the story suggests that sometimes people want to learn other ideas to discover what fits them best.
Many of Antonio’s dreams foretell future incidents. In the first dream, the night before the arrival of Ultima, Antonio is born and both sides of his family gather together for the arrival of the baby boy. The two families express their hopes and desires for the newborn’s future, but the calm Lunas and the savage Márez fight over the destiny of Antonio. As “curses and threats filled the air, pistols were drawn, and the opposing sides made ready for battle” (Anaya 6), Ultima steps into his dream, her voice full of authority. “Cease she cried…only I will know his destiny” (6). Everyone falls silent when Ultima speaks. Antonio didn’t meet Ultima but this dream foreshadows that Ultima is a powerful and a well respected figure. The fight not only shows the difference between the two families but also hints that there may be problems between them in the future. Right before Antonio’s brothers come back from the war, he has dream about his brothers. They tell Antonio to “stay and sleep while we cross the River of the Carp to build our father’s castle in the hills” (26). The brothers are telling him to stay behind and let them build their father’s castle, which refers to their father’s longing to be restless and build a family else where. This gives a hint that his ...
Gabriel García Márquez, 1982 Nobel Laureate, is well known for using el realismo magical, magical realism, in his novels and short stories. In García Márquez’s cuento “Un Señor Muy Viejo con Alas Enormes,” García Márquez tactfully conflates fairytale and folklore with el realismo magical. García Márquez couples his mastery of magical realism with satire to construct a comprehensive narrative that unites the supernatural with the mundane. García Márquez’s not only criticizes the Catholic Church and the fickleness of human nature, but he also subliminally relates his themes—suffering is impartial, religion is faulty by practice, and filial piety—through the third-person omniscient narration of “Un Señor Muy Viejo con Alas Enormes.” In addition to García Márquez’s narrative style, the author employs the use of literary devices such as irony, anthropomorphism, and a melancholic tone to condense his narrative into a common plane. García Márquez’s narrative style and techniques combine to create a linear plot that connects holy with homely.
Once these analogies are established, they lead us to further contemplate our sense of perception in everyday life: our minds are not screens loyally reflecting the outside world but active interpreters that are constantly ordering and reshaping sensory impressions according to our own mental scheme of things, and there is a subjective projection of imagination in all that we see or feel—we can never see things “as they really are” but only things “as we see them to be”, and sometimes the disparity between these too can be so large that after some bitter disillusionment, we can only think of the past derision as “a dream and fruitless vision” (3. 2. 371). The line that separates dreaming from waking life is thus blurred: like characters in the play, we cannot tell clearly where conscious life ends and dream begins. As the embodiment of imagination, irrationality and unconsciousness, the dream also challenges the boundaries of human reason and the idea of a stable, solid and unifying selfhood.
Oprah Winfrey once said, “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” But, what actually is a dream and what do dreams really have to do with one’s everyday life? In essence, a dream is a series of mental images and emotions occurring during slumber. Dreams can also deal with one’s personal aspirations, goals, ambitions, and even one’s emotions, such as love and hardship. However, dreams can also give rise to uneasy and terrible emotions; these dreams are essentially known as nightmares. In today’s society, the concept of dreaming and dreams, in general, has been featured in a variety of different mediums, such as literature, film and even music. While the mediums of film and music are both prime examples of this concept, the medium of literature, on the other hand, contains a much more diverse set of examples pertaining to dreams and dreaming. One key example is William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While the portrayal of dreams, in general, plays a prominent role in Shakespeare’s play, the exploration of many aspects of nature, allows readers to believe that dreams are merely connected to somewhat unconventional occurrences.