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Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. A Book Review Bless Me Ultima is a great book that will not leave anybody indifferent. Anaya fills the novel with many themes and subjects. However, the book mostly concentrates on a difficult way of self-search, of becoming an individual. It is illustrated through a little boys experience how religious, cultural and mental settings of a person affect who he becomes in this life. Even though the book ends when Antonio is still only 8 years old, the reader somehow feels safe for his future.
The title of the book offers a good clue as to its theme. It suggests that the blessing part of Bless Me, Ultima is a direction, a destiny, a unique and personal philosophy for which Antonio is searching, and which he hopes Ultima will help him find. As it turns out, Ultima does not reveal the truth to Antonio in the sudden, direct act of a prayer or blessing; instead, she exposes him to various aspects of nature and leaves him with a deeper understanding of the world. In other words, the title suggests a theme that ones direction in life will not just come easily - this blessing will only come to those who persist, strive, and wait for the truth. The legitimacy of the natural view of reality is another theme of the novel. Evil plays a strong and threatening role in the lives of the characters; life is a sort of cosmic drama, played out through individuals but with supernatural forces at work on the side.
It is this perspective that Anaya presents as the best outlook on the world: that people are the puppets, and great forces sometimes tangle with their strings. It is indeed this perspective that slowly draws Antonio away from the Christian religion, and towards a more incorporating (and more complex) view of the world. Bless Me, Ultima is filled with Antonio's dreams. Many of the boys fears and perceptions about religion and his family are vividly portrayed through his dreams. The author actually lets the reader inside Antonio's mind in this way. On of the most important dreams portrayed in the novel is the one on page 112.
It is about Antonio's world: about the divided world of his mother and father, and Catholicism and the religion of the Golden Carp. The water is divided between the raging sea of the Golden Carp and Antonio's father, and the cool, calm waters of his mother and the church. These two sides converge and a huge storm is about to descend when Ultima calls cease! Ultima explains that the sea could not survive without the replenishing waters of the moon, and that the oceans are drawn into the sky to become the waters of the moon.
Antonio now understands that what he sees is the cycle of life, that everything is bound together. He now views everything as one entity, rather than as separate parts. Ultima can almost be considered a theme in herself in Bless Me, Ultima, as her outlook is so essential to the novels meaning. She represents a fusion of body, mind, and spirit that walks a fine line between the human and non-human worlds. She doesnt analyze, control, or change natural reality as a scientist might wish to do, but she can undergo maneuvers (however strange they may be) to participate fully in the drama - she can make her body an instrument of the higher forces at work. There is always something unexplained about Ultima; the fact that she comes and goes with a certain air of mystery presents the resolution that one will never know the full extent of the mystery of life.
It is the combination of these themes that distinguishes Bless Me, Ultima as a great inquiry into human spirituality and the mans place in the universe. However, Bless Me, Ultima is so popular with the readers not only because it addresses numerous spiritual issues, but also for its unique, beautiful prose and tone. Rudolfo Anaya has done a tremendous job of incorporating his talent as a writer, communicating the Chicano culture to the people who know nothing about it and raising philosophical issues in the minds of his readers, into a one single book.
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