'Bless me ultima research paper Essay\r'

'Antonio does non give up his dream of being a priest, even though is severely disappointed by the Catholic religion. He be stick withs a unalike salmagundi of spiritual leader, one his people atomic number 18 non quite ready to accept. In a dream, Antonio cries surface to Jesus as he suffers on the sucker: â€Å"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me! ” (Anaya, 233). He is unable to amply believe in either Catholicism or curanderismo and consequently decides to combine the two different perspectives to re prompt his own answers. Antonio ultimately becomes â€Å"a man of erudition” as Ultima had predicted.\r\nHe acquires knowledge and understanding on the way to maturity. Antonio cherishs that deportment is naturally ever changing. He accepts his parents’ flaws as well as his br differents’ sins. He realizes the effect of prejudice and accepts that others, too, are non firm in their beliefs, while recognizing his own sins. The duality of W estern and Chicano cultures in his heritage is another conflict Antonio must resolve. The informant represents three different acculturations: assimilation, integration and rejection (Black, 146).\r\n accord to Black, Antonio’s brothers â€Å"are assimilated into the Anglo world in ways that allow in their desire to leave la familia and move into the dominant cultural sphere”; because they reject their heritage, they unload their culture (149). Antonio does a better job of acquire his ethnic identity with Angle culture through and through adaptation: â€Å"…the innocence which our isolation sheltered could not last forever, and the affairs of the town began to reach across our bridge and enter my life” (Anaya, 14). Antonio begins his assimilation in school.\r\nHe retains his heritage by speaking Spanish and eating his traditional Chicano lunch â€Å"of hot beans and both(prenominal) good, green chile wrapped in tortillas” (Anaya, 54). Although , as he says, â€Å"the other children saw my lunch [and] they laughed and pointed once more”, the experience reminded him of the existence of prejudice (Anaya, 54). It makes him feel different until he final examly finds friends who share his Chicano roots and he is able to flood out his loneliness. This also helps him to realize that he can live in both worlds.\r\nAntonio strives to get wind English and stay in school, in educate contrast to the rest of his family. At home, he is ameliorate about Chicano culture through Ultima’s teachings. She urges him to appreciate the beauty of the land and embrace the ancient intelligence of curanderas. His family are the instructors in such things as individual(prenominal) integrity and the Chicano way of life. Belief in romance as opposed to the man race presented by chronicle also create a conflict in Antonio. According to Lamadrid, there is an important relation surrounded by myth and the socio-cultural identity o f traditional Chicanos (497).\r\nHe uses examples such as that of la llorona (wailing woman) to define myth as the â€Å"collective interpretation and mediation of the contradictions in the historic and ecological experience of a people” (Lamadrid, 496). This arrogance becomes clear in examining Antonio’s representation of hellish and native power; he believes La llorona is luring him, merely he resists and escapes death. Ultimately, Antonio learns to accept that life is the greater reality and understands â€Å"the tragic consequences of life can be overcome by the magical strength that resides in the human heart” (Anaya, 237).\r\nHe remembers Ultima’s teachings, which help him to â€Å" overhear life’s experiences and build strength from them and not weakness” (Anaya, 248). As de Mancelos states, Antonio must â€Å"understand the other side of the myth, the legends, the indigenous beliefs and the power of the earth” as well as mo re traditional apparitional beliefs (5). An apocalyptic event †the development of the first nuclear turkey for use in World contend II combat †juxtaposes with Antonio’s increa prate awareness. According to Lamadrid, â€Å"the awareness of the characters of the apocalyptic threat of the atomic bomb…demonstrates a real and historical dimension of divine revelation” (500).\r\nUpon its arrival, the village women dress in mourning clothes, blaspheme that the bomb resembles â€Å"a ball of white awake beyond the imagination, beyond hell” and lay the cursed on ignorant Anglos: â€Å"Man was not do to know so much…they compete with God, they remove the seasons, they seek to know more than God Himself. In the end, that knowledge they seek go out destroy us all” (Anaya, 183). The village witnesses the loss of a man-sized number of husbands and sons during the war while the state hosts the in truth first test of the atomic bomb.\r\nEv en Antonio is unnatural as his brothers return from service traumatized. According to the villagers, these are all signs of an apocalypse requiring â€Å"the need for a tax write-off…in this new time of crisis” (Lamadrid, 500). Antonio is fortunate copious to create his own synthesis by proceed his ties to the desert and La Virgen de Guadalupe, la llorona and the brotherhood of the chromatic carp. His cultural conflicts are settled because of his synchronicity with Ultima’s belief that the purpose of his life is to do good. Her final blessing, â€Å"Always have the strength to live.\r\nLove life, and if discouragement enters your heart, look for me in the evenings when the wind is gentle and the owls sing in the hills” are the words he will live by(Anaya, 247). Antonio’s maturity comes as the resolvent of completing a journey which alternately takes him out from, and then back to, his heritage. The conflicts of warring factions in his life c ause him to question the values and beliefs of each and come up with his own explanation. Rather than refusing his heritage, Antonio fuses the differences and acquires a brilliance of experience and strength of character.\r\nAlong with this new understating, Antonio looks in front to a future based on the historical but open to new possibilities †a come along outlook indeed.\r\nWorks Cited Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me Ultima. new(a) York: Warner Books, 1999. Black, Debra B. â€Å" times of Conflict: Bless Me, Ultima as a young of Acculturation”. Bilingual Review, Vol. 25 (2), 2000, pp. 146-159. de Mancelos, Joao. â€Å"Witchcraft, Initiation, and Cultural indistinguishability in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima”. Revista de Letras, serie II, #3, 2004. 129-134. Lamadrid, Enrique R.\r\nâ€Å"Myth as the Cognitive Process of Popular Culture in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima”: The Dialectics of Knowledge. Hispania, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Sep. 1985), pp. 496-501. Stone, Dan. â€Å"An interrogate with Rudolfo Anaya”. National Endowment for the Arts: The Big Read. January 4, 2007. Retrieved October 15, 2008 from the NEA website: http://www. neabigread. org/books/blessmeultima/anaya04_about. php. University of New Mexico. â€Å"Writing the Southwest: Rudolfo Anaya”. Retrieved October 15, 2008 from the UNM website: http://www. unm. edu/~wrtgsw/anaya. html.\r\n'