Bless Me, Ultima

“Cease! She cried, and the men were quiet. I pulled this baby into the light of life, so I will bury the afterbirth and the cord that once linked him to eternity. Only I will know his destiny.”

Anaya establishes Ultima as Antonio’s mentor and spiritual guide early, cementing her importance in the rest of the narrative. By virtue of her presence at his birth, she holds the key to Antonio’s fate. This connection symbolizes the role she will play in his coming-of-age process.

“The four directions of the llano met in me, and the white sun shone on my soul.”

This moment foreshadows how Ultima acts as a mediator between all of the conflicting elements of Antonio’s life. She brings together four different directions of the llano, symbolizing the way she will help Antonio consolidate the different influences on his beliefs, culture, and future.

“Did God listen? Would he hear? Had he seen my father on the bridge? And where was Lupito’s soul winging to, or was it washing down the river to the fertile valley of my uncles’ farms?”

After Lupito’s death, Antonio experiences the first stirrings of a crisis of faith, preoccupied with the role of God in doling out punishment or forgiveness. This line of thinking will lead him to look toward other belief systems for guidance later in the novel.

“The day dawned, and already the time of youth was fleeing the house which the three giants of my dreams had built on the hill of juniper tree and yucca and mesquite bush.”

Here Anaya describes time using magical realism, lending a dreamlike feeling of nostalgia to Antonio’s recollection of his childhood. Anaya’s use of pathetic fallacy in personifying youth as fleeing foreshadows the anxiety Antonio feels about growing up and the speed at which he will be required to do so.

“It was a sin to grow up and be a man.

‘It is no sin,’ my father spoke up, ‘only a fact of life.’

‘Ay, but life destroys the pureness God gives.’”

This quote illustrates María’s reluctance to accept change in her life. María believes that a boy turning into a man is inherently a sin, a perspective that causes Antonio anxiety around getting older and learning more about the world. His desire to please his mother by remaining innocent and the necessity of his coming to maturity is one of the novel’s central conflicts.

“Now we have come to live near the river, and yet near the llano. I love them both, and yet I am of neither. I wonder which life I will choose?”

Here, Antonio’s relationship with the river and the llano acts as a microcosm of his Chicanx identity. He has ties to two locations but feels that neither is his true home and that he must choose between them. Eventually, he will learn that both places can be a part of him without the need for a choice.

“The rest of us were born steeped in sin, the sin of our fathers that Baptism and Confirmation began to wash away. But it was not until communion—it was not until we finally took God into our mouth and swallowed Him—that we were free of that sin and free of the punishment of hell.”

This quote illuminates the Catholic church’s perspective on original sin. Antonio believes he won’t be pure until he is cleansed by communion since humans are born sinful. This also highlights why the deaths of Lupito, Narciso, and Florence are so distressing for Antonio, who believes that his friends’ souls are bound for hell because they died without receiving communion.

“We found a few others who were like us, different in language and custom, and a part of our loneliness was gone.”

Anaya highlights the importance of community building, especially for those who are othered by or represent a minority in mainstream culture. This perspective is part of El Movimiento, the Chicanx cultural and political movement that peaked while Anaya was in the midst of writing Bless Me, Ultima.

“‘Hell, Andy,’ Gene said softly, ‘we can’t build our lives on their dreams. We’re men, Andy, we’re not boys any longer. We can’t be tied down to old dreams—’”

After returning from WWII, Antonio’s older brothers seek independent lives outside of their small community. Their decision to leave reflects the sweeping postwar social changes that occurred during Anaya’s childhood and that inspired the backdrop for Antonio’s journey to manhood.

“It made me shiver, not because it was cold but because the roots of everything I had ever believed in seemed shaken. If the golden carp was a god, who was the man on the cross? The Virgin? Was my mother praying to the wrong God?”

The idea of an Indigenous god’s existence upsets Antonio’s concept of the world and plants the seed of his eventual spiritual awakening. As he matures, he will move past the idea that there is a right or wrong god to worship and recognize it as a matter of personal choice.

“You must understand that when anybody, bruja or curandera, priest or sinner, tampers with the fate of a man that sometimes a chain of events is set into motion over which no one will have ultimate control.”

The idea that all of life is a harmonious cycle is introduced by Ultima and underlies the entire plot of Bless Me, Ultima. Because Ultima and Tenorio both meddle in the natural cycle, they both have to die in order to restore universal harmony.

“I knew I had witnessed a miraculous thing, the appearance of a pagan god, a thing as miraculous as the curing of my uncle Lucas. And I thought, the power of God failed where Ultima’s worked, and then a sudden illumination of beauty and understanding flashed through my mind.”

This moment is something of a miracle for Antonio, who has long been seeking this level of understanding through the church. It is a turning point for his relationship to religion and marks the first moment he seriously considers turning away from Catholicism.

“You have been seeing only parts, she finished, and not looking beyond into the great cycle that binds us all. Then there was peace in my dreams and I could rest.”

This is the great revelation that underlies Antonio’s journey. His suffering comes from his limited, absolutist perspective. The knowledge that life and death move in a balanced cycle brings him peace and helps him let go of his fear of death.

“Drowning or burning, the punishment was all the same—why couldn’t there be a god who would never punish his people, a god who would be forgiving all of the time?”

Let down by God and the golden carp, Antonio wishes for a less punishing God. In contemplating the existence of an all-benevolent god, he foreshadows his own eventual revelation that it is better to grant forgiveness than seek vengeance, even against his own enemies.

“‘Then pray for me,’ he said weakly and closed his eyes, ‘you are pure of heart’—”

Several times throughout the novel, Antonio is called upon to act as a priest. The first time, he runs away in fear, but in this moment, he stays to bless the dying Narciso, demonstrating selflessness and maturity.

“You foolish boy, God roared, don’t you see you are caught in your own trap! You would have a God who forgives all, but when it comes to your personal whims you seek punishment for your vengeance.”

Antonio’s dream in Chapter 14 exposes the youthful hypocrisy of his desire to forgive the sins of his loved ones while punishing his enemies. He must resolve this conflict as he moves forward with his spiritual journey to decide if vengeance has a place in his belief in God or if he will choose a new set of beliefs based on compassion and forgiveness.

“A wise man listens to the voice of the earth, Antonio. He listens because the weather the winds bring will be his salvation or his destruction. Like a young tree bends with the wind, so a man must bow to the earth—.”

Gabriel’s advice reflects a relationship to the land learned from the Indigenous people who lived in the land that is now New Mexico before it was colonized by the Spanish. This connection to the land is an important aspect of Chicanx identity, and Ayana uses natural imagery to emphasize this connection.

“I had stood my ground for what I felt to be right and I was not afraid.”

This is a clear illustration of Antonio’s growth, as he matures from a scared boy who literally runs from the scene of conflict to an adolescent who demonstrates moral independence. He knows that kindness will win out over cruelty, and his assuredness allows him to stand bravely against a threat from another boy.

“But you have the power of the church, you are the boy-priest! they cried. Or choose from the power of the golden carp of the magic of your Ultima. Grant us rest!”

Because he is so often associated with priesthood throughout the novel, Antonio feels a personal responsibility to grant salvation to the souls of his loved ones. Though he may not go on to become a priest, this sense of responsibility hints that he will grow up to be a man who mediates for his community.

“I crossed my forehead and prayed an Act of Contrition like I had for Narciso, but it was no good. Florence had never believed.”

Here, Antonio encounters the futility of trying to apply the Catholic concept of the afterlife to an atheist: If Antonio accepts the principles of Catholicism, then there is no way to save Florence from eternal damnation despite his good and gentle character in life. This glaring injustice drives Antonio further away from the church.

“A painful wrenching in my heart made me cry aloud, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

These words are drawn from Jesus’s final words on the cross as written in Matthew 27:46. The reference positions Antonio as a martyr and Christ figure for his community while highlighting how abandoned and betrayed he feels by the failure of all three major systems of spirituality in his life.

“You are growing, and growth is change. Accept the change, make it a part of your strength—.”

This is a key facet of the worldview Ultima hands down to Antonio. Change is inevitable as are the cycles of tragedy and joy that make up life. Rather than holding onto the past like Gabriel or María, Antonio must learn to embrace change as part of the new generation.

“‘Take the llano and the river valley, the moon and the sea, God and the golden carp—and make something new,’ I said to myself. That is what Ultima meant by building strength from life. ‘Papá,’ I asked, ‘can a new religion be made?’”

This quote illustrates the final result of Antonio’s coming of age under Ultima. He fully accepts the influences of the varying figures and systems in his life but does not feel bound to the past. He ventures beyond passive learning and instead looks ahead with a sense of creativity and hope, drawing on the past to create a new and better future.