Bless Me, Ultima

In his dreams, Antonio sees his absent brothers as giants, symbolizing how highly he regards them. Yet when they return from war, Antonio sees in them an upsetting vision of manhood. They have “war-sickness”—posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—and spend their time listlessly gambling, and cavorting with “sinful” women. The vignette about Serrano’s bull reveals Antonio’s aversion to masculine violence. As the bull violently mounts the cow, his father and brother’s boorish reactions highlight the way their temperaments contrast with Antonio’s. He sees his brothers “like wild bulls,” (69) driven by a crude desire.

Antonio’s brothers are an example of how WWII changed the landscape of the Americas in the 1940s. A whole generation of young men was affected by PTSD and exposed to the wider world outside of their hometowns. They sensed greater economic opportunities elsewhere and chose a modern, individualistic lifestyle over a traditionally family-oriented one. Anaya hints at this occurring throughout Guadalupe and the surrounding towns, contextualizing Antonio’s coming of age within a national season of social, political, and economic change.

Eugene, León, and Andrew also represent Antonio’s greatest fear about growing up, having lost their innocence and attained the knowledge of sin. Their transformation gives Antonio another source of religious anxiety: According to Catholicism, his brothers’ souls are headed for eternal punishment if they don’t repent for their sinful ways. Antonio is preoccupied with saving them, and his dreams place him in the role of an ineffectual priest, illustrating a sense of responsibility that is disproportionately weighty for a first-grader.

The river that cuts through the llano symbolically divides the familiar territory of Antonio’s family home from the unexplored territory of the town: In crossing the bridge, he takes another step toward attaining worldly knowledge and losing his innocence. This action also represents another step in the hero’s journey: the crossing of the first threshold, in which the hero leaves the familiar world behind and ventures into a dangerous unknown. After this point, Antonio will enter the initial stage of the journey, in which he will face new enemies, battle temptation, and create new alliances.

At school, Antonio first encounters alienation from the dominant culture as he mingles with white students. María stresses the importance of learning English, but Antonio and his Chicanx friends are mocked for their language and the food they eat. Anaya illustrates how this othering creates both a pressure to assimilate and a tighter communal bond between those who are outcasts. Antonio fosters friendships with the other Chicanx boys that make them feel “like we belonged” (59), highlighting the importance of cultural unity and celebration. The goal of resisting assimilation was amplified by the Chicanx Movement at the time Anaya was writing the novel, and it reverberates throughout the rest of the narrative.

In these chapters, Anaya establishes a unique way of conveying the passage of time. Rather than using traditionally descriptive terms like days, months, and years, Anaya relies on detailed descriptions of the New Mexican landscape to indicate the passage from one season into the next. He often opens chapters with descriptions that evoke both changes in nature and their effect on Antonio, for example: “The lime-green of spring came one night and touched the river trees. […] I sensed their restlessness” (147). In this way, Anaya links Antonio’s personal growth to the changing seasons, establishing a relationship between him and the earth that mirrors Ultima’s supernatural connection to the land.

Anaya has previously established that María resists change on a personal level while championing some forms of modernization. These chapters explore how Gabriel is her foil; while he encourages his son to grow and explore, he resists the large-scale societal change that is rendering the vaqueros obsolete.