Bless Me Ultima Loss of Innocence Essay
How do we transform from a little, young child to a big, grown adult? What problems do we face? Who helps us decide our future? In Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Antonio Marez must forward on the way to his own moral self-sufficiency. Antonio is put into the center of many distressing events which cause him to grow up faster, and lose his innocence. Antonio has many questions about spirits, god and beliefs. To get his answers, he must undergo a transformation. To attain maturity, you must have a loss of innocence.
For example, when a kid finds out that Santa Claus is not real, he is disappointed and cannot believe the fact that there is no Santa Claus, because he had the belief that Santa Claus is real. When someone has believed something for a long time, it is hard for them to accept the truth, so they are usually trapped between an enchanting belief and reality. As a child grows up, he or she starts to know about the harsh, intolerable conditions of life. What was a pleasant, calm world would not be as calm and pleasant. During this time, life can be very difficult, irritating, pressuring and bewildering.
In Bless Me Ultima,Antonio undertakes a rough adventure to seek his true faith and his beliefs. Antonio must transform from an innocent six year old to a fully grown, brawny man. He faces many experiences which always makes him doubt his beliefs, and his innocence slowly fades away as he experiences each incident. For example, when he experiences Lupito’s savage death, he has many questions about good and evil, punishment, sin, and his destiny. He starts to view the world as vicious and merciless, not the genial, affectionate world he had seen before.
Antonio even starts to worry about his own father’s lifeline, since he was involved in the death of Lupito. He is tormented by more deaths, when Narciso, a virtuous man, is murdered while trying protect Ultima,whereas Tenorio, a seemingly wicked man, is forgiven. He believes that these results are not fair, and that they should have been different. As he sees life as not fair, he loses another part of his innocence. He starts to perceive that he has to make up his own beliefs, and that he cannot just follow what everyone believes. The next phase of his adventure to maturity demands him making self-supporting choices.
An example of this is when he helps Ultima to cure Uncle Lucas, even though he knows that the others will object. He starts to focus more on what he thinks, instead of what others think, even with all the consequences. Antonio has completed his adventure once he has buried Ultima’s owl. The burial symbolizes Antonio’s own innocence as he realizes that he should develop his principles by himself, and he should determine his own individuality. Antonio begins a spiritual transformation as he starts losing confidence in his belief after he doesn’t hear God talk with him during his first Communion.
While he keeps on doubting his ideology, Antonio discovers ease and advice in the heathen God, the Golden Carp. He is convinced that the Golden Carp can literally assist him throughout his search for theological clarity. The Golden Carp provides Antonio with an affecting sacred incident, which he was expecting to get earlier during his first communion. Instead of accepting his Catholicism, with no understanding, like his religion tells him to do so, Antonio’s understanding of the Golden Carp assists him in assessing his spiritual individuality. He resolves that it is bearable to doubt many features of his principles.
As he decides to start accepting his spiritual practices, he is still exposed to different other religious beliefs, this completes his spiritual transformation. In an additional transformation, his friends are essential in turning Antonio into a more self-sufficient person. The first time Antonio goes to school, he is scared of his peers and is not capable of thinking for himself. As he goes through school, he starts developing a strong friendship with Samuel and Florence, who help him gain more independence by as