Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima
Manzanares
Mia Manzanares Arlene Larson AP Literature 15 October 2024 BMU LAP What creates one's fundamental set of characteristics? Is it perhaps one's blood, upbringing, or human nature? Consider this, what if one's upbringing encompasses two worlds that were never meant to collide? Rudolfo Anaya?s Bless Me, Ultima perfectly portrays this ideal. The novel illustrates four very crucial years of our young protagonist, Antonio Juan M?rez's childhood. Throughout these four years, Antonio faces challenges that should be unheard of in the eyes of the innocent. Antonio loses the ignorance that shields him from all the issues that were present within his surroundings repeatedly throughout his entire life. When a woman of little words decides to …show more content…
His fathers before him were vaqueros, and so he expects us to be men of the llano? Anaya 27-28. Antonio?s siblings would constantly face struggle due to the fact that they were expected to continue on their father?s dream, his dream being moving to California and building his fortune. However, the Marez brothers?Leon, Andrew, and Eugene? detest this dream of a life. They felt it was unfair that they had to pursue a goal that was not their own. Of course, they respected their father, but they were aware that their father had the option to migrate westward and had lost that opportunity for himself. The men felt as though they deserved the freedom to choose where they went. This scene in particular highlights irony due to the fact that the boys are unwillingly following within their father's footsteps. In spite of their intentions to rebel against their father's wishes, they are exactly mirroring the very path of the Marez men, which is the freedom in which they crave. ? ?We have to get the hell out?a here,? Eugene said nervously,?this hick town is killing me!?... Yeah. I think it's a good idea. It?s hell to have seen half the world come back to this,? Leon nodded across the river to the small town of Guadalupe...?It?s that M?rez
Mia Manzanares Arlene Larson AP Literature 15 October 2024 BMU LAP What creates one's fundamental set of characteristics? Is it perhaps one's blood, upbringing, or human nature? Consider this, what if one's upbringing encompasses two worlds that were never meant to collide? Rudolfo Anaya?s Bless Me, Ultima perfectly portrays this ideal. The novel illustrates four very crucial years of our young protagonist, Antonio Juan M?rez's childhood. Throughout these four years, Antonio faces challenges that should be unheard of in the eyes of the innocent. Antonio loses the ignorance that shields him from all the issues that were present within his surroundings repeatedly throughout his entire life. When a woman of little words decides to …show more content…
His fathers before him were vaqueros, and so he expects us to be men of the llano? Anaya 27-28. Antonio?s siblings would constantly face struggle due to the fact that they were expected to continue on their father?s dream, his dream being moving to California and building his fortune. However, the Marez brothers?Leon, Andrew, and Eugene? detest this dream of a life. They felt it was unfair that they had to pursue a goal that was not their own. Of course, they respected their father, but they were aware that their father had the option to migrate westward and had lost that opportunity for himself. The men felt as though they deserved the freedom to choose where they went. This scene in particular highlights irony due to the fact that the boys are unwillingly following within their father's footsteps. In spite of their intentions to rebel against their father's wishes, they are exactly mirroring the very path of the Marez men, which is the freedom in which they crave. ? ?We have to get the hell out?a here,? Eugene said nervously,?this hick town is killing me!?... Yeah. I think it's a good idea. It?s hell to have seen half the world come back to this,? Leon nodded across the river to the small town of Guadalupe...?It?s that M?rez