The epic duo of Bless Me, Ultima and The House on Mango Street have really made for some incredible reads in the last couple of weeks. Our previous assigned readings had me a bit worried a month ago or so, but Brother Mack has proved himself a champion once again with the quick read that is, The House on Mango Street. What I am most enjoying about these books is the fact that they are written by adults through the eyes of a child well positioned in the path of growing up. I am fascinated by that perspective. Having completed childhood not so long ago (my mother would argue differently), I feel almost caught out in "no mans land." Stuck in between seasoned adulthood and childhood-like innocence. Allow me to use the following quote to explain:
"In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate."
(Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, 89)
One of the outlying themes of The House on Mango Street is that of identity. In the case of Esperanza, she is a young, immigrant girl trying to make a comfortable world for herself in the bussle of a large city like Chicago. Who she is and who she will become are greatly influenced by both the place in which she lives and the many interesting people that surround her. It seems that Esperanza has an opinion on just about everyone that she has ever seen. Friends, neighbors, employers, co-workers, and even family members are constantly being identified, at least in the mind of Esperanza, for their outstanding physical, mental, or social characteristics. At times, that may be justified, however, constant comparison appears to be the preferred method of the young immigrant.
In the aforementioned quote, Esperanza expresses her desire to be unlike, in this case, the women that she has come to know as a young girl. She, in an attempt to find her place in her new world, wants to "leave the mold" and become something else. At this time, she is most drawn to the rebellious attitudes and lifestyles of Hollywoods famous actresses. She will no longer conform, but become her own woman. In her own words, this decision was perfectly "Simple" and "Sure."
Adolescence is an extremely confusing, yet important formative period for a youth in which experimentation often occurs. In my own opinion, middle schoolers are just the weirdest demographic of people on earth. If we could do away with that phase of life, I think we might all be a bit better off. While reading, however, The House on Mango Street and thinking about what it's like to decide what one will become, I thought about society's great outliers and how their formative years and desire for something, "fresh" and "rebellios" lead them to great things. With such a positive impact either made or being made, history and pop culture provide us with names such as Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs, and Mother Teresa. Their youtful rebellions or lack of conformity to the status quo led them to greatness whether that meant sneaking into a university library early to computer program or renouncing inherited wealth to lead a life of impoverished service, Esperanza's desire is both natural and necessary. Nontheless, on the flip side of things, it's easy to overindulge and negatively stray from the shining path - Macaulay Culkin, Jerry Rubin, Marilyn Manson, Dennis Rodman, etc. The list is endless.
With greatness and large-scale contribution hanging in the balance, is an adolescent questioning of one's own identity imperative to making a difference and becoming an outlier?
November 17th, 2012 I was totally thrown a curveball by Professor Mack when he revealed to the class that we would be responsible for both a new blog entry and "tweet analysis" over Thanksgiving break, but if it's one more opportunity to write about Bless Me, Ultima, I suppose that that's just an opportunity that must be seized. On the positive side, I have now finished the novel and have been able to piece together what I truly feel about Anaya's work. In my opinion, the following simple quote summarizes what Anaya wants the reader to take from Bless Me, Ultima .... My mother and I stumbled down the hill. I did not think she or my father understood what the owl's death meant, and I who shared the mystery with Ultima shuddered at what I would find. We rushed into the still house. "Mama!" Deborah cried. She held trembling Theresa. "It is all right," she reassured them, "it is over." "Take them to their room."I said to my mother. It was the first time I had ever spoken to my mother as a man: she nodded and obeyed.
(Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, 259)
After all of the discussion that we had in class, I think that it's easy to see the symbolism behind the various seasons, locations, and characters. Many parallels are drawn to Christ and his life throughout the novel as well (this always seems to be the case), yet for me that has never really been the main issue with Anaya's message. I felt an extremely strong connection, while reading and learning more about the characters, with Antonio and his journey towards a loss of innocence. That may appear to be an odd message for an author to transmit, but the losing of one's innocence does not necessarily imlpy the falling into sin or loss of one's soul. For Antonio, innocence is gradually lost as manhood increases within Antonio.
Think of the events that transpired in the life of Antonio that form a troublesome childhood - the deaths of three men, continual peer abuse, the weight of adult dreams resting squarely on his shoulders, school, religous confusion, and the knowlege of Ultima's true identity and supernatural superiority. Of all of these events, one of the most impactful for Antonio had to be when he discovered the immorality of Andrew. Symbolically, Antonio's world had come crashing down. I easily identified with Antonio in that when I was younger I remember clearly looking at my parents and thinking that they were superheros. Invinsible! Nothing could hold them back and they could do no wrong! As maturation began to take hold, however, I realized that that was not the case. Illness, depression, pain, suffering, anguish and life's typical troubles afflict all and parents of the world are not immune. I suppose that to a certain degree it was assumed that when I returned from my mission, I knew something about the world because the relationship that my mother and I had completely changed. For the first time in my life she looked to me for advice on specific matters. It was almost as if we were equals. In my mind, that couldn't be further from the truth, but my mother really was needing of help and to her son she looked. Manhood, in our Mormon culture, is often thought to have been reached with the arrival of a mission call, yet, when the heros of my youth sought my counsel and applied it, in that moment I couldn't have felt more like a true man.
The aforementioned quote embodies the manhood that was forced on Antonio by the events of his youth. Others had begun to look at Antonio as a priest of sorts. Physical prowess had already been reached in Antonios first fight and even in the winning of his first foot-race over the infamous bridge. Farming and manual labor had become a way for Antonio to pass his summers. That being said, Antonio's journey towards a premature manhood comes full circle with the acceptance by his mother of him as an equal and decision maker.
With one week's worth of reading, I have made a substantial amount of progress with Bless Me, Ultima and will go as far as deeming it the best novel that I have read in my short, but reading-filled collegiate career. That's high praise coming from someone who has never been a huge fan of reading. In today's class anlysis, we focused primarily on the sensory aspect of Anaya's Chicano classic. To be honest with you, that connection was one that I had never made and was one that really didn't appeal to me all that much. Antonio's battle to decypher the happy medium between satisfying his young, Catholic ideals and newfound, "seeing is believing" pagan beliefs is nothing short of incredible and connects with me, as the reader, on a personal level. Take for example the brief conversation between Antonion and his new "pagan-priest" of sorts, Samuel:
"The golden carp," I said to myself, "a new god?" I could not believe this strange story, and yet I could not disbelieve Samuel, "Is the golden carp still here?" "Yes," Samuel answered. His voice was strong with faith. 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?
(Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, 81)
It seems like everyone is able to tie in our assigned readings into movies like "Avatar" or "Inception." Neither of those movies have I seen and I'm not really a huge fan of movie watching. That being said, this novel makes me think so much of my favorite movie, "Simon Birch." "Simon Birch" is the story of two boyhood friends, Joe and Simon, who are considered by the other citizens of their small New England town to be outcasts. Simon is plagued by a peculiar bone disease that makes him greatly smaller than the rest of his peers. As if the teasing and jeers of those that surround him aren't enough, one Summer day in 1964, Simon accidentally hits a foul ball that strikes Joe's mother in the head, killing her on impact. The movie tells the tale of how both boys, with age, begin to lose their innocence and even go as far to discover that Joe is an illegitimate child, fathered by the town's very own priest. Both Simon and Joe question their identities as they discover more about where they have come and begin to negatively view the faith in which they have matured over the years. Simon's continual source of peace is a firm belief that God has put him on earth to be a hero and fulfill his destiny.
Just as Antonio struggled to find the balance between Catholicism and paganism, Simon Birch and Joe attempted to justify who they in the eyes of God despite what others say about where they had come from. Simon clings to the belief that God has a special purpose for him on earth and has given him a small frame specifically so that he can fulfill his life's calling, even when the town priest continually attempts to tear down Simon's faith. Likewise, Antonio finds solace in the unseen powers of Ultima, even though her methods often bring him confusion in regards to the power of a God that appears to be powerless under the authority of the Catholic church.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta had a similar "trial of faith" or life-altering doubt that caused a great deal of turmoil within her personal thoughts. Mother Teresa died the 5th of September, 1997 and after several months investigating her private journals it became public knowledge that for a number of decades Mother Teresa experienced a crisis of faith. In her own words, "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured a fellow christian. "[But] as for
me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, —
Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I
want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand." Very similar feelings were felt by both Antonio and Simon. For me, both the novel and the movie propose an interesting question: Is doubt an essential step in the path leading to true faith?
November 6th, 2012 When I told my roommate that I was going to be reading Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, a book that he had read his freshman year of high school, I was bombarded with nothing but negative comments and predictions of future visits to Sparknotes in search of refuge from mind-numbing literature. With bruises still visible from my experiences with Iracema, reluctancy crept over me as I opened the book and scanned over those first few pages. However, to my surprise, I found the first seven chapters of Anaya's novel to be extremely down to earth, reader-friendly, and engaging for the reader in the sense that Anaya really helped me find and identify the similarities between my own life and Chicano culture.
"My father's dream was to gather his sons around him and move westward to the land of the setting sun, to the vineyards of California. But the war had taken his three sons and it had made him bitter. He often got drunk on Saturday afternoons and then he would rave against old age. He would rage against the town on the opposite side of the river which drained a man of his freedom, and he would cry because the war had ruined his dream. It was very sad to see my father cry, but I understood it, because sometimes a man has to cry. Even if he is a man."
(Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, 14-15)
For me, tears have always been an interesting thing. I have never been a horribly emotional person. The women of my family have always been the type of people that wear their emotions on their sleeves and are never afraid of putting the "waterworks" on display for all to see. As a missionary, in the Missionary Training Center and also the mission field, I experienced frequent displays of emotion, namely crying, on a consistent basis for really the first time in my life. I was often so overcome by the kinds of experiences that I was having, both positive and negative, that my pride and attempt to maintain a respectable level of "manhood" came crumbling down. As others around me, investigators and members alike, spoke of life's ups and downs and the various things that had happened to them, it was amazing to watch the physical manifestation of a deeper, inner feeling come forth. It's as if tears are nature's way of humbling her inhabitants. A man can deny what he feels until the tear makes its way from the duct to the cheek, providing sufficient evidence for all to see that something very real and deep is ocurring. There is no denying what others can see.
Now for the fun part: Metallica. Forget the Disney songs that so many of us seem to be able to tie in to Latin American Humanities, Metalica's "One" could not be any more relevant. Looking beyond the power chords, long hair, and shredded jeans, "One" tells an extremely interesting tale of a war-torn soldier and his fight for happiness in a future lifestyle that will have little to offer him. While fighting in World War I, his face is blown off by a mortar which deprives him of his ability to hear, see, smell, and taste. Finding himself with no arms or legs, he is consigned to a hospital bed where he spends his days reflecting on his life and the things that his father had taught him. Doctors are stunned by his frequent "spasms" that, oddly enough, don't seem to be harming his health. In an attempt to better understand the apparent medical phenomenon, the soldier's general is called in to see what he can do. As the general and a soldier accompanying him enter, immediately a spasm occurs. After a few minutes of continued movements, the accompanying soldier realizes that there is no spasm. The wounded soldier had been using morse code to communicate with the hospital staff. His message? K-I-L-L-M-E.
From what I have read thus far in Bless Me Ultima, the war (WWII) is viewed as a curse of sorts that changes both men's desires and who they are. Immediately after the aforementioned quote was given by Antonio's father, Gabriel, Lupito kills Chavez. In search of an explanation for the sudden tragedy, Gabriel says: "Ay que Lupito, the war made him crazy." Just as Gabriel is brought low by what appears at this point to be a shattered dream, so to was the nameless soldier whose fortune would never change. Two men, humbled by life's challenges, were forced to sacrifice their "manhood" and submit to the will of a higher power.
(Metallica, "ONE" - watch this video and this whole thing will make a lot more sense)
