1. Bless Me, Ultima is the story of a young boy named Antonio whose family takes in an old woman named Ultima. Antonio and Ultima bond while she stays with his family and she teaches him about medicinal plants and what each one can be used to heal. Antonio must deal with witnessing death and losing his innocence, but Ultima helps guide him through it all. In the end a man named Tenorio who has a burning hatred for Ultima ends up shooting her owl, which leads to her death. The owl was Ultima's spirit and with the death of the owl, she could no longer live.
2. I belive that the theme of this story was that innocence can only be held onto for so long. Another theme could be to do what you want and not what others want for you.
3. The tone of Bless Me, Ultima is a sad and serious one. One example of how it is sad is how Antonio saw Lupito being shot to death when he was out at night. It was even more of a sad moment for Antonio because Lupito then asks Antonio for his blessings. An example of how the tone is a serious one is how seriously Antonio takes his religious classes. He wants to take the Communion so that things might start to make sense like his mother told him, so he takes the classes serious. One last example of how the tone is sad is when Ultima's owl is shot at the end by Tenorio. The reader can't help but feel a little sad that Ultima's owl is killed meaning that Ultima will die because the owl was her spirit.
4. One literary element that I noticed was how Anaya used dreams to help further an understanding on certain subjects. One example is how when Antonio dreams of his brother's going into the brothel. Andrew stays and tells Antonio that he will not go into the brothel until Antonio loses his innocnce. This helps the reader to understand that Antonio has lost innocence one Andrew does go into the brothel. Another element is how Anaya uses the owl as an extension of Ultima. When Tenorio is accusing Ultima, the owl comes and attacks him. When he kills the owl, Ultima dies along with it. When Samuel tells Antonio the story of the golden carp, he says that if man cannot stop sinning then the carp will get rid of them by flooding the land, Anaya is simply using a technique to help the reader understand the extent to which mankind sins. Two more techniques that Anaya used to help strengthen the theme are charcterization and diction.
1.Why did Tenorio hate Ultima? What did she do to him?
ReplyDelete2.How was the characters innocence taken away?
3.How do Antonio’s parents feel about Ultimas teachings?
1.I noticed that this book uses a lot of symbolism to describe situations just like the book of Like Water for Chocolate.
2.This book also reflects Hispanic culture throughout the book just like the book I read.
3.The sad tone that this contains is also seen in the book I read because of all the tragedies that occur in it.
I thought that your summary was very descriptive and it actually made me want to read the book. I would've liked if your themes had included examples/explaining.
ReplyDeleteWhat did the death of an owl have to do with Ultima's death?
ReplyDeleteI also think that you could have expanded a little bit more on your explanation for the theme. Specific examples of diction and characterization would help to explain their effect on the understanding of the theme.
ReplyDeleteAt what point in the novel do you believe that Antonio fully loses his innocence?