Bless Me, Ultima is a splendidly written novel that is at once tragic, pastoral, and apocalyptic. The novel begins with Ultima's violation of the maxim not to interfere with the destiny of any person. Her death at the end of the novel can be seen as a nemesis, or punishment. These events occur in the context of a rural people whose cultural relationship to nature is being greatly impacted by Western development. The folk response to massive social change is apocalyptic in terms of perception, and the novel is apocalyptic in that it promotes biculturalism as a synthesis of the conflict between cultures. The novel has excellent symmetry, good pace and action, and can be seen as a Chicano bildungsroman.
Bless Me, Ultima is not only regarded as a major contribution to the growing body of Chicano/a literature that emerged during the Chicano/a Movement (1965-75), but also is held as one of the works that set the canon for Chicano/a literature. Today, the novel is regarded as part of the emerging genre of cultural novels that explore the development of self and ethnic identity in a world of racism and antagonistic ethnic relations. The writings of Anaya, especially Bless Me, Ultima, have generated the largest response of interpretation and criticism of any work by Chicano/a authors.
Bless Me, Ultima can be analyzed at many levels from many angles. It is a rich novel that weaves social change, religion, psychological and cognitive maturation, cultural conflict, ethnic identity formation, and many other themes together into a coherent and believable story about a young boy. At one level, Bless Me, Ultima can be read as a romance novel that laments the passing of a societal period that is seen in the present through myth. It can also be read at the cultural nationalist level as resolving the historical conflict between the villages and providing a counter-position to the racist ideology of the United States. Finally, it can be seen as a fragment of an expressive Chicano/Mexicano culture that promotes storytelling and uses apocalypse as an ideological construct. Literary critics have found Bless Me, Ultima a fertile text for analysis. The names, figures, and objects of Antonio's world have yielded rich analyses of their symbolisms. In sum, the novel is a richly textured narrative that weaves many themes and sub-themes and allows for different interpretations.
Anaya's Use of Imagery. Anaya uses powerful images to evoke a multiplicity of responses from his readers. He draws readers into the story through prophetic dreams, idyllic scenes of harmony, episodes of spontaneous horseplay among children, scenes of mystical dynamism, and episodes of violence and death. Each of them is richly detailed and provides readers with a sense of closeness to the characters and to the forces of nature.
Oppositional Forces. Opposition is a technique widely used by Anaya in the novel to create conflict at many levels. Antonio's parents are opposed in their backgrounds and in their visions and aspirations; religions are opposed in their viewpoints and demands on the individual; cosmic forces are opposed in the forms of good and evil; and forms of nature are opposed in their dry and fertile manifestations. The novel contains psychological, social, cultural, and physical conflict. Indeed, conflict is pervasive in Antonio's life.
Tripartites. Anaya uses tripartites to structure the novel. Again and again, things occur in "threes." There are, for example, three cultures, three brothers, three Trementina sisters, three prophetic dreams, three revelations of Ultima's identity, three Comanche spirits, three interferences by Ultima in the destinies of others, and so on. While numerology is not a salient feature of the narrative, it is clear that numbers structure the plot.
The Question of Autobiography. Bless Me, Ultima can be categorized as a "quasi-autobiographical" novel in the sense that a mature, older "I" serves as narrator for the experiences of the younger "I." A mature Antonio is narrating his experiences as a young boy, but the experiences are conveyed through the childlike naiveté of a six- to eight-year-old boy.
At another level, like many other novelists, Anaya himself admits that he used his personal experiences and those of others in his childhood to construct the story. In another sense, then, the novel is quasi-biographical, but the reader is never privy to the distinction between the real and the fictional because Anaya presents it all as fictional. It really does not matter much which is real and which is non-real since what is worthy of note is that Anaya, like other writers, takes his own life as a rich repository of experiences from which he draws upon to construct his stories.
