Prompt 3 -- The House and the Farm

Rudolfo Anaya’s bildungsroman, Bless Me Ultima, details the growth and maturation of a Mexican-American boy named Antonio “Tony” Marez in New Mexico during the 1940s. Tony spends much of the novel on the receiving end of pressure from his mother to grow up and become a Catholic priest and from his father to grow up and continue the family tradition of horsemanship. The opposition each of Tony’s parents comes to experience from the other is reflected in the contrast between the llano Tony’s father built the family’s house on, and the farm owned and operated by Tony’s maternal uncles; as Tony grows up and attempts to find himself spiritually and culturally, the merits and faults of both places come to serve Tony’s development into a young man capable of following his own beliefs and goals.

The Marez family’s house on the llano is a piece of architecture crafted by Tony’s father and slightly isolated from the town in which Tony goes to school. This isolation from the rest of the town is often a source of distress from Tony’s mother, who insists that it was foolish to build the house out in the fields as opposed to the town itself. And despite his defensiveness to Tony’s mother, Tony’s father himself seems discontent with the house; he dreams of moving himself and his sons to a place where his dream of keeping the vaquero (cowboy) lifestyle alive is possible, which was the initial purpose of the house he built on the llano. These dreams prove impossible, though, and by the end of the novel, Tony’s father comes to terms with the fact that his cowboy lifestyle cannot be assimilated into American life – a fact that had always been symbolized by the house’s isolation from the assimilated town.

Aside from his own house, Tony also spends a significant amount of time in the novel at his uncles’ farm in another town. In contrast to Tony’s house, the farm is more immersed in the town and, rather than being the product of one man’s hands, has been shared by Tony’s mother’s family from generation to generation. The nature of the lifestyle the farm reflects also contrasts that of the Marez house; whereas the house is essentially the swan song of the dying vaquero lifestyle, the farm is a source of prosperity for Tony’s uncles, grounded in family and tradition. Within that understanding, Tony’s mother’s desire for her son to pursue priesthood in the Catholic tradition is a fitting extension of what the farm represents. However, that this farm and the opportunities it presents Tony clashes with what Tony’s father hopes for him ironically generates conflict in Tony about the sense of family the farm embodies.

Components of both places ultimately play fundamental roles in Tony’s development as a character; a spiritual guide named Ultima takes advantage of the Marez house’s isolation to guide Tony’s understanding of nature, and uses the same concept of growth and life-giving at the farm to build on that understanding. Numerous traumatic events at both places, including a series of murders and an exorcism, advance Tony’s spiritual development as well. In essence, the wide variety of experiences and different conditions associated with the house and the farm come to mold Tony not merely into a product of only the house or only the farm, but a product of both, who is capable of continuing to grow as a person.

Prompt 2 -- Remedios the Beautiful Conflict

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude details the foundation, development and ultimate destruction of the fictional Colombian town Macondo by seven generations of the eccentric Buendia family. Throughout the course of the novel, Macondo evolves from an isolated, mythical Eden into a modern, but tainted part of Latin American society. The peak of the town’s development – marked by its introduction to industry and technology – occurs roughly halfway through the novel and coincides with the lifetime of Remedios – the first member of the Buendia family’s fourth generation whose beauty becomes legendary. Remedios, or Remedios the Beauty, as she becomes known, presents a kind of extreme antithesis to the modernity to which Macondo is being exposed: while the town goes wild over numerous modern novelties, Remedios the Beauty is not only indifferent to them, but lives an almost disagreeably simple life.

Remedios the Beauty is almost entirely characterized by the contrast between the natures of her appearance and of her mannerisms. Word of her beauty reaches distant lands and indirectly causes the deaths of several captivated men; the effect her face has on others becomes so problematic that she is forced by her great-grandmother, Ursula, to cover it while in public. Still, Remedios remains almost completely detached from her surroundings; she is not malicious, but aloof, and demonstrates a number of behavioral peculiarities that cause some of Macondo’s people to suspect that she may be mentally impaired. For example, she insists on walking around nude, does nothing but bathe all day and, at one point, cuts her magnificent hair simply to avoid the hassle of combing it. Oddly enough, though, Remedios’ great uncle, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, insists that he sees in her great wisdom and lucidity, possibly as extensions of the simplistic purity her behavior seems to symbolize.

Meanwhile, Macondo’s development, led by Remedios’ twin brothers Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo, begins to overshadow the ethereal quality that was such a significant part of the town in earlier days and that Remedios the Beauty is the sole remnant of. The two brothers instigate the construction of a train station and a waterway through which a number of modern entities flow into Macondo. And although the town’s inhabitants are initially unreceptive to all of the new introductions, they eventually embrace them. As a result, Macondo sees the arrival of a movie theatre, prostitutes and even the establishment of a banana plantation by foreign capitalists, all of which enamor the town’s inhabitants – except Remedios the Beauty.

Macondo’s modernization and Remedios’ simple lifestyle directly clash with each other. At the same time the town is moving toward the future, Remedios alone insists on living as basically and purely as possible, which draws negative reactions from the rest of the town’s inhabitants. Interestingly, though, Remedios the Beauty and the influx of growth and technology have similarly disorienting effects on the townspeople. The potency of these effects – both of Remedios’ attractiveness and the forces behind Macondo’s development – are likened to the powers of divine beings. And with this in mind, Remedios’ actions, in blatant contradiction to her beauty, can be interpreted as a rebellion of purity against Macondo’s soon-to-be-revealed-as-sinister evolution – a rebellion that ends with her departure from the novel.

Remedios the Beauty’s ultimate fate recalls the magical occurrences of Macondo in days before its development: she simply floats into the sky while folding laundry one morning. Two ideas about her ascension are significant, though. First is the idea that her “rebellion” was ultimately unsuccessful – that while modernization competes with it, there is no place for purity of her variety in Macondo anymore. Second, is her ascension’s timing: a short while after she leaves, the banana plantation’s executives orchestrate a massacre that results in the assassination of all the plantation’s workers, except for Remedios’ brother. Remedios’ departure, then, is a means of avoiding the massacre’s repercussions.

Thus, the conflict between Remedios the Beauty and Macondo was not one of great emotional strain or struggle on her part. It was instead a conflict between the natural purity that she represented and the unchecked change that the town was caught up in, and it resulted in the unfortunate victory of the latter.


So I went like ten minutes over the given 40, but I changed my character from the one I wrote about in class (went from one batshit crazy chick to another), so I don't even know if the time thing still applies.

Anyway, so far I've commented on Carol's, Caitlan's, Lauren's and Lindsey's blogs. I read Kammie's, but I can't comment on it =/

Prompt 1 -- Magic Fishy

In Rudolfo Anaya’s novel Bless Me, Ultima, conflicts of religion and faith are addressed through the doubts and contemplations of a young Mexican-American boy named Antonio “Tony” Márez. Tony, who begins the novel as a seven year old, was brought up under the rigidity of Catholicism and is initially devout to the point of piety. However, following the arrival of Ultima, an elderly pagan healer and family friend, Tony finds himself in the midst of religious conflicts with himself that arise as a result of his introduction to violence and alternative belief systems. The most significant representation of such a belief system is the colossal golden carp that swims the waters of a lake near Tony’s New Mexico home. The carp, which is regarded by some of Tony’s friends as a god, first signifies the paganism that competes with Tony’s Catholicism for his acceptance as what is true in the world. As the novel progresses, though, and Tony’s faith is tested further, the carp comes to symbolize an opportunity for Tony to form his own constructs of faith and his own definitions of morality.

Tony is first made aware of the carp by a friend named Samuel during an afternoon of fishing. Samuel explains to Tony that to fish for carp is forbidden and tells a story about gods who sent mortal men to live in the same New Mexican valley the boys live in. The men in Samuel’s story were forbidden by the gods from eating carp, but disobeyed the commands they were given during a time of famine. One god, who pitied the mortals, requested that they be turned into carp instead of killed, and this god eventually joined the transformed men as a carp himself – a large golden carp.

When Tony is taken to the lake in which the carp lives, he is awestruck that such a magnificent creature exists: “The huge, beautiful form glided through the blue waters. I could not believe its size. It was bigger than me! And bright orange! The sunlight glistened off his golden scales. He glided down the creek with a couple of small carp following, but they were like minnows compared to him.”

Evidently, Tony’s first experience with the carp is characterized by surrealism. Anaya’s grandiose introduction of the fish is characteristic of a literary element used heavily in Hispanic literature known as magical realism – the existence of fantastic and even supernatural events and entities in a realistic and generally passive context (hence, the realism). In Bless Me, Ultima, the magical realism associated with the carp’s mere existence, its tangibility, serves to drive the idea that Tony’s Catholic-centric reality is being intruded upon and challenged by the paganism to which the carp is linked. For Tony, the ambiguity – and sometimes entire absence – of the Catholic God he worships is frustrating. That the god manifested by the carp is so real and accessible, though, generates turmoil in Tony about what may and may not be real. Furthermore, the golden carp’s matter-of-fact being presents Tony with the fact that other faiths, besides Catholicism and such as paganism, have their own legitimacy.

As the novel progresses, the golden carp comes to represent more to Tony than just an alternative belief system. Over the next few years the novel details, Tony encounters several obstacles of adversity, all of which are traceable to the concept of sin: his uncle is cursed by women who practice witchcraft, the image he holds of his older brother Andrew is tarnished by Andrew’s involvement with prostitutes and, most significantly, he witnesses the murder of a family friend named Narciso. Ultimately, Tony comes to fear that the sins plaguing his town are manifestations of a prophecy related to the legend of the golden carp. This prophecy states that the town formerly inhabited by the transformed men will become the home of a second group of mortals, the weight of whose sins will become so great the town will collapse and sink into the underground lake over which it stands.

The fear Tony feels for the fate of his town haunts him in a particularly extensive dream; in it, Andrew and his other older brothers ask that Tony forgive them for their sins before turning into the Trementina sisters – the witches who cursed Tony’s uncle. The dream witches place a curse on him and the failure of Tony’s mother’s prayers and Ultima’s pagan rituals results in Tony’s “death.” Catastrophe ensues in Tony’s dream world, and ultimately, the golden carp opens “his huge mouth and swallow[s] everything, everything there was, good and evil. Then he swim[s] into the blue velvet of the night, glittering as he [rises] towards the stars … and his golden body burn[s] with such a beautiful brilliance that he [becomes] a new sun in the heavens. A new sun to shine its good light upon a new earth.”

The role the carp plays in Tony’s dream reflects its development from a symbol of paganism to a symbol of something much more significant. That it consumes each of the belief systems Tony has been exposed to (the Catholicism of his mother, the paganism practiced by Ultima and the witchcraft utilized by the witches) before being reincarnated as “a new sun [over] a new earth” suggests that the carp now represents the unity and creation of faith. In fact, the sun and earth imagery of the dream has biblical undertones, which is especially appropriate considering that the dream marks the beginning of Tony’s understanding of his own, personal, spiritual beliefs not only as a response to his questions regarding faith, but also as a method of coping with the adversity he has faced while growing up.

Anaya’s development of the golden carp from a symbol of paganism to a symbol of new faith entirely is a key component of Tony’s development as a character. He goes from a young boy bound by a religion he questions to a young man free to form his own belief system and his own constructs of faith.

I commented on the following people's blogs: Carol, Cyrus, Eleanor, Jacob, Kellie Kawa, Kelli Ho, McKenna, Sarah and Tori.