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.
