In Bless me, Ultima, Antonio is on the journey to discover what he believes and who he is supposed to be as a man. His experiences throughout the book make him question his beliefs and took away his innocence. The Golden Carp plays a considerable role in shaping Antonio's life both religiously and physically. Antonio is already confused about his identity, what he is supposed to be, a priest or a farmer, world of Ultima's magic versus religion, and the Golden Carp is a sign of yet one more root for his uncertainties and questions about Christianity. According to pagan myth, in IIano when the gods had turned the people into carp because the people irritated their gods, the king of the god who loved the people was very depressed (84). The river …show more content…
As he came out of the darkness of the pond and the sun caught his shiny scales and the light reflected orange and yellow and red. He swam very close to our feet. His body was round and smooth in the clear water. We watched in silence at the beauty and grandeur of the great fish" (120). When Antonio sees the Golden Carp the first time, he could not believe his eyes that he had saw a pagan god. He is so astonished upon seeing the Golden Carp that he felt like he had witnessed a miraculous thing. All the thoughts that were going on in his mind about how the power of God failed where Ultima's magic worked and that if the God of the church had saw him observing the Golden Carp, Antonio thought that he had sinned and he went to pray to the god of the Church. Because he was confused about between the two different god's, the same night, he had another dream about the contradictory cultures in his life. In his dream, his mother says to him that the water of the Church runs through his body and it is the water of his baptism. On the other hand, his dad says that the salt water of the ocean runs through his body, which means the seawater connects him to the pagan god, the Golden Carp. Due to this uncertainty, the torture of pain was more than he could