The Role Of Fate In Bless Me, Ultima By Rudolfo Anaya

Rudolfo Anaya explains in his novel Bless Me, Ultima, the struggles one may face on the journey to discovering their purpose in life. As Lemony Snicket says, “Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who brings you things you never asked for and don’t always like.” Antonio Márez is in a similar situation. He is given two options at his birth: to grow up a vaquero like his father, or a farmer-priest for his mother. Antonio struggles between the two until Ultima, a curandera, arrives and presents Antonio with a third option. Ultima knows Antonio’s fate and gives him the opportunity to allow his destiny to shape itself. Antonio battles with deciding between his father or his mother when approached with their

Antonio’s father would have his son be a vaquero, but Antonio’s mother would have him be a priest or a farmer like his uncles, the Lunas. His father and the other vaqueros display their urging for Antonio to follow them in Antonio’s dream about his birth. The vaqueros express their interest when they say, “He is a Márez…He is his father’s blood!” (6). Antonio feels the pressure from his father to be like him - free, wild, and adventurous; however, his mother feels differently. Antonio dreams about the Virgin Mary and his mother, soon after Ultima’s arrival. He realizes his mother’s strong urging for him to be a priest for the Lunas when she prays, “…Mother of God, make my fourth son a priest…” (45). Once again, Antonio carries the burden to conform his fate to meet his mother’s hopes. Not only do his parents persuade Antonio to choose one or the other, but his brothers mock him for the fate his mother wishes for him. Antonio dreams about his brothers after witnessing Lupito’s death, and they taunt him for pursuing his mother’s plan for him, “You are a Luna…You are to be a farmer-priest for mother” (26). Antonio feels as if it is up to him to choose between being a Márez or being a Luna. He leans more toward his mother’s hopes for him of joining the priesthood because of her urging and the weight she puts on his religion and

He witnesses his family arguing over his destiny, but the arguments quickly halt as Ultima tells the men, “Cease...I pulled this baby into the light of life, so I will bury the afterbirth and the cord that once linked him to eternity. Only I will know his destiny” (6). Antonio sees in his dream that maybe he does not have to be either a Márez or Luna. Ultima opens the possibility of choice to Antonio by her knowing his true fate. Antonio dreams about his destiny and Ultima again, and within this dream his parents are debating about his fate. His father insists he is Márez and of the sea water, while his mother argues that he is a Luna and from the sweet water of the moon. Ultima appears and answers Antonio’s pleads to know his fate by saying, “…That the sweet water of the moon…is the same water that gathers into rivers and flows to fill the seas. Without the waters of the moon to replenish the oceans there would be no oceans…the waters are one Antonio” (121). It is clear from Ultima that Antonio is neither Márez or Luna, his is simply Antonio, a mixture of both his parents’ desires. Ultima again opens Antonio’s eyes to his true self and fate in his dream when she tells him, “You have been seeing only parts…and not looking beyond into the great cycle that binds us all” (121). Ultima is the guiding light Antonio needs who shows him that his fate his not black and white. There