Bless Me, Ultima (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

When Bless Me, Ultima was first published in 1972, it barely received a blip on the radar screen of literary criticism, despite the fact that it won the Premio Quinto Sol for its literary merit. This critical oversight was most likely due to the fact that the book was published by a small publishing house and was written in a genre that had yet to be accepted by mainstream critics — that of the Chicano coming-of-age novel.

However, by the late 1970s, the novel had been noticed by a few critics. In 1976, Francisco Lomeli and Donaldo Urioste called Bless Me, Ultima "an unforgettable novel" and stated that it was "already becoming a classic for its uniqueness in story, narrative technique and structure." Daniel Testa, in the Latin American Literary Review, criticized the novel somewhat by calling it stereotypical:

Bless Me, Ultima can be taken first of all as a good action novel, a work in which intense and dramatic happenings make up a considerable part. There are violent fights and deaths. The technique and calculated effects of certain scenes seem deliberately to have been drawn from popular literature and movies that reflect a legendary "wild" west, replete with stock situations and characters. Some of the stereotyped elements used in the work are a Longhorn saloon, a poolroom, a bawdy house, a wise old Indian who lives in a cave, settlers and sheepherders, farmers and cowboys.

Testa went on to clarify that Anaya moves beyond stereotypes "by giving symbolic value to places and objects. Anaya adds to the texture of his narrative by tapping other sources of folklore, legends, mythologies, and cosmologies." Testa was complimentary about Anaya's prose, saying that its intensity "is worthy of the dramatist or the short story writer."

In the 1990s, when Bless Me, Ultima was first published in a mass market edition, the novel received more intensive review — and it proved that it could withstand scrutiny and time. Charles Lar-son, reviewing the book for World & I in 1994, called the novel "one of the great works of Chicano literature." Larson further stated:

What I admire most in Anaya's wonderful novel is the fusion of the two worlds out of which he writes. The folk traditions of his people (the holistic reverence for the earth; the healing powers of the curandera, Ultima; the belief that good can only be appreciated and understood when one has experienced evil) are melded into a novel that is stylistically fascinating because it incorporates dreams and visions, folktales, and oral history.

Like Larson, other critics have found much depth in the underlying mythology and traditions in Bless Me, Ultima. Some popular themes for critical analysis of the novel have included the Golden Carp, Ultima's blending of Catholic and native beliefs, Tony's dreams, and the religious quest. Acknowledging the caliber of the novel, critics have compared it to such accomplished works as Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Today, Bless Me, Ultima has the distinction of having spawned the most critical review of all contemporary Chicano novels.