1. In an attempt to explore the complexities of one’s own identity, authors Rudolfo Anaya and Mark Twain created literary novels describing the troubles of their time. Although they present separate social aspects during different time periods, both Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima and Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper present the issue of culture and social boundaries affecting the person you are, and who people perceive you to be. These factors may assemble to determine one’s own personal identity. <br />Six-year-old Antonio “Tony” Márez in Bless Me, Ultima lives in the llano in New Mexico. His parents come from two entirely different backgrounds, and of course they both want him to follow theirs. Antonio’s mother wanted him to grow up and become a priest, while his father wanted him to become a vaquero and help him fulfill his “dream” to “move westward to the land of the setting sun, to the vineyards of California” (Anaya 15). “It was [his] father’s pride” (3) and he didn’t want to be the one to disappoint him. But his father wasn’t as pushy as his mother. She made it seem like Tony needed to become a priest, stating, “That would save him!” (33) from destroying the purity and goodness he was born with. But Antonio didn’t really agree with everything his mother said:<br />My mother was not a woman of the llano, she was the daughter of a farmer. She could not see the beauty in the llano and she could not understand the coarse men who lived half their lifetimes on horseback (2). <br />Both his mother and father were influential characters in this sense, but there was no other that had more impact than Ultima. She wasn’t a frequent part of Antonio’s life, as she only came to stay with them during the summer; but that summer changed his life. “The silent, magic powers she possessed” (1) helped Antonio find the hidden common ground between his mother and father’s ideology (Kanoza 159). And finding that common ground also meant finding himself. Ultima was the woman to guide Tony, saying in his dream:<br />You both know…that the sweet water of the moon which falls as rain is the same water that gathers into rivers and flows to the seas. Without the waters of the moon to replenish the oceans there would be no oceans. And the same salt waters of the oceans are drawn by the sun to the heavens, and in turn become again the waters of the moon…The waters are one…You have been seeing only parts, and not looking beyond into the great cycle that binds us all (Anaya 126).<br />After this truth became clear to Antonio he claimed, “Then there was peace in my dreams and I could rest” (126). <br />Ultima served as Tony’s aide, just like Father Andrew serves as Tom’s in The Prince and the Pauper. He “taught Tom a little Latin and how to read and write” (Twain 17) which foreshadows his use of the language and skills later on in court after switching roles with the young prince. Father Andrew tried to provide some salvation from a world where “drunkenness, riot, and brawling were the order there every night and nearly all night long” (17). But Tom was so used to his environment that “he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing” (17).<br />Although Tom had accepted his place in society as a poor beggar, the stories that Father Andrew would tell him about “enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings and princes” (17) made his imagination run wild and he eventually came to the conclusion that he wished to have “the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace” (17). These wishes appeared in his dreams, too. “His dream people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby clothing and his dirt and to wish to be clean and better clad” (18). Just like the domino effect, his wishes turned into reality when Tom begins to “act” (18) like the prince, unconsciously. His speech and manners were so well off that the people around him began to admire him. “In time he came to be looked up to by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being… He seemed to know so much! And he could do and say such marvelous things! And withal, he was so deep and wise!” (18). It’s apparent now that from the way Tom was being brought up, with the stories and teachings of Father Andrew, he has become a more refined person. He was changed, just as Antonio was changed by Ultima. <br />In each novel the setting plays a major role in influencing values onto the boys. In Bless Me, Ultima, the world of nature in rural New Mexico, the landscape, the environment, the forces of nature, the llano all combine to create a powerful sense of place that produces a sudden flash of enlightenment or a revealing intuition often occasioned by something trivial or apparently insignificant (Olmos). Throughout the novel, Tony allows himself to be transformed by the beauty and magic of nature.<br />The setting in The Prince and the Pauper was in an age controlled by nobility and royalty, with not much middle ground. There were those who ate well every night, and those who begged for any sliver of food they could get. Tom Canty is amongst that crowd. He “was born to a poor family of the name Canty, who did not want him” (1). Any more children added to the family meant more burdens, and more time spent begging in the poor street of Pudding Lane. And then there was Edward the Sixth, the ought-to-be king of the town. His birth was such an event that “people went nearly mad for joy” (1) and everyone in town “did want him” (1). Tom has no freedom and is constantly beaten and restricted in his home environment. Likewise, the young prince is confined to his royal apartments and has little or no freedom — that is, he does not have the freedom that he believes a commoner has. <br />Despite their vast differences in social class rank, they have many things in common. Ironically, they even have identical birthdays. The effect of them switching clothes highlights the influence of image on identity as well, along with the people around them. The switch causes the prince to be kicked out and turned into the pauper, and Tom to go up in rank as the new prince of London based on just his fancy clothes. The outcome reveals that actions make the man, but clothes also make half (The British Quarterly Review 188). <br />The conflicts proposed in these novels are influenced by the surrounding culture and boundaries. These “social norms” are sought out to overcome in each novel. In Bless Me, Ultima Tony seeks to overcome his reliance on the catholic religion with that of Ultima’s traditional beliefs and guidance. His mother is a devout Catholic, even praying that Tony will one day become a priest. Tony himself appears to be devoted to the Catholic faith. However, when one day a friend tells him about the golden carp, a pagan god, the possibility that there is another god besides the Christian one forces him to question his entire worldview. In a dream, Ultima says to Tony “The waters are one, you have been seeing only parts ... and not looking beyond into the great cycle that binds us allquot;
(Anaya 126). With Ultima’s guidance, Tony learns that his mother's religion and a faith in the golden carp do not have to be mutually exclusive, and as an extension of this, he can also resolve his parents' expectations for him. (Kanoza)<br />In The Prince and The Pauper, Tom and Edward both overcome the influence that image has on identity and inequalities in their extremely restricted society. When the two boys exchange clothes, the prince immediately becomes the pauper and is thus treated like a pauper and, likewise, the pauper is treated like a prince. Unlike Tony, the boys had no guidance through their journey for self-discovery, yet they break free of the boundaries society built much like the way Tony does towards the catholic religion.<br />Both novels emphasize the need to reconcile the opposites. In searching for his identity, Tony begins to realize that he must reconcile the many opposing expectations of his family and his community if he is to learn the answers for which he hungers. The most evident oppositions are his father's pastoral lifestyle and his mother's farming tradition. The differences between the two are repeated throughout the novel, underscored by their very surnames--Márez and Luna (Olmos 9). While traveling to the Tellez home with his father and Ultima, Tony has the realization that he has learned important values from both sides of his family:<br />From my mother I had learned that man is of the earth, that his clay feet are part of the ground that nourishes him, and that it is this inextricable mixture that gives man his measure of safety and security. Because man plants in the earth he believes in the miracle of birth, and he provides a home for his family, and he builds a church to preserve his faith and the soul that is bound to his flesh, his clay. But from my father and Ultima I had learned that the greater immortality is in the freedom of man, and that freedom is best nourished by the noble expanse of land and air and pure, white sky (Anaya).<br />At the end of the novel, despite Ultima's death, imagery shows that Tony is learning to let the opposites coexist (Riser 3): quot;
Around me the moonlight glittered on the pebbles of the llano, and in the night sky a million stars sparkledquot;
(Anaya 261). In other words, the moonlight of the Lunas and the llano of the Marez are joined. It is in learning to combine the many seemingly irreconcilable elements of his life--family agendas, religious beliefs, and language--that Tony learns his quot;
own truthsquot;
(Riser 3). <br />