Magical Realism In Bless Me Ultima

Bless me Ultima follows Tony, a young boy as he tries to find himself emotionally, mentally, and philosophically. His journey mostly focuses around his attempts to find the perfect religion that suits his every belief. The magic begins to come into play when we begins to see all the awesome power of each belief around him,except the one he was raised to be. In an Old Man with Enormous Wings, a decrepit and blind angel falls out of the sky into a small, remote town. Regardless of that fact the inhabitants seem to be completely unphased by his arrival and simply put him in a chicken coop. These strange anomalies are all categorized under Magical Realism. Magical Realism allows authors to employ various “fantastic” elements and merge them with a realistic reality to shed light on some corrupt aspect of said reality. In this case, both stories are almost focused on various aspects of religion and therefore have things to say about how religion affects our reality.

When an author

Each story focuses mainly on the way religion impacts a person and how their expectations of the unknown may not always turn out how they anticipated. Tony was unable to find a religion that suited his every belief, he could see the power of the witches, of ultima, and of the golden carp but never saw any physical sign of the power he originally believed in. Father Gonzaga was utterly stunned by the angel in an Old Man with Enormous Wings because all of his priestly teachings and catechism has incorrectly prepared him. The angel is completely different from what he expected, both visually and the level of his powers. He has to go back and consult his superiors leaving the angel with the townspeople. Without the overall elements of magical realism both stories would simply be too fantastic to be compared with realism. No one would able to interpret their deeper, hidden messages about our world, things that not even we can say about