Blog #8

Daniel Cuevas-

He paused at the gaily lit door and said, I will wait and not enter until you lose your innocence.
But innocence is forever, I cried.
You are innocent when you do not know, my mother cried, but already you know too much about the flesh and blood of the Marez men.
You are innocent until you understand, the priest of the church said, and you will understand good and evil when the communion is placed in your mouth and God fills your body.
Oh, where is the innocence I must never lose, I cried into the bleak landscape in which I found myself. And in the swirling smoke a flash of lightning struck and out of the thunder a dark figure stepped forth. it was Ultima, and she pointed west, west to Las Pasturas, the land of my birth.
She spoke. There in the land of the dancing plains and rolling hills, there in the land which is the eagles by day and the owls by night is innocence. There where the lonely wind of the llano sang to the lovers feat of your birth, there in those hills is your innocence.(Anaya, 71)

This passage is another one of Tony's dreams. This dream mentions a topic in Bless Me Ultima. This topic being innocence. In addition, innocence is a theme in Bless Me Ultima that follows Tony through out his experiences in Bless Me Ultima. This passage shows that Tony is no longer innocent and that he left his innocence behind on the day he was born in Las Pasturas. In our world innocence is used as a euphemism to refer to someones virginity, and in our society you are kind of pressured to lose your innocence; if you dont you can be singled out. I believe that this is not the meaning of innocence Anaya is using to convey his thoughts. I believe that Anayas "innocence" symbolizes maturity and Tony growing up into an adult. Furthermore, this passage also states that Tony is not innocent anymore because he knows to much. For instance, when it states, "but already you know too much about the flesh and blood of the Marez men." Moreover, Tony's experiences like when he saw Lupito get killed and the things hes seen have caused him to lose his innocence. Also, I am curious in what other ways Anaya used innocence.