Author Archives: Syndicated User

Hope in "The House on Mango Street": Do you need to be selfish to survive?

I think so far this is the book I have thought of the most, not only is my group working on a Wikipedia article that showcases it, but I think it has just left me thinking about its meaning. The more I read it, the more I look at articles about it or analyze its characters, the more contradictions I find. I haven’t made up my mind on whether I like it or not, I think I’ll never really know.

While I was reading it, I couldn’t help wonder what message this book is communicating, I am trying to pinpoint it amidst the other books we’ve read this semester. To start off the author dedicates this book “To the Women”. We can see that for most of the characters are women, and most of the stories about the struggles of women. However, it is simply narrating issues women face but not conveying any empathy nor hope. We simply get the idea that Esperanza wants to escape this, we see that she is different from the rest of her community, or she feels different. We notice the same in Piri, how he also seems to be facing a different struggle from that of the “group”. These stories are really about the protagonists and not the community. That is what I find unsettling in a certain way. It doesn’t mean that it is good or bad, just that I don’t get peace at the end because the struggles of these communities just persist, and the existence of these protagonist doesn’t generate any change in the lives of those around them. I find that in Esperanza’s and Piri’s stories they both come across as selfish individuals. Esperanza seems to be always dissatisfied with her state in life, only finding her “house” when she is older and by herself. This defies that saying of “home is where family is”. An article I read about this book also said that Esperanza was only able to leave Mango Street on the backs and sacrifice of many women, so in a way she benefits from the ‘system’ as well. When piecing this altogether, I see it as a mechanism adopted by Esperanza to survive, if you don’t empathize and set yourself apart from your community it makes it easier to look outside of it for an escape route. Esperanza lived her emancipation very privately, we don’t see her sharing this with friends of her age. We see her interaction with mentors, older women, but these are speaking out of regret, for they weren’t able to seize the right moment to escape, they either dropped out of school, got married, got pregnant, etc.  

Having this in mind, what does it say about Chicano culture? Why are these issues so prevalent? Specifically when portraying women as victims and men as perpetrators? This isn’t really a kink because these woes, sadly, are seen as a norm. Where can we find voices that speak out for equality and not for a disordered emancipation? I ask this last question because in this book there really isn’t a fixed model of femininity/womanhood, women are portrayed as objects and servants, and Esperanza herself thinks that by emulating the qualities of a man is how she escapes this “I am one that leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up a plate”. With this Esperanza associates being a women with being tame, with following orders, with being pretty, and a subordinate, when that isn’t what femininity is about. Here being a wife is seen negatively, being a mother is seen negatively and dismissed as almost nothing. There is no value put in motherhood. In my view, such an important role of a woman, a role only performed by women, is completely disregarded or badly portrayed. Is the book saying that to escape this culture women ought not to marry and be mothers? What does this say for the future of strong Chicana women, those to whom this book is dedicated to? If the cells of culture are families, how is it to be transmitted without a positive perception of motherhood? How is that communicated in these books? Where is the hope, the Esperanza, for Chicano culture? I haven’t seen it myself so far, maybe I missed something.

The House on Mango Streets: Don’t forget who you are … and remember to come back!

It has been difficult to find what’s my favorite book until now. To be honest, I was not really happy when reading the first two books. But since Down These Mean Streets until now, it is very difficult to choose one that I have liked the most, because all of them were really good. The last three books have surprised me and helped me analyze some social issues and topics trough different perspectives.

However, when it comes to The House on Mango Streets, I feel this book touched a very sensitive point inside me. One part that really makes me identify with Esperanza is when she fights so fiercely for going out from Mango Street. She wants to go away and have a nice house of her own. But, she is not only dreaming about that, as her mother used to do. Esperanza does not leave anything by chance,  she is persevering and determined to achieve that; and eventually it is nice that at end of the book she achieves this dream.

Yet, another common message that this book outlines, is  that Esperanza should not forget who she is and where she comes from. Almost at the end of the book, we can read this: “You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are. […] You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you” (p. 105). This part of the book is kind of repetitive. Esperanza is always expected to come back to her origins and don’t ever forget that. It is as if she has, in a sense, “the duty” to help the ones that are still in Mango Street, the ones that do not born with the same destiny of Esperanza, and who sadly have to live hard moments in that special but also difficult neighborhood that characterizes Mango Street.

This message is kind of intriguing because I’ve also had the need to come back to my country and help those people who did not have the opportunity to go abroad and study in a University like UBC. However, in the case of Esperanza it is difficult to know for sure if this is a personal duty she imposed for herself, or if it is more like a duty that society expects her to meet.

One final though I have in my mind is that it is confusing to know for sure if Esperanza  is the one that achieves his goal, meaning that she has the agency to carve her own destiny, or if it is luck that plays on her favor and permits her to go out of Mango Street because “she is special”, as one of the three  old women  told her.

I think it is needed more blogs to talk about this book. I have focused more on Esperanza and on the topics mentioned before. But, there are many stories more in this book that are also valuable to analyze. Esperanza’s neighbors have also very interesting, and (some even sad) lives. Sally is one of the characters that really caught my attention in this book, as well as Ruthie.

I really enjoyed this book, hope you also enjoyed it ????

The House on Mango Street

This blog post is going to be a bunch of random thoughts mushed together!

I remember one of my little sisters bringing home “The House on Mango Street” in grade 7 and asking me for help with the assigned questions.  She kept saying she didn’t understand the point of the book, and didn’t know why the chapters were so short.  Looking back, I can understand why someone in grade 7 might not understand the ‘point’ of this particular book.  The problem is that they are always looking for a point.  It’s interesting that at the beginning Sandra Cisneros even says that she didn’t want to write a book that “a reader won’t understand and would feel ashamed for not understanding” (xvii).  On the topic of shame, one of the biggest ‘themes’ (not sure if it’s a theme in the book but whatever) that stood out to me throughout this book was in fact shame.  Esperanza talks about her aunt being ashamed, herself being ashamed, etc.

Just like with Piri and Antonio, we are able to follow Esperanza’s  ‘journey’ and witness her growth; however with this book, for first time we are presented with a female protagonist.  One part that really stood appears in what’s perhaps one of the shortest chapters I have ever seen: “Those Who Don’t” (28). The chapter begins with the following: “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighbourhood scared.  They think we are dangerous.  They think we will attack them with skinny knives.  They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” (28).  It’s interesting that Esperanza uses “we”; she clearly identifies very closely with her community, but on the other hand, we see later on that her own community also causes her problems.  What’s clear at the beginning is that she wants to be involved and play an active role in her community.  Esperanza is also always talking about what she wants in the future; it’s as if she is rushing the experience of growing up.  I think this is a very relatable feeling for many young girls.  On page 73 she says: “I want to be all new and shiny”.  In other chapters she talks about wanting to own her own house, being held by a boy, etc.  She also doesn’t consider herself like other girls, and she makes it clear; she doesn’t even “cross the street like other girls” (72).  Esperanza seems to like having responsibilities, no matter how small or big they are.  “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from.” (87).  This is just one example where I began to think about the whole idea of ‘pride’ and the role it has played in this book, as well as the others.  My question is: what role does pride play in this book?

On page 56 we learn that her abuelito has died and because she is the oldest, the responsibility is on her to tell the others.  She has never seen her father cry before, she has never seen him vulnerable; now she is holding him in her arms. I remember seeing my dad cry for the second time when my grandmother died; it’s such a strange feeling seeing your parents in a vulnerable state, and having to comfort them instead of the other way around.  I don’t think Esperanza ever thought she would see her father like that and have to comfort him, after all, he is a ‘man’.

I was thinking about a question Jon asked us last week:  is this Esperanza’s story or is this every young female Chicano’s story?

The House on Mango Street

I can honestly say that The House on Mango Street was not what I expected when I began reading the book. Perhaps this is because I kind of did it backwards, as I read analyses on the book for the Wiki Project before reading the actual text, so I was expecting more of a novel that was written like others we have read in the class. So, its short, poetic-like narrative caught me by surprise.

It certainly is an interesting and intriguing way to write; not quite a novel, nor a short story. Not quiet a poem, nor a play. While it is a length of a novel, it is made up of short pieces, each of which have rhythm and rhyme, but are all connected by a unified story line. One article poses the question, “Is this a novel or a mere collection of letters?”, and this is a valid question.

The book is a testimony to her life – the poverty, cultural suppression, gender inequalities, her fears, her doubts, her bravery in overcoming obstacles and social constructs. Perhaps, then, the fragmented and unconventional way of the narrative is a reflection of the multi-faceted and fragmented life that she has experienced. One thing that I hadn’t noticed when reading this novel is the fact that each chapter (if that’s even what they’re called) can be read individually without any context. Apparently, this was purposeful on Cisneros’ part as she stated in an interview that she “wanted to write a collection which could be read at any random point without having any knowledge of what came before or after. Or that could be read as a series to tell one big story. I wanted stories like poems, compact and lyrical and ending with reverberation.” To me, this speaks to how great and skilled of a writer she really is, as making the individual parts seem whole by themselves, while also making them a congruent and continuous full story, is no easy task. This might be a stretch, but perhaps this is symbolic or reflective of her (and everyone’s) identity – we have snap shots of experiences in our lives that can be viewed as an episodic memory, one that holds part of who we are, but we can also view those memories as a continuous lifeline that makes us up as a whole person; we are both defined as those individual memories that can be recalled and retold without much context, yet we are also defined by all of them at once.

Before I end this post, I would also like to comment on the name Esperanza. On page 11, she describes the meaning of her name: “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it is mine. She looked out the window all her life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow …. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window”. The inheritance of this name also means that she has inherited the social constructs surrounding it – submission of women in a world of patriarchy and cultural suppression. In other words, she has inherited the “sadness” and “waiting” that is present in the lives of women in the patriarchal world she lived in. However, she goes on to say that she would “like to baptize [herself] under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Martiza or Zeze the X. Yes. Zeze the X will do.” I find it interest that she provides no explanation of where those desired names come from nor what they mean to her, but I think this chapter really highlights her resistance against the cultural constraints that hold her and her immense desire to break free.

Week 11—The House on Mango Street

So all term long, I have dreaded bloging about The House on Mango Street. Not because I didn’t like this book; on the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But this book is so different from any book I’ve ever read.

Then it dawned on me: kink. This book is a kink.

The Introduction really brings this to the fore. First of all, it occupies just over 20% of the copy space of the entire book (of the edition I read). It’s xxvii pages long! And unlike the Forward in Bless Me Ultima, where Anaya blathers on about how great his book is, Sandra Cisneros shares with us the experience of writing her book. The writer tells her reader, up front, that what they are about to embark on is rather out of the ordinary. She says what she had in mind was “a book that could be opened at any page and will still make sense to the reader who doesn’t know what came before or what comes after.”

When I read this book for the first time over Christmas (actually, it was on my Christmas wish list and was a stocking stuffer from my husband), I read it in a linear fashion, from cover to cover, beginning to end. When I picked it up for a second read last week, I decided to do as Cisnero suggests in her Introduction, and read miscellaneous chapters at a time (marking the ones I had read), from where ever I opened the book. And she’s right; the reader can open the book and start where ever they want, without knowing what happened previously, and without knowing what is going to happen—and it still makes sense.

As far as literary analysis goes, and the methods with which I have been taught to use, this throws everything out the window. There is a plot, but it doesn’t really happen in the format of ‘beginning, middle and end’ if you read it from any point. Each segment takes on its own plot with its own mirco- beginning, middle and end. And the characters don’t develop in the same way as they would reading a novel from cover to cover. Some characters only exist for a paragraph, some for a page…and then vanish as if you’ve passed them in the street or noticed them briefly in a coffee shop. The setting, while it all takes place in Chicago, isn’t really impacted by reading the book in this way. The reader may be taken to a street, or a stolen car or school, only to turn the page to find that this mini adventure is over and another begins. The result: a collection haphazard little snippets and anecdotes that unite to tell a story about the protagonist, Esperanza. If anything, I enjoyed reading the book in this way more because I didn’t expect anything to happen. Yes, it is anticlimactic (which is something else this book seems to lack), but truth be told, I wasn’t searching for a climax. Each chapter managed to take me away from the craziness I now find myself in.

What a curious book this is. And for this reason, I find that The House on Mango Street is, in itself, a kink. A written-word collage, like photographs taken of someone else’s life journey and shared during a trip down memory lane, or a picture book you get at an art gallery where each page is a different painting.

My blogsong this week is “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. This song came out just a couple of years before The House on Mango Street was first published. Tears for Fears are an iconic band from the UK. This song captures, for me at least, the craziness of the world we are now surviving in.

Be well, and stay healthy.

The House On Mango Street: the need to escape

As far as I’m concerned, The House on Mango Street is a book about the need to escape. Throughout the book, the narrator expresses, through various metaphors and direct allusions, her desire to be free and to escape from this miserable life in this poor neighborhood of Chicago. What does Esperanza want to escape from? The book begins with a description of her intense disappointment at the discovery of her new home on Mango Street. Throughout the book, Esperanza expresses her desire to escape the poverty and detrimental living conditions associated with her home. In addition, she wants to escape from the neighborhood in which she lives, frequently expressing her feeling that she does not belong there (even though she expresses her attachment to her community). Last but not least, Esperanza wants to escape the “traditional” patriarchal roles that oppressed Chicana women. To clarify this point, I think it is important to point out that most of the chapters begin with a female character’s name and that most of the book describes in negative terms the events that happen to these women. Every female character is trapped by abusive husband or father. It is interesting to note that Esperanza describes different ways for women to achieve their freedom, but not all of them are conclusive. One of the possible ways would be the possibility for beautiful girls/women to marry a man. However, in all cases, for example in the case of Sally, they try through this marriage to escape from a reality of misery (because of poverty or physical abuse) but end up trapped in similar conditions. In the end, by creating her own story, Esperanza creates her own solution to escape this trap. Two quotes from the book struck me. The first is on page 89: “I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure, I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the char or picking up the plate”. The other is page 108: “Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. With […] My books and my stories”. These two sentences clearly define the message of the book. If the woman wants to escape the traditional expectations of gender roles, she must take her own destiny into her own hands and break this dependency on the male figure.

Even more interestingly, Esperanza describes the means by which she expresses her desire to escape. I noticed that the window metaphor is recurrent throughout the book. The window symbolizes the trap in which all the women in the book are stuck, because of their violent partners, but at the same time it represents their deep desire to escape from this reality. Another omnipresent symbol is that of the trees whose “only reason is to be and to be”. The trees represent Esperanza’s desire to get out of this dependency by herself and for herself. Finally, her books, stories and poems are a practical way to escape her reality and express who she really is.

(I should precise that I am writing this post at Amsterdam airport (my second Paris-Lyon flight has been cancelled and replaced by 2 other flights Paris-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-Lyon) and I have not slept more than 24 hours. So, if you could be indulgent aha).

Week 10—Bless Me Ultima (part ii)

I’ll cover a couple of things in my blog from this past week. First and foremost, is Matilda, our dog joining us in class today. She’s been rather lonely and out of sorts since Clarabell passed away at the end of January. So when I moved from the dining room table to the couch as the battery on my lap top got low, Tilda didn’t realise I was in class and decided she needed to join. I don’t have the heart to push her away, mea culpa.

As Jon mentioned, I’ve been delinquent in getting my blog out this past week. I’ve run amok, so to speak. Compiling thoughts in any cohesive manner has been difficult for me. But the discussion of our class today has helped me a little.

But I am going to do things backwards and discuss a song to which I’ve always turned when I feel ill at ease, and then relate it back to Bless Me Ultima. The song is “Day is Done” by Peter, Paul and Mary, a folk/ hippy group from the 60s (before my time by the way…). The song starts with the lines “Tell me why you’re crying, my son, I know you’re frightened, like everyone”, which rather reflects how I feel lately over this whole Covid-19 hoopla, social distancing and isolation. Someone, with more wisdom than the child, is asking what’s the matter. Perhaps the asker has the answer or can help ease the ill-at-ease feelings.

Back to Bless Me Ultima now, this is almost, for me at least, like the relationship Antonio has with Ultima. Ultima seems to have all the answers. Or if she doesn’t, she has the ability to make Antonio feel more secure, as a child, with the troubling things he sees going on around him. Perhaps Ultima doesn’t say anything, but she seems to know how to make him feel better or more assured. Which is what religion does, I suppose. I’ve been a recovering-Catholic since my mid 20s, after having converted to Catholicism at the age of 14 (yes, odd I know…in fact, I am the only Catholic in my family and very nearly became a priest). But it is what we believe that provides us with reassurance, regardless of whatever that is. As children, this reassurance often came from adults, or a grandparent, like Ultima does for Antonio and his family.

My grandpa died 6 December 1986. I can still hear his voice, smell his smell of DuMaurier cigarettes and Mentos mints. I remember this day as if it happened yesterday. It was 6 minutes after 8:00 in the morning, and the phone rang. I had a habit of asking who it was when I didn’t answer the phone. I never got an answer, but I knew what happened. I knew it was Grandpa. I sat with my Mum in the living room for the morning, staring off in to space, in absolute shock. Mum wasn’t able to provide me with comfort because she too was just a child looking for comfort. And now that I have no grandparents left, there is a feeling of being on my own, to find my own way that often overwhelms me.

I think this is what Ultima means when she tells Antonio that he cannot go on if Ultima is with him all the time. How can he develop and mature into adulthood, finding his own way, if Ultima is always there for him to rely on? Sooner or later we need to all put our big boy/ girl pants on, and be brave, and face the big scary world.

On that note, I end my odd blog this week. Slightly off topic, I admit, but perhaps we can all be brave in the newness of the current conditions in which we find ourselves…and find comfort in knowing that at least twice a week we are among each other on Google Hangouts for a bit of a break from the real world.

Please, be safe and be healthy.

Bless Me, Ultima II

anaya_ultimaThe phrase that gives Rudolfo Anaya’s novel its title, “Bless me, Ultima,” does not arise until almost the very last page, when Ultima is on her deathbed. She is dying not so much because she herself is sick or has been injured, but because the owl that in some way represents her soul (is her soul?) has been shot and killed. Placing the bird, wrapped in a blanket, by the old woman’s bed, Antonio, who has been her acolyte and intimate, “drop[s] to [his] knees” and asks

“Bless me, Ultima–” Her hand touched my forehead and her last words were “I bless you in the name of all that is good and strong and beautiful, Antonio. Always have the strength to live. Love life, and if despair enters your heart, look for me in the evenings when the wind is gentle and the owls sing in the hills. I shall be with you–“ (260-61)

And so the torch is handed on. Of course, Ultima has to die for Antonio to become what he will be, and to be in a position to chart his own path in the future. His childhood is now at an end, and so therefore is this narrative, which has described what its very first page described as a “magical time” (1) so evocatively. However much has happened in the twelve months or so that the book covers (from the beginning of one school year to another), it is understood that in many ways this was all an interlude, a respite from another form of reality, or perhaps another way of looking at the real, which will pick up again after the final page has been turned.

In fact, it is perhaps surprisingly Antonio’s father, otherwise portrayed as somewhat lost (all at sea in more than one sense of the term: both restless and left behind), who best captures this sense of impending transition. Talking of magic (and even beyond the mystical connection between owl and Ultima, there is plenty of magic in Anaya’s novel), he says: “To the child it is natural, but for the grown man it loses its naturalness–so as old men we see a different reality. And when we dream it is usually for a lost childhood, or trying to change someone, and that is not good. So, in the end, I accept reality” (248). Ultimately, Antonio will have to accept reality, to be fine with the fact that he will inevitably (like all of us) lose his childhood, and to learn that he cannot change anybody–not his mother, nor his father, or his brothers. (Again, the sisters get remarkably short shrift throughout the novel.) But if he cannot change anybody, he has to find some sympathy for them, perhaps precisely because of the recognition that they cannot be changed, that they are simply playing out their destiny. It is this sympathy, more than any hocus pocus with potions, that is Ultima’s true magic. Though, again, it is up to Antonio’s father to point this out, when he tells his son that “no greater magic can exist” (248).

As the novel heads towards this conclusion, it becomes ever less a specifically “Chicano” novel. These lessons, whatever one may think of them, surely purport to be universal rather than particular. Indeed, as Ultima exits the scene, urging Antonio to “gather my medicines and my herbs and [. . .] take them somewhere along the river and burn them” (260), her “magic” thus becomes transmuted from traditional, indigenous knowledge, located in place and time, to general human sympathy, applicable anywhere “the wind is gentle and the owls sing in the hills” (262). Of course, this raises the question of what a “Chicano” novel should be in the first place. Why shouldn’t it have aspirations to something like universality? Indeed, the fact that Anaya’s book so successfully and almost seamlessly (magically?) transmutes the particular into the universal is surely a large part of its remarkable success. And yet, I wonder what is lost in this procedure, which at times feels like dilution into rather banal uplift and cheer (“Always have the strength to live. Love life”). Especially given that the novel has in fact portrayed much that is far from lovely–not least the three deaths that Antonio has already witnessed at close quarters even before the book’s dénouement–I for one find its closing moral(ism) somewhat disappointing.

Bless Me, Ultima: Part 2

Alright here we go. I think this whole post is just going to be a rant how everything is so weird right now.

First of all, I’m sad (like actually) because we won’t be able to come in and do our discussions in person. It was impending but I guess I didn’t realize that our last class was probably the last class that I will get to see most of you guys. Trying to get myself to do things while sitting at home trying to stay away from the crowds has been rough so fingers crossed for the upcoming weeks.

Okay now I’m going to talk about the book. I might sound like I’m overreacting but I wish I wish I wish, oh how I wish that someone told me ahead of time that this book was going to  be “graphic”, if that is even the word to use to describe it. There were times that I would try to read the book late at night to just find myself setting it down after a few pages because some chapters just creeped me out, particularly the burial of one of the Trementinas. I find the book really interesting but the supernatural aspect of it is not sitting quite well with me.

Anotnio has had a very good coming of age in terms of experience I would say. I don’t know how I would have processed everything if I were him. Everything that he was taught or believed contradicted each other, and he has a clouded image of who God is and His character.

A scene I would relate to this is the school play. During the nativity play, the parts to be played by the girls had to be played by the boys. Maybe this is just my interpretation and I don’t know if it actually means something but it’s interesting how the boys had to fulfill the girls’ roles, but in reality it seemed like Antonio had more faith in the Virgin Mary than in God. Also, I think the whole play is a depiction of how people try to perfect religion and want to attain a certain level of morale with good deeds and “trying to be like God” when in reality, not a single person can attain that perfection.

With that being said, I don’t want to forget about the night with Ultima, Narciso, Gabriel and Tenorio. After reading this chapter and the chapter of this play, I saw the two ends of Antonio’s spectrum of beliefs almost being represented to be faulty.

 

Bless Me, Ultima Part 2:

This novel has been quite interesting in giving the reader an interesting view of the different issues a child may face as they are progressing through life be it related to identity, religion, or culture. One of the main ideas of Bless Me, Ultima, is witnessing the process of Antonio leaving his childhood behind and acquiring his own knowledge as he goes through the process of maturing. At first, the reader is witness of an innocent boy who is unaware of the dangers and difficulties that life has to offer. We accompany Antonio through this loss of innocence and his realization of the good and evil in the world. With this loss he acquires other qualities which  can be seen as wisdom and maturity.  Throughout the novel we see this transition in many experiences that Antonio witnesses or is involved in. An example of one of these experiences is witnessing the murder of Narciso. He sees how Narciso’s life is taken away by Tenorio, a villainous man who has an obsession with seeking revenge against Ultima. After witnessing Tenorio shoot and fleeing the crime scene, Antonio hears Narciso’s last confession. In order to give the dying man comfort in what he wants to share, we witness Antonio listening to the man’s last dying words which can be perceived as him taking the role of a priest. Another scene that touches on the loss of innocence is when Antonio witnesses his brother Andrew at Rosie’s house. We can view this scene as one that may relate to Antonio’s earlier dream, where Andrew tells Antonio that he would not enter the house until Antonio loses his innocence. If Andrew’s entrance to Rosie’s house relates to the past dream Antonio had, this means that he has lost his innocence, which is related to the naïve and childlike perspective he begins with in the novel. We also start noticing how Antonio begins to defend his beliefs and grows a sense of confidence about them. This can be seen with his conviction to defend Ultima against the mob who come to his house with Tenorio in seek of vengeance. He is willing to speak up and to partake in the defense of Ultima. As I read through the novel, I was able to witness a coming of age story through the perspective of a young boy and witness his growth and maturity into becoming a man.