| Pedro Páramo | |
|---|---|
Second edition |
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| Author(s) | Juan Rulfo |
| Translator | Margaret Sayers Peden |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish |
| Publisher | Fondo de Cultura Económica |
| Publication date | 1955 |
Pedro Páramo is a short novel written by Juan Rulfo, originally published in 1955. In just the 23 FCE editions and reprintings, it had sold 1,143,000 copies by November 1997. Other editions in Mexico, Spain, and other nations have sold countless more copies. It is Rulfo's second book, after the short story collection El Llano en llamas, translated into English as The Burning Plain and other Stories. It has had a major influence in the development of magical realism and it is told in a mixture of first and third person narration. Gabriel García Márquez said that he had not felt like that since reading The Metamorphosis, while Jorge Luis Borges called it one of the best novels in literature.[1]
The novel has been translated twice into English. The more recent translation is by Margaret Sayers Peden which has received numerous film adaptations. The first, by Spanish film director Carlos Velo and starred by American actor John Gavin in 1967 [2] and the latest will star Gael García Bernal and be directed by Mateo Gil.[3]
Contents |
The novel is set in the town of Comala, considered to be Comala in the Mexican state of Colima.
The story begins with the first person account of Juan Preciado, who promises his mother at her deathbed that he will return to Comala to meet his father, Pedro Páramo. Juan suggests that he did not intend to keep this promise until he was overtaken by subjective visions of his mother. His narration is fragmented and interspersed with fragments of dialogue from the life of his father, who lived in a time when Comala was a robust, living town, instead of the ghost town it has become. Juan encounters one person after another in Comala, each of whom he perceives to be dead. Midway through the novel, Preciado dies. From this point on most of the stories happen in the time of Pedro Páramo. Most of the characters in Juan's narration (Dolores Preciado, Eduviges Dyada, Abundio Martínez, Susana San Juan, and Damiana Cisneros) are presented in the omniscient narration, but much less subjectively. The two major competing narrative voices present alternative visions of Comala, one living and one full of the spirits of the dead. The omniscient narration provides details of the life of Pedro Páramo, from his early youthful idealization of Susana San Juan, his rise to power upon his coming of age, his tyrannical abuses and womanizing, and, finally, his death. Pedro is cruel, and though he raises one of his illegitimate sons, Miguel Páramo (whose mother dies giving birth), he does not love him. He does not love his father (who dies when Pedro is a child), or either of his two wives. His only love, established from a very young age, is that of Susana San Juan, a childhood friend who leaves Comala with her father at a young age. Pedro Páramo bases all of his decisions on, and puts all of his attention into trying to get Susana San Juan to come back to Comala. When she finally returns, Pedro makes her his, but she constantly mourns her dead husband Florencio, and spends her time sleeping and dreaming about him. Pedro realizes that Susana San Juan belongs to a different world that he will never understand. When she dies the church bells toll incessantly, provoking a fiesta in Comala. Pedro buries his only true love, and angry at the indifference of the town, swears vengeance. As the most politically and economically influential person in the town, Pedro crosses his arms and refuses to continue working, and the town dies of hunger. This is why in Juan's narration, we see a dead, dry Comala, instead of the luscious place it was when Pedro Páramo was a boy.
One theme is that the hopes and dreams of people will give them the motivation that is needed to succeed. Hope is the largest motive for each character in the work. Dolores tells her son, Juan, to return to Comala with the hope that he will find his father and get what he deserves after all of these years. Juan goes to Comala instilled with that hope that he will meet up with his father and finally know who he is. He fails at this challenge and dies of fear and not with hope. Pedro hopes that Susana San Juan will return to him after all of these years. He had a childhood crush on her and remembers flying kites with her from when he was a child. When she returns to him, she is crazy and lives as if her first husband is still alive. But nevertheless, Pedro has hope that she will eventually come to love him. Dorotea says that Pedro truly did love Susana and wanted nothing but the best for her. The Padre lives with the hope that he will someday be able to fully fulfill his vows as a Catholic priest and tell Pedro that his son will not go to heaven, rather hell, instead of pardoning him of his sins for a lump sum of gold because he is too poor to make ends meet otherwise. Along with the theme of hope in the work is despair. All of the characters in the work have had their hope meet with cold despair and none of their attempts have come to any success. Another theme is ghosts and the ethereal nature of the truth. The entire town is a ghost town, when Juan arrives it. The reader slowly realizes that this is true. For example, with Damiana Cisneros, Juan believes that she is alive. He walks through the town wit until he smells a rat wit her telling him that she knew that he was in town. This causes him to nervously question, “Damiana Cisneros , are you alive?” This encounter shows the truth as quickly fleeting, always changing, and never able to be pinned down and examined. It is difficult to truly know who is dead and who is alive in Comala, and sometimes the order and nature of events that occur in the work. Additionally, the reader believes that the they are read in the work as it happens but on page 66 the truth is rapidly changed as they find it out it is a flashback to the grave with Dorotea and Juan telling her of his experiences.
The sequence of events for the plot is broken up in the work and is at times difficult to discern. Each plot event is stated and then defined in more detail.
Critics primarily consider "Pedro Páramo" as either a work of magical realism or a precursor to later works of magical realism. This may be deceptive, however, as magical realism is a term coined to note the juxtaposition of the surreal to the mundane, with each bearing traits of the other. It is a means of adding surreal or supernatural qualities to a written work while maintaining a necessary suspension of disbelief. "Pedro Páramo" is distinct to other works classified in this manner, because the primary narrator states clearly in the second paragraph of the novel that his mind has filled with dreams and that he has given flight to illusion, and that a world has formed in his mind around the hopes of a man named Pedro Páramo. Likewise, several sections into this narration, Juan Preciado states that his head has filled with noises and voices. He is unable to distinguish living persons from apparitions. Certain qualities of the novel, including the narrative fragmentation, the physical fragmentation of characters, and the auditory and visual hallucinations described by the primary narrator, suggest that this novel's journey and visions may be more readily associated with the sort of breakdown of the senses present in schizophrenia or schizophrenia-like conditions than with magical realism.[4][5]
The title of the work is Pedro Páramo. It is obvious that the title underscores the importance of the character of Pedro Páramo. Pedro is a very important character and his life and decisions that he makes are key to the survival of the town of Comala. He is not only responsible to the economic well-being of the town but also for the existence of many of its inhabitants. His offspring include Abundio, Miguel, and Juan along with countless others. He is commonly seen raping women and even Dorotea cannot keep track of all the women he has slept with. He is also responsible for the security of the town. He strikes a deal with the revolutionary army and does so mainly in his own self-interest and for protection. But being the owner of such a large swath of land, he is, by extension, in charge of the physical well-being of the town. An example of his power is when he decides to allow Comala to starve and do nothing with the fields and with the crops. The town withers on his apathy and indifference. The entire work centers around his actions, appetitive and aversive. He holds the town of Comala in the proverbial palm of his hand.
Major Characters- There are three main characters, their three stories all intertwine and twist together. They are Pedro, Juan, and Susana San Juan.
- protagonist and antagonist. He is both protagonist and antagonist since he acts a cross-purposes. He is capable of decisive action, like when he eliminated his debt and took over more land, but is unable to use that decisiveness to do any good for the community. He is like a tragic hero in the way that he longs for Susana and is totally unable to get over her passing. His one fatal flaw is her. He cannot function without her or the incentive of her and he does not. Pedro serves as a fertility god figurehead in the work. He not only impregnates many of the town’s women literally, but he also is in charge of the well being of Comala. He has many children (the Padre brings many to his door step) such as Miguel but also can “cross his arms” and let Comala die. This shows that he has the power of life and fertility over the town. Pedro’s name has great significance in the work. Pedro is Peter in English and means the “rock of Christ” and Páramo means “barren heat”. This is ironic as in the end of the work Pedro collapses “like a pile of rocks” after observing what his land had become.
She is the love of Pedro’s life. They grew up together. Her mother died friendless and later her father is killed in the Andromeda mine by Sedano - so that Pedro can marry her. She loved her first husband very much and went mad when he died. She thinks that he is still living and she is apparently “talking” to him several times in the work. She appeared to have loved him for his body and not for his personality. She might have had sex with Pedro, but it is apparent that he wanted to have her. They were never married since he had never divorced Dolores. He is full of grief when she dies and refuses to work anymore and lets the town die. She is commonly portrayed and symbolized as the rain and water. In the passages that she is in, there is a backdrop with it raining. Such an example of this is the scene with Juanita, Susana, and the cat. The entire background is the rain, it is raining torrents and the valley is all flooded.
Juan is one of the two narrators in the work. He is recounting his story for the first half of the work, up until his death. He comes to Comala in order to find his father, his mother’s last wish. He finds the town abandoned and dies of fright from the ghosts. He is then buried in the same grave as Dorotea who he talks with. It is apparent that he dies without the proper sacraments and is now stuck in purgatory.
He is the administrator of the Media Luna and also plots with Pedro to increase the landholdings. He had been around the estate for many years serving the former don, Lucas. He knows what to do and how to do it and boast a number of achievements including getting Dolores to marry Pedro. He is killed by a band of revolutionaries who view him as an embodiment of the privileged estate that they are fighting against. He also is responsible for having Toribio Aldrete hung because he is trying to get the land surveyed to prove his right to some of it.
He and Juan are both sons of Pedro Páramo. His character is the exact opposite to Juan. He is wild and a rapist whilst Juan is quiet and respectful of women. He is fearless whereas Juan dies of fear. He has a horse and rides it often where Juan does not and has to travel by foot. His wantonness contrasts the calmness of Juan despite their shared parentage. Additionally, he is known for liking loose women and for murdering Ana’s father. He also rapes Ana when he goes to her to apologize to her for killing him. He is thrown from his horse when going to another village to meet his current lover.
She is the second narrator in the work. She tells the story of Comala before Pedro died after she is buried in the grave with Juan. Her story telling dominates the second half of the work. She was known for being homeless and living on the charity of the people in the town. She had always tried to have children but had “the heart of a mother but a womb of a whore.” She was known for her eccentric behavior by thinking that she had a baby.
He is really not the main character but he possesses all the characteristics of one. He tries to stand up to Pedro and not to give absolution to his son, Miguel. He has only the best intentions in mind but is unable to carry them out. His brother was killed by Miguel and his niece was raped by him. He takes some gold to bury Miguel, and he feels poorly about it throwing himself in a corner and crying to the Lord.
He goes to another town to try to get himself forgiven of his sins so that he could continue to give the sacraments to the people of Comala. The other priest refuses but they talk about how everything in Mexico is so sour and bitter. It is directly Father Rentería’s fault that so many souls are stuck in Comala. He had failed in his duty to absolve those people and administer the last rite to them and thus they died and were unable to go to heaven.
Eduviges Dyada Good friend of Dolores Preciado. They promised to die together and help each other through the afterlife. She had died years ago and greets Juan when he arrives at Comala. She tells him of how she almost “came within a hair of being his mother” since she had to go and sleep with Pedro on their wedding night. She tells of her relationship and relations with Miguel Páramo and how it was she that saw his ghost before it left. Her sister, Maria Dyada tells the Father that her suicide was out of despair, and that she was a really good woman. He refuses to help her and thus her ghost remains in the town and purgatory. She dies with the idea that Abundio is a good man and does not know about his murdering Pedro.
Dolores Preciado She was Juan’s mother. She was wooed into marriage to Pedro by Sedano who said he thought of nothing but her all day and night and that her eyes were beautiful. Pedro owed her family the most money of all the other families, and her sisters had already moved to the city. She was married to annul the debt. Later, she is staring at a buzzard and says that she wishes that she was the same, so that she could fly to her sister in the city. Pedro gets mad enough and dismisses her for good. They are never officially divorced. Her dying wish is for Juan to go and see his father and “make him pay for all those years he put out of his mind.”
Abundio Martinez He is the mail carrier. Dyada calls him a good man and that he was deaf since a rocket went off near his ear. After that he did not talk so much and he became depressed. Later, his wife dies. He goes to get drunk at a local bar and does so. When leaving he sees Damiana Cisneros and asks her for some money to bury his wife. He startles her and she begins to scream. He then kills Pedro Páramo, his father, is captured, vomits, and is dragged to town.
Inocencio Osorio He is the town’s seer. He is the one who tells Dolores not to sleep with Pedro on her wedding night. His nickname is “Cockleburr” since he is well known to be able to stick to any horse and break it.
Damiana Cisneros She is the cook at the Media Luna and is the ghost who takes Juan from Dyada’s on that first night. She is sad to hear that Dyada is still wandering the earth. Juan takes a while to realize that she is really a ghost; and, for a time, thinks that she is still alive. She was murdered by Abundio. She was also one of Dolores’s good friends and Juan knew about her when he arrived at Comala.
Torbio Aldrete He is a property surveyor. He was splitting and dividing up Pedro’s land and was going to build fences. He is stopped by a plot by Pedro and Sedano. They plot to try to stop him from doing the survey and draw up a warrant against him. Sedano goes to Dyada’s house one night with a drunken Aldrete and hangs him and throws away the keys to the room. He remains there in spirit and wakes Juan on his first night in Comala with his death screams.
Donis and his wife/sister These two are some of the last living people in the town. Donis is suspicious of Juan and his motives for being there and thinks that he is a murderer and does not want him to spend the night. His wife/sister likes him there and does a little extra to try to get him some more food since they have so little. She trades some of the old sheets for food and coffee. Donis is glad that Juan showed up as he could now leave the town and have his wife/sister taken care of. Years ago, it is recounted, that a bishop went through and refused to marry the two.
Justina She is Susana’s caregiver. She has taken care of her for many years, since she was born. She cried over the death of her mother and Susana told her to stop crying. Justina is scared one day by a ghost or Pedro who tells her to leave the town as Susana would be well cared for. Susana hates her cat and it keeps crawling under the covers of her bed and annoying her.
A quotation from the novel was an epigraph to an article about the Mexican Drug War in Time magazine in 2011.[6]