Pedro Páramo is a short novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo was a Mexican author and photographer. One of Latin America's most esteemed authors, Rulfo's reputation rests on two slim books, the novel Pedro Páramo , and El Llano en llamas...

, originally published in 1955. In just the 23 FCE

Fondo de Cultura Económica

Fondo de Cultura Económica is the most important publishing house in Mexico and one of the most important ones in Latin America. It was originally established in 1934 by Daniel Cosío Villegas as a way to provide students of economics with books in Spanish on the subject...

 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

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 collection El Llano en llamas

El Llano en Llamas

El Llano en llamas is a collection of short stories written in Spanish by Mexican author Juan Rulfo and first published in 1953.- Literary Reputation of the Author:...

, 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

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...

 said that he had not felt like that since reading The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world...

, while Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

 called it one of the best novels in literature.

The novel has been translated twice into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. The more recent translation is by Margaret Sayers Peden

Margaret Sayers Peden

Margaret Sayers Peden is an American translator and Professor, being a Missouri native and born in about 1920.-Career and Achievements:She returned to college to obtain her graduate degrees in later life...

 which has received numerous film adaptations. The first, by Spanish film director Carlos Velo

Carlos Velo

Carlos Velo was a Spanish film director. He directed 45 films between 1934 and 1983. His 1956 film Torero was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature....

 and starred by American actor John Gavin

John Gavin

John Gavin is an American film actor and a former United States Ambassador to Mexico. Gavin is half Mexican and fluent in Spanish....

 in 1967  and the latest will star Gael García Bernal

Gael García Bernal

Gael García Bernal is a Mexican film actor and director.-Early life:García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the son of Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model, and José Ángel García, an actor and director. His stepfather is Sergio Yazbek, whom his mother married when García Bernal was...

 and be directed by Mateo Gil

Mateo Gil

Mateo Gil Rodríguez is a Spanish screenplay writer and director.-Writer:*Agora *Mar adentro *Vanilla Sky...

.

Synopsis

The novel is set in the town of Comala, considered to be Comala in the Mexican state of Colima

Colima

Colima is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It shares its name with its capital and main city, 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.

Themes

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.

Plot summary and time line

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.

• Fulgor Sedano arrives at Media Luna: His old patrón, Lucas, told him that Pedro is totally useless and that he should go and get a new job when he dies.
• Pedro’s grandfather dies: His family prays for him after his death to help shorten his time in Purgatory. Pedro himself does not feel like doing this and instead thinks about Susana.
• Susana San Juan and Pedro Páramo play during their childhood: Pedro thinks about this often. They would fly kites near the village and Pedro would help Susana fly hers. He is scolded for taking so long in the outhouse by his mother, while he recalls this event.
• Senora San Juan dies. This event is assumed since Dorotea cannot remember seeing Susana with her mother ever. Susana also talks about how her mother died. She recounts that she was sickly and never visited anyone and how no one came to her funeral. Susana laments about having to pay for Gregorian masses for her mother and the heartless transaction of money required to be able to do that.
• The San Juan family moves to the mining region. Not much is known about this other than they lived there for many years and later returned to Comala.
• Susana and her Father explore the Andromeda mine. Señor San Juan drops Susana, at the end of a rope, down into the old mine shaft and tells her to look for gold coins. She is unable to find any, only a skeleton.
• Lucas Páramo was killed: He was shot at a wedding by a bullet that was meant for the bridegroom. Pedro later killed most of the people at that wedding. He also permanently crippled a man which Juan hears about in the grave.
• Florencio dies (exact time unknown). Susana’s husband dies and she tragically becomes mad. She still thinks that he is living. She stayed up late that night waiting for him, but he never arrived at home and in the morning she found out that he was dead.
• Fulgor Sedano tells Pedro about his father's debts: Sedano had avoided Pedro in the past because of the warnings of Lucas, but stayed on the hacienda because he loved the land. He has to tell Pedro about the debts. Pedro answers that: “I’m not interested in how much, just to whom.” They concoct a plan get Dolores Preciado to marry him to eliminate the debt to her family.
• Sedano and Dolores Preciado talk: Sedano tells her a lie about how much Pedro had wanted her and that he is really a very shy man. To this, she replies that she is having her period and cannot be married so soon. Sedano is scornful of this reason.
• Osorio warns Dolores Preciado not to sleep with Pedro on her wedding night. She beg Eduviges Dyada to go and sleep with Pedro in her place. Eduviges does this, but Pedro is too drunk to have sex.
• Miguel Páramo is killed by his horse: He is going to Contla to visit his girlfriend and to have sex with her when he attempts save time on his journey by jumping his horse over a fence that his father had built. His horse’s name is El Colorado, and it was said that this horse would be the death of him one day. His ghost came back to tell Dyada about this.
• Miguel Páramo is absolved by the Church: Father Rentería absolves him after Pedro Páramo gives him some gold coins. The priest realizes that he cannot afford to anger the leader of the town, Pedro, by not doing so. The priest is upset that he absolved his brother’s killer and niece’s rapist.
• Rentería talks to his confessor: He is not forgiven of his sins as he did not give absolution to the dying. The other priest chastises him for not doing his job and saying that the people of Comala believe in God more out of superstition rather than actual adoration. They talk about how the land is bitter in Mexico.
• Dorotea Confesses: Dorotea goes to Father Rentería and tells him that she was the one who was procuring girls for Miguel Páramo. She is drunk at Miguel’s wake. She tells the priest that she had brought girls for Miguel for years and years and that she had lost count of how many she had gotten. The Padre said that there is nothing that he is able to do about it. He cannot forgive her and says that she will not “go to Heaven now.”
• Toribio Aldrete is hung: He was plotted against by Fulgor Sedano and Pedro Páramo who accused him of “falsifying boundaries”. Toribio owned some land that Páramo wanted to add to his hacienda. Pedro orders Sedano to write charges for Aldrete’s conviction. One night Aldrete is drunk and goes into Eduviges Dyada’a house (the corner room) and is hung. He is left to “turn to leather” and to never have salvation. The key to the room is thrown out. Ironically, Eduviges gives Juan Preciado this room in her house in which to stay the night. He then hears an echo of the past while sleeping and awakens suddenly.
• Dolores Preciado (Juan's mother) leaves Pedro Páramo and the Media Luna hacienda: She is looking at a crow in the sky and says that she wishes that she was this bird and could fly to her sister’s house in the city. Pedro becomes angry enough to finally dismiss her. She leaves and never returns. She and Pedro are never divorced.
• Eduviges Dyada kills herself: Her sister. Maria Dyada, tells Father Rentería that it was out of despair. “She died of her sorrows.” But the priest laments that all her good work has gone by the wayside and that she will be unable to get into heaven. The priest says that only with prayers will she be able to get into heaven and even then nothing is certain.
• Start of the Mexican Revolution
• Return of the San Juans: Señor Bartolomé San Juan refuses to read the letters from Pedro asking him to come and be his administrator. He is finally found and comes back to Comala only because the Revolution makes the countryside dangerous. He finds out the Pedro wants only his daughter.
• Señor San Juan dies: Before, while working, he had realized that he would die and that he must die. Additionally, Sedano and Pedro conspire to have him killed. He dies and goes to heaven. His “spirit” comes to say goodbye to Susana. Susana laughs that he came to say goodbye to her while Justina cries. He must have been killed since his ghost does not haunt the town.
• Fulgor Sedano is killed: A scared man comes to Pedro’s house with the news. He says that the revolutionaries stopped him and Sedano and told Sedano to run and tell Pedro that they were coming for him and then shot him as he ran.
• Pedro joins Revolution: He calls the local revolutionaries to his house for supper. He promises to give them much money and support, even more than they had asked for. By doing this he managed to remain safe and preventing the soldiers from attacking his lands.
• El Tilcuate, the revolutionary leader, and Pedro talk: Pedro tells Damasio that he has no more money to give to him to fight and that he should go and raid a larger town to get supplies.
• Susana San Juan dies: She refuses absolution by the priest. She is simply waiting for death to come and take her. Father Renteria gave her communion, but she is semi-delirious and is talking to Florencio. Susana says that she “wants to be left in peace.” She dies without receiving the last sacraments.
• The party: The people of Comala have a large fiesta which is full of drinking and wild revelry. This greatly annoyed Pedro who wanted people to mourn his loss of Susana. He says, “I will cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.” And that is what happened
• Refugia Martinez dies: This is the wife of Abundio. He had stayed up all night with her and she had died in the morning. He is out to get drunk to forget his troubles. He goes to the Villalpando’s store to do so.
• Damiana Cisneros’s slaying: Abundio Martínez frightens Cisneros and she begins to scream. In his drunken state he becomes confused and begins to stab her. While doing so, he thinks about his wife and that he only wanted money for her burial. He is then captured and dragged back into town.
• Pedro Páramo dies: He is stabbed by his illegitimate son, Abundio. Pedro dies after think about Susana. It can be discerned that with her death, he died too. He realizes that he cannot move his arms and the ghost (apparently) of Cisneros comes to him and then he dies.
• Dolores Preciado dies: Her death wish is for Juan to find his father and get what he deserves from him after all of these years.
• Juan Preciado comes to Comala: He meets the ghosts of:
  • Abundio
  • Dyada
  • Cisneros
• He is taken in by Donis and his sister/wife.: He is scared to death.
• Dorotea dies
• Juan and Dorotea are buried in the same grave.

Interpretation

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.

Meaning of title

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.

Characters: major and minor

Major Characters- There are three main characters, their three stories all intertwine and twist together. They are Pedro, Juan, and Susana San Juan.

Pedro Páramo

- 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.

Susana San Juan

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 Preciado – narrator

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.

Fulgor Sedano – mentor

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.

Miguel Páramo

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.

Dorotea – narrator

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.

Father Rentería – antihero

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.

Minor characters

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.

Influence

A quotation from the novel was an epigraph

Epigraph

Epigraph may refer to:* an inscription, as studied in the archeological sub-discipline of epigraphy* Epigraph , a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component...

 to an article about the Mexican Drug War

Mexican Drug War

The Mexican Drug War is an ongoing armed conflict taking place among rival drug cartels who fight each other for regional control, and Mexican government forces who seek to combat drug trafficking. However, the government's principal goal has been to put down the drug-related violence that was...

 in Time magazine

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

in 2011.

External links

• Pedro Páramo (2004) the theatre by Theatre Formation Paribartak of India