Pedaro Peramo – Juan Rulfo

Pedaro Peramo – Juan Rulfo

Pedro Páramo is both a simple and very difficult work to summarize. It follows a labyrinthine structure in which the past is interspersed with the present, sometimes in ways that are not clear until halfway through a section. Much of the responsibility for crafting a chronological narrative falls to the reader. Furthermore, there are several narrators, some first-person and some third-person omniscient. This short summary will present events more or less as they unfold in the novel, though with some synthesis of events for the sake of a more cohesive summary.

The story begins with Juan Preciado narrating a trip he takes to his mother's home village of Comala. She has recently died and asked him to find his father, Pedro Páramo, in the village where she was born. As he approaches, a man on a burro, Abundio, overtakes him and leads him down to the valley. Abundio tells him that he is Pedro's son as well, and that their father has been dead a long time. He introduces Juan to the large expanse of land around Comala, called the Media Luna.

Once in the village, Juan finds it is deserted. He seeks out a woman named doña Eduviges on Abundio's recommendation, and finds her in an old house. She tells him that the voices of the dead can be heard in Comala, and confesses she knew he was coming, as his mother sent a message despite being dead. She tells Juan a bit about his mother's childhood and also that Abundio has been long dead as well. Juan tries to tell her about his aunt whom he grew up with, but she ignores him. Juan hears a horse galloping by, and is told about Miguel Páramo, Pedro's cruel bastard son - yet the only child he recognized - who was killed on a horse ride. His horse rides forever lamenting his owner's passing. She tells him about the night Miguel died, and seems sad about it.

Interspersed with Juan's first hours in Comala is a narrative recounting the childhood of Pedro Páramo. He is young and poor, and he pines for a girl named Susana who had left the village long before. He is reprimanded by his family for dreaming, and they send him to run errands. He later gets a job but shows an independent streak that keeps him from impressing his family. His memories shift to the moment when his father died, and the anger he felt over it.

The narrative shifts to the story of Father Rentería, the parish priest of Comala who hates the Páramo family but nevertheless forgives them their sins because they can pay. He hates himself for having blessed Miguel's corpse at the boy's funeral, since Miguel had raped the priest's niece Anaand killed her father. He is further haunted by memories of having denied Eduviges atonement because she killed herself, a hypocrisy considering he had forgiven Miguel for worse sins.

Back in Juan's present, Eduviges leaves him to sleep, but he is kept awake by howling in his room. Suddenly, Damiana Cisneros, another childhood friend of his mother, arrives and takes him to her house. She tells him the cries he heard were those of Toribio Aldrete, a man Pedro had murdered for refusing to cooperate with his takeover of the Media Luna.

The reader is introduced to adult Pedro, and his attempts to purchase the entire Media Luna. With the help of a supervisor named don Fulgor Sedano, who had also worked for Pedro's father Lucas Páramo, Pedro devises a plan to marry or romance the women to whom his family owes debts in order to avoid paying them back. Their first target isDolorita Preciado (who will later give birth to Juan). They are able to secure the marriage, and so does Pedro's conquest of the Media Luna begin. His first order of business is the murder of the man whose ghost Juan heard.

In the present, as Damiana walks Juan through town, she explains to him that many spirits haunt Comala, reliving their past lives. After she suddenly disappears from his sight, he overhears several conversations from spirits, most about Pedro. He begins to wonder whether he should leave the village, when a woman taps him on the shoulder and invites him to her home. He accepts, and there he meets the woman's brother, Donis. Donis and his sister are involved in an incestuous relationship, which has particularly scarred the sister. They seem to be alive, and invite him to stay. The next morning, he overhears them wondering whether his presence will damn their house. Donis is out when he awakes, and so the sister explains the extent of her misery living alone in Comala in such an unhealthy relationship.

Donis returns, and he and his sister leave together. Juan sleeps, until woken by an old woman who is taking sheets from under Donis's bed. He spends several days caught between sleep and waking. When he does wake up, he finds Donis's sister lying next to him. She tells him that Donis has left, perhaps forever, and that Juan can now take care of her. He wakes again later feeling stifled from the heat, and escapes out into the town square where, unable to breathe, he dies.

Juan then wakes underground, buried next to a woman named Dorotea. The rest of the novel involves their conversation and the voices they overhear. She challenges his account of his death, and he admits he died not from asphyxiation but from the "murmuring." She tells him to find comfort in the fact that he will be there for a long time, and argues that one should not be overcome with guilt and suffering. Every since Father Rentería once convinced her she would never be forgiven of her sins, she has been happy to live without excessive guilt.

Back in Pedro's day, don Fulgor oversees the success of the Media Luna, but is resentful about Miguel, who runs around without supervision, wreaking havoc on women and the community. Miguel has been accused of several murders, all of which Pedro's employees are expected to hide. Miguel is told about Dorotea, who, when alive, was a simpleton desperate to have a baby, and he recruits her to collect women for him in exchange for pay.

Later, Pedro is woken to find that Miguel has died, having been thrown off his galloping horse as the reader earlier learned from Eduviges. The father feels no sadness but knows he is beginning to pay for his sins. That night, Father Rentería wanders the countryside alone, upset about his weakness in allowing the Páramo family to buy their absolution. The priest recalls how he sought atonement for his own sins from a colleague in Contla, but was denied. Because of his shame over the denial, Father Rentería continues to refuse absolution to the poor of Comala, a hypocrisy that makes him feel even more guilty.

In Juan's present, he hears the voice of Susana San Juan, the girl whom Pedro loved most of all. She talks to herself about her own mother's funeral, which was organized by her nursemaid Justina. Nobody came to her mother's funeral. Dorotea explains to Juan how Susana, after returning in adulthood to Comala, was married quickly to Pedro, even though she was mentally unstable. Pedro was madly in love with her, and when she died, he gave up on life and let Comala and the surrounding countryside (all of which he owned) slowly die off. This is what led to the mass exodus from Comala, and the suffering that has followed many spirits into the afterlife.

In Pedro's day, Susana and her father, Bartolomé San Juan, return to Comala on Pedro's invitation. He had been searching for them for many years, and finally lured them back with the promise of a house. Though Bartolomé accepts the gift, he does not want his daughter involved with Pedro. There is a strong implication that he and Susana are involved in an incestuous relationship. Because of his resistance, Pedro and don Fulgor devise a plan to send Bartolomé to a mine where he can easily be killed.

Both through a voice that Juan hears and through an omniscient narrator, we learn how, following her father's death, Susana retreated into a feverish fantasy world where she revisited memories of her dead husband Florencio, whom she loved deeply. She refuses to accept Father Rentería's forgiveness, and is unaware of how deeply Pedro pines for her, watching her in the midst of feverish dreams each night, wishing he knew what she dreamed of.

Meanwhile, news is brought to Pedro that don Fulgor has been killed by a burgeoning revolution against the landowning class of rural Mexico. Pedro sends for the revolutionary leaders, and also recruits a mercenary namedEl Tilcuate to infiltrate the movement. When the leaders arrive, they are clearly disorganized and easy to manipulate, and Pedro convinces them to accept money and men from him, amongst whose number will be El Tilcuate.

Pedro's lawer, Gerardo Trujillo, tries to quit his employer's service but is forced to stay when not given a bonus. Pedro has continued to rape young women because he is unwilling to force himself on Susana, but he is terribly sad over her condition. Meanwhile, the revolution continues to grow, and now includes priests including Father Rentería. Pedro convinces El Tilcuate to continue to fight, but to leave him alone.

When Susana finally dies, after refusing again to receive last rites from Father Rentería, Pedro is devastated. When Comala coincidentally holds a fiesta in the days following her death, the grieved and angry Pedro promises to destroy them, which he ultimately does in the way previously explained by Dorotea. Pedro then retreats into an idle, depressive life, where he sits outside his house all day and does nothing.

Abundio, the guide who first brought Juan into Comala, is introduced in the context of the past. His wife has recently died, and he convinces a shopkeeper's mother to sell him cheap liquor. He gets drunk and stumbles around until he ends up begging money from Pedro, who denies him. Without knowing what he is doing, Abundio stabs Pedro and Damiana, who tried to protect the don. Though men arrive quickly to take Abundio away, Pedro slowly dies, thinking of Susana all the while, and happy to finally be released.

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

Synopsis

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

People's hopes and dreams as the source of the motivation they need to succeed is a major theme in the book. Hope is each character's central motive for action. As Dolores tells her son, Juan, to return to Comala, she hopes that he will find his father and get what he deserves after all of these years. Juan goes to Comala instilled with the hope that he will meet and finally get to know his father. He fails to accomplish this and dies fearful, having lost all hope. Pedro hopes that Susana San Juan will return to him after so long. He was infatuated with her as a young boy and recalls flying kites with her in his youth. When she finally returns to him, she has gone mad and behaves as though her first husband were still alive. Nevertheless, Pedro hopes that she will eventually come to love him. Dorotea says that Pedro truly loved Susana and wanted nothing but the best for her.

Father Rentería lives in 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 instead of pardoning him for his sins in exchange for a lump of gold because he is too poor to survive otherwise.

Along with hope, despair is the other main theme in the novel. Each character's hopes lead to despair since none of their attempts to attain their goals are successful. Ghosts and the ethereal nature of the truth are also recurrent themes in the text. When Juan arrives in Comala it is a ghost town, yet this is only gradually revealed to the reader. For example, in an episode with Damiana Cisneros, Juan talks to her believing that she is alive. They walk through the town together until he becomes suspicious as to how she knew that he was in town, and he nervously asks, “Damiana Cisneros, are you alive?” This encounter shows the truth as fleeting, always changing, and impossible to pin down. It is difficult to truly know who is dead and who is alive in Comala. Sometimes the order and nature of events that occur in the work are not as they first seem.

For example, midway through the book, the original chronology is subverted when the reader finds out that much of what has preceded was a flashback to an earlier time.

Interpretation[edit]

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, since 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 finding 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.^[3][4]

Meaning of title[edit]

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. His last name is symbolic because it means "barren plain", which is what the town of Comala becomes as a result of his manipulation. He is not only responsible for the economic well-being of the town but also for the existence of many of its inhabitants. His offspring includes 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[edit]

Pedro Páramo[edit]

Pedro Páramo is both protagonist and antagonist since his acts are at 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 death. His one fatal flaw is her. He cannot function without her or the incentive of her. Pedro serves as a fertility god figurehead in the work. He not only literally impregnates many of the town’s women, but he has many children (the priest brings many to his doorstep).He also is in charge of the well-being of Comala. 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 derived from the Latin petrus, meaning "rock," and "Páramo" means “barren plain”. This is ironic since in the end of the work Pedro collapses “like a pile of rocks” after observing what his land had become.

Susana San Juan[edit]

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 “talks” 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 flooded.

Juan Preciado – narrator[edit]

Juan is one of the two narrators in the work. He recounts 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, whom he talks with. It is apparent that he dies without the proper sacraments and is now stuck in purgatory.

Fulgor Sedano – mentor[edit]

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 boasts 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 hanged because he is trying to get the land surveyed to prove his right to some of it.

Miguel Páramo[edit]

He and Juan are both sons of Pedro Páramo. His character is the exact opposite to Juan. He is wild and a rapist, while Juan is quiet and respectful of women. He is fearless, whereas Juan dies of fear. He has a horse and rides it often, whereas 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[edit]

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 storytelling 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[edit]

He is really not the main character, but he possesses all the characteristics of one. He tries to stand up to Pedro and not 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 absolve 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 that grows in their region tastes 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. He is later mentioned as having joined the Cristero War.