Week 5 - Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo - Nicholas Latimer - On Ghosts, Revenge & Lust

Ghosts were everywhere in the town of this tale. When thinking of a ghost, my brain imagines a cartoon person who’s transparent, visibly supernatural, and floats through walls - haunting different rooms. There are some similarities here to this concept of ghosts, in that they are haunting the living people of Comala - trapping echoes and striking fear in others. The style of the text flows through different character perspectives - just like my ghosts float through the walls of a haunted house. Nonetheless, what is different is that these souls of passed characters are not obvious (at least, to me). This is confusing, as we’ll hear the impressions of dead people, or even be led to believe that a character (for example, Abundio) is real and living, taking part in the story - until it is revealed that “It couldn’t have been him…. Abundio has already died”! 

Rulfo recounts in his passage that he too found difficulty keeping up with the wildness of the strange town. He offers us sympathy in writing: “I believed that woman was crazy. And then I no longer believed anything” -  referring to Eduviges. I found it slightly necessary to adopt this “laissez-faire” attitude while floating like a ghost through the story, to not get stuck up on trying to figure out “did that really happen” or “who’se talking now”... Perhaps this is also helped by Jon’s 5-minute rule - although - sometimes Rulfo failed to give me all of the necessary information. But if the story wasn’t as much of a blur as it is - the incredible mashup of themes present might be less impressive. 

At first, I thought I would write about “letting the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy…” from the song “Take it easy”. The whole story merges (as suggested by our lecture) the concepts of death vs. life, and concepts of perpetuity - but what was evident was a theme of bitterness, resentment, or revenge that was haunting all of these people. Whether it was Rulfo’s mission to take back what was owed to them from his father, or Pedro’s fear that: “Abundio will come with his bloody hands to ask me for the help I denied him. And my hands will not be able to cover my eyes so I don’t see him. I will have to listen to him until his voice ends with the day, until his voice dies.”. 

This was powerful on its own. But I realize that beyond this - Rulfo displays a crazy story of love, lust, and affection. I realize now that Pablo was a wild and manipulative man - to his many women, but also to his peers (if you can call them that). Tying together these two ideas into one story of resentment, anger, love, and lust - made for a clearly successful book - albeit blurry and challenging to keep up with.  

My question for you is: Was one of these themes (love & lust, vs. resentment & revenge) displayed more than the other in the text? If so - why?

Comments

  1. Daniel OrizagaFebruary 13, 2023 at 12:22 PM

    "Rulfo displays a crazy story of love, lust, and affection". I find this idea interesting because this novel by Rulfo has been analyzed from the most different parameters you can imagine. Some even suggest not trying to find an interpretation but reading it as a poem (because of the way it is written in Spanish this is possible). Your way of approaching the novel, without getting too complicated with some details, and continuing to read seemed quite successful to me. Later, we can discuss these details in class.

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  2. Curtis HRFebruary 13, 2023 at 1:49 PM

    Hey Nicholas,

    Really liked your blog post.

    I felt that throughout the story the most pressing theme was one of 'intergenerational trauma', or more concretely, how the circumstance of those before you is still pertinent to you today. The origin of this continuing hardship was the death of Pedro's grandfather, which lead to his outbursts, the debts he was required to pay, and eventually his 'badness' was even transmitted to his son, Miguel.

    What do you think about this? This idea of continuing trauma.

    Take care,

    -Curtis

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  3. Jordan ClarkeFebruary 13, 2023 at 8:52 PM

    Hi Nicholas! I thought your ideas on the themes of the novel to be really interesting. I was more focused on the ideas of the intersection of life and death, and how each in their own way greatly impacts the other. However, after reading your post I did think that love was definitely a major theme in the story, but it feels like lust or maybe even like blind by desire was strong as well. When I first read the part about the mother wanting her best friend to sleep with Pedro instead of her, I was kind of shocked and confused. Her friend willing did this for her and then admitted that she loved him also. I feel like Pedro really likes all the attention of the women, and clearly a lot of women desire him, enough to like the guy your best friend likes. Anyways, not sure if this made sense, but that's what I think!

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