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 sympat...