Juan Rulfo and PEDRO PÁRAMO

There are writers who stand out for writing numerous works, just as there are others who manage to express their genius in a few. This is the case of Juan Rulfo, a versatile artist who flirted in life with photography, cinema and literature. The Mexican artist published various stories and stories that were compiled in the book The Burning Plain, a feather loaded with a fantastic tint and a deep rawness. In this lesson from a TEACHER we will do a short summary of Pedro Páramo, the main novel by Juan Rulfo.

Juan Rulfo he was born in Sayula in 1917 and when he was around 6 years old his father was murdered. Shortly after this loss, his mother died. In this orphan condition, since childhood, he was developing a feeling of loneliness and strangeness that he would later replicate in his work. Although Juan Rulfo's style is characterized by having structured plots loaded with imagination and fiction, his prose is still a biographical reflection. Be part of the authors of magical realism in Latin America and one of the essential voices.

As Rodríguez points out in his text Juan Rulfo and the dream of time, the Mexican author achieved create a narrative that played with the times and the voices of the characters:

"This leads us to think of a structure similar to dreams, in which fragmentary scenes of the times are trapped."

Rulfo's literary proposal is a convergence of the past, the present and the future that, as Rodríguez says, “invents a new time of the narrative: a time of the ghost, which allows the ‘appearance’ and ‘disappearance’ of the characters, who without ceasing to be present, provoke the suspense". And for that very reason is an author who demands a slow reading or at least more than one reading.

In the same way, in his lyrics we find the mark of a violated and peasant Mexico, which speaks to us of mysteries and myths of marginalized social groups, of passions and losses. For sure, Pedro Páramo is a conglomerate in this style that transformed the Latin American literature of the twentieth century.

Before starting with the summary of Pedro Páramo, we are going to know the plot of the work.

In a spectral setting, in which time seems arbitrary and its inhabitants non-existent, Juan Preciado travels to the town of Comala. He wishes to fulfill the promise he has made to his mother on her deathbed: go in search of his father, Pedro Páramo.

By creating an aura of mystery we will discover the secrets that Juan's ancestors hide.

Abundance, who claims to be son of Pedro Páramo, he is the first person with whom Juan Preciado has contact, who shows him the way to town. Despite the fact that his mother had described Comala as a place full of life, we entered a ghostly world, an almost dreamlike place that appears to be abandoned.

In the summer of half a year, Juan enters the Eduviges Dyada house who claims to know his mother and offers him an inn. Juan's arrival in town is interspersed with chapters of the novel that tell the story of his father's love for Susana San Juan.

Between the past and the present

We discovered that the love he felt Pedro Paramo since childhood by Susana, a girl from the town that I can never conquer, prompts him to seek the power of Comala. After committing crimes and rapes, as well as receiving as an inheritance Media Luna (the property of his parents), Pedro He decides to marry Dolores Preciado (Juan's mother) to avoid outstanding debts from his family to that of his future wife.

Nevertheless, Dolores discovers greed and intentions that she was carrying her husband and she decides to abandon him with her son. After learning a little about Pedro's life, chapters return in which it is revealed that something strange is happening in that place.

Eduviges tells Juan Preciado the story of Miguel Páramo, a son of Pedro who fell from a horse and, after his death, different people saw the specter of him wandering. That same night, Damiana Cisneros, who lived at the Media Luna hacienda, wakes up Juan and warns him that it is impossible that Eduviges would have given him an inn, since she had died some time ago.

Comala, the ghost town

Little by little, the book takes us into the past death of the different villagers and, finally, Juan discovers that he is full of ghosts. In a return to the past, it is said that Susana drifts into madness when Pedro Páramo, in his unstoppable search for his love, decides to assassinate his father, Bartolomé San Juan. Susana's health deteriorated until her death, an event that devastates Pedro.

We end this summary of Pedro Páramo attending to the end of the novel. None of the characters seem to be able to escape the clutches of death. The violence, loss and loneliness that embody the spirit of Juan Rulfo seem to have taken their full form in this work and its ending. For this reason, it is not surprising that even our protagonist fell dead at night amid the surreal voices that roamed Comala.

Pedro Páramo sowed the seed that would make the people perish with his greed and brutality. From his deathbed, Juan Preciado tells us the story of himself and of his ancestors being himself a ghost.