Flowering Judas Summary & Analysis

Braggioni’s constant presence is a reminder that Laura’s time is not her own, nor does she have the run of her own house.

Braggioni and Laura have fallen into a routine where she feels she must tolerate him, placating him with requests for a song that she couldn’t care less about. By being forced the say the right thing, Laura is clearly compromised.

Braggioni is a has-been revolutionary whose desires are decidedly un-revolutionary, as he accumulates followers and sustains his power through fear. There is a hint that Braggioni may have been more devoted to the revolution in the past, but those days are well behind him.

Laura is an exotic figure for Braggioni, being a young American woman in Mexico. Thus he has turned her into a kept woman who is permanently in his debt and must therefore resist the urge to express her true feelings.

Laura acknowledges the gulf between what she expects of a revolutionary hero and Braggioni, and blames herself for her unrealistic expectations. Yet she still maintains her ideals, even in light of more cynical peers like Braggioni who essentially exploit her, seeing her only as a prize to be won. This puts Laura in a precarious position, as she must fend off Braggioni without offending him and risking her livelihood.

Laura has high expectations for life, though she suspects herself of naiveté. She wishes she could escape Braggioni, not just because he insists on lecturing her, but because she wishes to return to the innocence that she has known, a sense of justice that has nothing to do with somebody like Braggioni.

While Braggioni dresses himself in fine clothes, Laura wears plain, conservative garments and sees her political faith as her true “uniform.” She wants to be seen as a good socialist instead of simply a beauty. It’s also significant that Laura’s knees are clutched together, as she’s clearly not interested in Braggioni’s advances.

Laura’s peers reject Christianity, as they likely follow Marx in seeing religion as “the opiate of the masses.” But Laura’s Catholicism still lingers, and she struggles to resolve it with her political faith while hiding her visits to the church from the others. To the socialists, machines are holy because they are the tools of the working masses. Laura, however, insists on handmade lace, which she associates with the figures of the saints in the church. Her balancing act between religion and politics, machine labor and craftsmanship, is represented by her many lace collars, which she buries in her wardrobe, figuratively stuffing down her competing loyalties.

Braggioni’s song rings entirely false, as he is neither lonely nor friendless—the narrator has already pointed out that Braggioni has a whole slew of adoring followers, and will later reveal that he has an even more adoring follower in his doting wife. The content of the song is also at odds with his plump figure and his fine clothes. His ammunition belt further speaks to his hypocrisy, as it is worked in silver, implying that it is largely for show. Braggioni plays the part of the troubadour and revolutionary but is really just a power-hungry nuisance.

Power is how Braggioni measures wealth, and by that standard he is rich. His comforts now are his “small luxuries” like fancy perfume and other goods that set him apart from the largely poor Mexicans whom he uses to consolidate his power. In this passage, Braggioni opens up and confesses his disillusioned philosophy and deep disappointment in human nature. Like Laura, he once held lofty sentiments, which he feels life stripped from him. He expects the same will come of Laura, and warns her that she, too, will wind up a crushed realist. While this may be well-intended advice, Braggioni’s predatory demeanor and “yellow cat’s eyes” suggest that he’s also trying to break down his victim.

Laura is gripped by a nameless fear and remembers that she is at risk every day as a woman and could easily wind up killed. She wants her life, and death, to stand for something and resolves not to die dishonorably. She also reproaches herself for betraying the commitments that brought her to Mexico, where she is now essentially trapped. Her horror of Braggioni comes partly from seeing too much of herself in him. 

Laura wonders what all her efforts are for, as she hardly makes a difference teaching English to native children. Yet she continues to go through the motions, carrying out revolutionary errands for political prisoners, as well as simply keeping them company. She also brings them drugs, a detail that foreshadows a tragedy later in the story. However, all of Laura’s work with the imprisoned dissidents is nothing compared to what Braggioni could easily do by insisting on their release, once again highlighting Braggioni’s obsession with accruing power. They wait for Braggioni to come through for them, but he bides his time in order to bind them to him further.

Laura helps wanted men escape the firing squads and makes sure they have enough cash to make it to the relative safety of Vera Cruz. This is in contrast to Braggioni, who shrugs off their needs and plays his cards carefully to ensure he remains in control while having to do very little.

The ridiculous agitators spend more time trying to outsmart one another rather than opposing the state apparatus, further depicting the Mexican political scene as corrupt and focused on power. Each man thinks he is more clever than the other, and both flirt with Laura, with whom they imagine a connection. That Braggioni gamely manipulates both men again points to his moral depravity and obsession with gaining power. Laura, meanwhile, continues to be seen as woman first and person second, as the idea of a woman of abiding political commitment is unheard of for the locals.

Emiliano Zapata Salazar was a hero of the Mexican Revolution, meaning that the young captain in this passage has considerable prestige. However, he proves foolish and vain, attempting to help Laura off her horse, something she can do quite well herself, only to embarrass himself. When he writes Laura professing his love, she thinks of sending him crayons because, to her, he is little more than a child.

Laura embraces local custom in throwing the Judas blossoms at the minstrel, but only winds up encouraging him—like Braggioni, the minstrel won’t take Laura’s polite and indirect “no” for an answer. She chastises herself for partaking in superstition, another betrayal symbolized by the Judas tree from which Christ’s betrayer, Judas Iscariot, is said to have hung himself. Still, Laura adjusts to the near-constant presence of the minstrel and the poems he writes her and tries to keep her composure, much as she does with Braggioni.

Laura’s circumstances are increasingly claustrophobic. She sees danger lurking all around her, her only defense being the word “No,” which has come to seem to her a kind of holy incantation. She says “No” to the men who proposition her and “No” to Braggioni, who, like the minstrel, is undeterred. Instead, he asserts himself as an authority on feminine beauty and all but harasses Laura outright. He continues to sing ballads, hoping to woo the virginal Laura, while she waits for the inevitable moment when she turns him down and he finally relents for the night and goes home.

Braggioni remembers his youth, when he was scrawny and romantic, an object of desire for the women of his neighborhood possessed of revolutionary notions. This is a sharp contrast to his embittered sensibility as an adult. Delgadito, or “skinny man,” is now a hypocritical and bloated politician who hates peasants and only gives them coins in order to make them dependent on him. Braggioni also demonstrates his blatant misogyny in this passage, as he blames all women for his wounded pride and sees them as interchangeable sex objects.

Braggioni’s wife is a fascinating, if minor, character who commits to progressive causes much like Laura, but is too much of a realist to believe that she can ever be as free as Laura yearns to be. She accepts her second-class status as a woman and yields to Braggioni who clearly torments her and jokes menacingly of the consequences if she fails to please him. Laura sees Braggioni’s wife’s situation as her potential fate should she continue to fall under Braggioni’s power.

The conflict between religion and politics is perhaps most tangible in Braggioni’s relation of the two parades headed for collision. Braggioni expects and even welcomes violence, despite the fact that the marching socialists and the Catholics are suggestively positioned as essentially two sides of the same coin. By flaunting his gun belt, Braggioni again pretends to be a hero, and even recalls his service for future Mexican President Pascual Ortiz Rubio during the Revolution. (Ortiz’s presidency will be a disappointment as, following the assassination of reformist president Álvaro Obregón, he will be little more than a puppet.) Laura uncharacteristically challenges Braggioni to put his money where his mouth is and kill someone in the embattled city of Morelia, where clashes between local farmers, rebels, and the army are common. However, she may mean the comment sarcastically, implying that Braggioni is still behaving like the revolution is still at its peak and he is still a soldier rather than a corrupt oaf full of empty threats and false promises.

Laura’s culpability in Eugenio’s death haunts her. This passage reveals that Eugenio took his own life rather than wait for Braggioni to get him out of prison. Braggioni’s callousness in calling Eugenio a fool further depresses Laura, who is left alone with her guilt after Braggioni finally leaves. Braggioni is here contrasted not only with Laura, who is in the figurative trenches of the revolution, but with the martyred Eugenio who suffered for his beliefs.

In a scene reminiscent of Mary Magdalene’s washing of Christ’s feet, Mrs. Braggioni likewise washes her husband’s feet as a way to humble herself before him. Braggioni weeps before his long-suffering wife, a theatrical scene of making-up that is implied to be nothing more than routine because of the phrase “this time.” In this way, Braggioni’s wife continues to exist as subordinate to the unfaithful and emotionally manipulative Braggioni. Perhaps because he has just had a particularly frustrating interaction with Laura, who refuses to be subservient to him, Braggioni “this time” takes great pleasure in his wife’s penitent, submissive tears and feels reinvigorated.

In the story’s final scene, Laura’s twin belief systems—Catholicism and socialism—are united in her dream of Eugenio and the Judas blossoms. In another echo of Christ, Eugenio tells Laura that by eating the blossoms, she has consumed his body and blood. This is a reference to the Eucharist, wherein Catholic belief holds that wine and bread are transformed into the blood and body of Christ through a process called transubstantiation. Eugenio blames Laura for his death and tries to take her hand and lead her to the death that she has been dreading. When she awakens with her usual cry of “No!” she fears going back to sleep, just as she fears that she can never go home again or escape the circumstances that restrict her freedom and bind her to her thankless, empty existence in Mexico.