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Fulgor Sedano
Bartolomé is Susana San Juan’s father. After Susana’s mother dies, Bartolomé takes the young Susana from Comala to the Andromeda mine in a remote area in the surrounding mountains. When violence breaks out in the area, he returns to Comala with Susana, reluctantly accepting the house that Pedro Páramo offers them. While Bartolomé resists Pedro’s request for Susana’s hand in marriage, Susana insists on leaving Bartolomé to go with Pedro. She hints that Bartolomé may not be her real father and might have sexually abused her in the past. After Susana leaves, like many of the novel’s other characters, he suddenly foresees the conditions of his own death: he realizes that he must return to the Andromeda mine to die. When he does, Pedro sends Fulgor Sedano to kill him. Bartolomé’s ghost visits Susana, who actually celebrates his death. She recalls a particularly traumatic moment when Bartolomé lowered her into the Andromeda mine, and she found a man’s skeleton at the bottom, in the same spot where he eventually died. Another example of how the past and present intermingle in Pedro Páramo, this episode suggests that Bartolomé was somehow dead and alive at the same time.
Bartolomé San Juan Quotes in Pedro Páramo
The Pedro Páramo quotes below are all either spoken by Bartolomé San Juan or refer to Bartolomé San Juan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Fragments 37-46, Pages 61-85 Quotes
I waited thirty years for you to return, Susana. I wanted to have it all. Not just part of it, but everything there was to have, to the point that there would be nothing left for us to want, no desire but your wishes. How many times did I ask your father to come back here to live, telling him I needed him. I even tried deceit.
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Fragments 47-59, Pages 86-108 Quotes
“Hand me that, Susana!”
She picked up the skull in both hands, but when the light struck it fully, she dropped it.
“It’s a dead man’s skull,” she said.
“You should find something else there beside it. Hand me whatever’s there.”
The skeleton broke into individual bones: the jawbone fell away as if it were sugar. She handed it up to him, piece afterpiece, down to the toes, which she handed him joint by joint. The skull had been first, the round ball that had disintegrated in her hands.
“Keep looking, Susana. For money. Round gold coins. Look everywhere, Susana.”
And then she did not remember anything, until days later she came to in the ice: in the ice of her father’s glare.
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Bartolomé San Juan Character Timeline in Pedro Páramo
The timeline below shows where the character Bartolomé San Juan appears in Pedro Páramo. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Fragments 37-46, Pages 61-85
Fragment 43. Back in the past, Fulgor Sedano tells Pedro Páramo that Bartolomé San Juan has returned to Comala. Fulgor doesn’t know why Bartolomé is back, but he...
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...have everything she could possibly imagine. Pedro even offered a job to her father, don Bartolomé San Juan. But the messenger kept failing to find Bartolomé and deliver him the job...
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Fragment 45. Bartolomé San Juan tells Susana, his daughter, that Comala smells unlucky. Everything was alive in La...
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Susana insists on going with Pedro. Bartolomé points out that Pedro has already had many other women, and he realizes that he...
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...Susana is the most beautiful woman in the world and then asks Fulgor to make Bartolomé disappear when he returns to the Andromeda mine. This will leave Susana with no option...
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Fragments 47-59, Pages 86-108
...stay to take care of Susana, who is sick. Justina thinks the voice is from Bartolomé, but before finding out, she starts to scream.
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...is bothering her again, and Justina embraces Susana and cries. She explains that Susana’s father, Bartolomé, has died. But Susana smiles: she realizes that the noise she heard in the night...
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Susana remembers once visiting the Andromeda mine with Bartolomé as a young girl. He lowered her down inside on a rope, until she hit...
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