Pedro Páramo

by

Juan Rulfo

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Susana San Juan is one of the novel’s central characters along with Pedro Páramo (her second husband) and Juan Preciado (one of Pedro’s many illegitimate sons). Her return to Comala and marriage to Pedro Páramo are the most significant plotline in the book’s second half. Susana is born and raised in Comala, where she and Pedro are childhood friends. But her mother dies when she is young, and she follows her father, Bartolomé, to the Andromeda mine in the mountains. It’s unclear whether Bartolomé is really her father at all, or whether their relationship is sexual as well as familial. In adulthood, Susana marries a man named Florencio, and she never falls out of love with him, even though he dies young. She returns to Bartolomé at the Andromeda mine, but when armed conflict breaks out in the area around the beginning of the Mexican Revolution (1911), they return to Comala, and she insists on marrying Pedro in order to get away from Bartolomé. She lives out the rest of her life locked inside her room and her imagination. Bedridden, she constantly relives both pleasant and traumatic memories. Once she dies, her ghost does the same thing in her grave, while the ghosts of Dorotea and Juan Preciado listen to her from a distance and try to reconstruct her story. Because Susana is so lost in her own mind, she and Pedro never establish communication during their marriage; indeed, Susana only ever talks directly to Justina, her dear friend and longtime maid. Susana and Pedro represent opposite principles. She is associated with water, and he is associated with stone; she is dynamic and spontaneous, while he develops elaborate plots to control others; she is emotional, and he is unfeeling. The circumstances of her last days represent the way beauty, creativity, and freedom of thought are fundamentally indestructible but are often stifled and stunted by power, order, and hierarchy (especially patriarchy). Pedro’s attempts to win Susana’s heart through bribery and coercion are doomed to fail, which shows that the human love and freedom that Pedro destroys have an infinitely greater value than the gold and property he gains in the process.

Susana San Juan Quotes in Pedro Páramo

The Pedro Páramo quotes below are all either spoken by Susana San Juan or refer to Susana 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:
Death, Hope, and Despair Theme Icon
).
Fragments 1-12, Pages 3-24 Quotes

Water dripping from the roof tiles was forming a hole in the sand of the patio. Plink! plink! and then another plink! as drops struck a bobbing, dancing laurel leaf caught in a crack between the adobe bricks. The storm had passed. Now an intermittent breeze shook the branches of the pomegranate tree, loosing showers of heavy rain, spattering the ground with gleaming drops that dulled as they sank into the earth. The hens, still huddled on their roost, suddenly flapped their wings and strutted out to the patio, heads bobbing, pecking worms unearthed by the rain. As the clouds retreated the sun flashed on the rocks, spread an iridescent sheen, sucked water from the soil, shone on sparkling leaves stirred by the breeze.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo, Susana San Juan, Dolores Preciado (Juan’s Mother)
Related Symbols: Rain and Water
Page Number: 11-12
Explanation and Analysis:

Hundreds of meters above the clouds, far, far above everything, you are hiding, Susana. Hiding in God’s immensity, behind His Divine Providence where I cannot touch you or see you, and where my words cannot reach you.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Susana San Juan
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Juan Preciado, Susana San Juan, Bartolomé San Juan, Dorotea
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Susana San Juan (speaker), Bartolomé San Juan (speaker)
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:

“I went back. I would always go back. The sea bathes my ankles and retreats, it bathes my knees, my thighs; it puts its gentle arm around my waist, circles my breasts, embraces my throat, presses my shoulders. Then I sink into it, my whole body, I give myself to is pulsing strength, to is gentle possession, holding nothing back.
“‘I love to swim in the sea,’ I told him.
“But he didn’t understand.
“And the next morning I was again in the sea, purifying myself. Giving myself to the waves.”

Related Characters: Susana San Juan (speaker), Florencio
Related Symbols: Rain and Water
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Fragments 60-68, Pages 109-124 Quotes

“I… I saw doña Susanita die.”
“What are you saying, Dorotea?”
“What I just told you.”

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker), Dorotea (speaker), Susana San Juan
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:

People began arriving from other places, drawn by the endless pealing. They came from Contla, as if on a pilgrimage. And even farther. A circus showed up, who knows from where, with a whirligig and flying chairs. And musicians. First they came as if they were onlookers, but after a while they settled in and even played concerts. And so, little by little, the event turned into a fiesta. Comala was bustling with people, boisterous and noisy, just like the feast days when it was nearly impossible to move through the village.
The bells fell silent, but the fiesta continued. There was no way to convince people that this was an occasion for mourning. Nor was there any way to get them to leave. Just the opposite, more kept arriving.
[…]
Don Pedro spoke to no one. He never left his room. He swore to wreak vengeance on Comala:
“I will cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.”
And that was what happened.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Susana San Juan
Page Number: 116-117
Explanation and Analysis:
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Susana San Juan Quotes in Pedro Páramo

The Pedro Páramo quotes below are all either spoken by Susana San Juan or refer to Susana 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:
Death, Hope, and Despair Theme Icon
).
Fragments 1-12, Pages 3-24 Quotes

Water dripping from the roof tiles was forming a hole in the sand of the patio. Plink! plink! and then another plink! as drops struck a bobbing, dancing laurel leaf caught in a crack between the adobe bricks. The storm had passed. Now an intermittent breeze shook the branches of the pomegranate tree, loosing showers of heavy rain, spattering the ground with gleaming drops that dulled as they sank into the earth. The hens, still huddled on their roost, suddenly flapped their wings and strutted out to the patio, heads bobbing, pecking worms unearthed by the rain. As the clouds retreated the sun flashed on the rocks, spread an iridescent sheen, sucked water from the soil, shone on sparkling leaves stirred by the breeze.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo, Susana San Juan, Dolores Preciado (Juan’s Mother)
Related Symbols: Rain and Water
Page Number: 11-12
Explanation and Analysis:

Hundreds of meters above the clouds, far, far above everything, you are hiding, Susana. Hiding in God’s immensity, behind His Divine Providence where I cannot touch you or see you, and where my words cannot reach you.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Susana San Juan
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Juan Preciado, Susana San Juan, Bartolomé San Juan, Dorotea
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Susana San Juan (speaker), Bartolomé San Juan (speaker)
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:

“I went back. I would always go back. The sea bathes my ankles and retreats, it bathes my knees, my thighs; it puts its gentle arm around my waist, circles my breasts, embraces my throat, presses my shoulders. Then I sink into it, my whole body, I give myself to is pulsing strength, to is gentle possession, holding nothing back.
“‘I love to swim in the sea,’ I told him.
“But he didn’t understand.
“And the next morning I was again in the sea, purifying myself. Giving myself to the waves.”

Related Characters: Susana San Juan (speaker), Florencio
Related Symbols: Rain and Water
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Fragments 60-68, Pages 109-124 Quotes

“I… I saw doña Susanita die.”
“What are you saying, Dorotea?”
“What I just told you.”

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker), Dorotea (speaker), Susana San Juan
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:

People began arriving from other places, drawn by the endless pealing. They came from Contla, as if on a pilgrimage. And even farther. A circus showed up, who knows from where, with a whirligig and flying chairs. And musicians. First they came as if they were onlookers, but after a while they settled in and even played concerts. And so, little by little, the event turned into a fiesta. Comala was bustling with people, boisterous and noisy, just like the feast days when it was nearly impossible to move through the village.
The bells fell silent, but the fiesta continued. There was no way to convince people that this was an occasion for mourning. Nor was there any way to get them to leave. Just the opposite, more kept arriving.
[…]
Don Pedro spoke to no one. He never left his room. He swore to wreak vengeance on Comala:
“I will cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.”
And that was what happened.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Susana San Juan
Page Number: 116-117
Explanation and Analysis: