Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pedro Páramo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Death, Hope, and Despair
Power and Morality
History, Memory, and Narrative
Love and Patriarchy
Summary
Analysis
Fragment 13. On the sunny day of Miguel Páramo’s funeral, Father Rentería refuses to bless Miguel because he lived an evil life. Carefully avoiding Pedro, the priest sprinkles holy water on Miguel’s body and asks God to take mercy on him. As the congregants carry Miguel’s body out into the streets, Pedro approaches Father Rentería and admits that he has heard the rumors: Miguel murdered Father Rentería’s brother and raped his niece Ana. But he asks for his son to be forgiven—and offers a few gold coins as an incentive before leaving the church with two henchmen. Father Rentería offers the coins on the altar and prays that God do whatever is appropriate, then goes to a private part of the church and cries.
Father Rentería’s moral conflict about Miguel Páramo’s death shows how power corrupts. Father Rentería knowingly chooses his own self-interest not only above the moral principles that he is supposed to uphold personally and in the community. And more than this, he knowingly puts his self-interest above his love for and loyalty to his own family. This suggests that understanding the corrupting effects of power isn’t enough to prevent this corruption from taking root. Of course, Rulfo is also pointing out how political power corrupts religious institutions the Catholic Church more broadly: even though they are supposed to defend morality and justice, priests just become glorified politicians, lending their services to people who offer them wealth and power. (The Cristero Wars of 1926-1929, which come up near the end of the book, are a clear example of this tendency.)
Themes
Fragment 14. That same evening, Father Rentería tells Ana that Miguel is dead and buried. She admits that she is not sure that he was the one who raped her: it was too dark to see his attacker’s face, but he did identify himself as Miguel Páramo. He came to her window asking for forgiveness, then came inside her room and climbed on top of her. Afraid for her life, Ana froze. She does not remember anything until the next morning, when she was surprised to wake up alive. She did not recognize Miguel’s voice, but she does know that he killed her father and is now “in the deepest pit of hell.” Father Rentería is not so sure—the community is praying for Miguel. But he thanks God for taking Miguel, even if to heaven.
Listening to Ana recount her rape in detail, Father Rentería is too ashamed to admit that he helped pray for Miguel’s salvation. He even tries to discredit Ana by looking for holes in her story and trying to suggest that her rapist might not have been Miguel—even though there is really no doubt that it was him. Accordingly, even though he cares for her, Father Rentería ignores and discredits Ana in order to make himself feel better about his decision to help pardon Miguel. This behavior echoes Miguel’s manipulativeness: he claims to be making amends in order to win Ana’s trust but then takes advantage of this trust to assault her. In both cases, the men’s actions contradict their stated intentions. They actually make the harm they commit worse by showing that they view making amends as another way to manipulate people, rather than a meaningful way to atone for their crimes.
Themes
Fragment 15. A woman reports that Miguel’s horse has been galloping down the path to Contla, twisted around in an agonizing position, as though it were trying to kill itself. The news reaches Pedro Páramo’s Media Luna ranch, where the workers are sore from carrying and burying Miguel. Later, they hear that Miguel’s ghost is still visiting his old girlfriend in Contla, and they wonder if Pedro will try to discipline him. The sky is full of shooting stars, and they worry that this means Miguel has made it to heaven.
Miguel’s horse is a foil for Father Rentería, who is also haunted by guilt over Miguel’s death. Like Miguel, Father Rentería managed to escape Comala and pass the afterlife somewhere else, even despite his wickedness. Miguel’s ghost has not managed to leave yet, but rather continues to do exactly what he did in life, which proves that there really is no clear distinction between the living and the dead in the world of Comala.
Themes
Fragment 16. Father Rentería watches the same shooting stars that night. He feels unbearably guilty for compromising his principles in order to satisfy Pedro Páramo. Because he depends on the townspeople for his livelihood, he betrays the truly faithful in order to please the powerful.
To Father Rentería, the sky full of shooting stars seems to be a kind of message from God, pointing out his sinfulness and Miguel’s ascension to heaven. Father Rentería is really forced to choose between surviving and sustaining the church, on the one hand, and maintaining his principles but risking his wellbeing and the church’s survival, on the other. This does not mean that he is right to abuse his power, but rather that acting morally demands a self-sacrifice he is unwilling to make.
Themes
Get the entire Pedro Páramo LitChart as a printable PDF.
Father Rentería remembers Eduviges Dyada, who lived nobly and generously, giving the town’s men the sons they wanted. But when they refused to recognize or care for their sons, Eduviges committed suicide in despair. Rentería told Eduviges’s sister, María, that Eduviges would be damned for killing herself, even despite her lifetime of benevolent deeds. He told the destitute María she could only save her sister’s soul if she found the money to pay for prayers and masses. It would have been so easy for him to pardon and pray for her, as he did for the wicked Miguel Páramo. Father Rentería recites the names of saints to fall asleep, but realizes that this is sacrilegious. Guilt overwhelms him as he watches the shooting stars in the night sky.
Father Rentería’s unwillingness to pardon Eduviges underlines the way his greed turns the Catholic Church into an evil institution that perpetuates inequality rather than a benevolent one that fights it. His regret still cannot undo his crimes. By reciting saints’ names as a way of counting sheep, Father Rentería shows how he empties the Church of its real meaning and values. This passage also clarifies that Eduviges really is dead when Juan Preciado meets her and explains why she seems to have been completely forgotten. Tragically, she seems to be stuck in Comala because her old friends and benefactors—including Dolores Preciado—have not fulfilled their half of the bargain by praying for her. This suggests that goodness (and faith in others’ goodness) is fundamentally unrealistic and self-undermining: hope inevitably leads to disappointment.
Themes
Fragment 17. Back in the present, Eduviges Dyada tells Juan Preciado that he is lucky and then abruptly walks out of his room. Juan struggles to sleep. In the middle of the night, a despondent cry wakes him up, pleading for death. The town then falls into a silence so unfathomably deep that it feels like another dimension. The voice soon cries out again, demanding “a hanged man’s right to a last word.”
The strange cry in the night, like the ghostly figures who populate Comala, seems to be an echo from the past. It demands “a last word,” or the chance to tell its story and thereby get the redemption it was formerly denied.
Themes
A woman enters Juan’s room, introduces herself, and invites him to stay with her at the Media Luna ranch. Juan remembers his mother once mentioning her name: Damiana Cisneros. She cared for him as an infant. Juan agrees to go with her—after all, the bloodcurdling scream keeps interrupting his sleep. Damiana recalls that the Media Luna ranch hand Toribio Aldrete was hanged in this very room and then locked inside. Juan says that Eduviges let him in, saying it was her only free room. Damiana laments that Eduviges keeps “wandering like a lost soul.”
Unlike Eduviges, Damiana is a familiar figure to Juan, although her role as Juan’s childhood caretaker makes it clear that, like Eduviges, she is a foil for the mother he has lost. If Juan makes it to the Media Luna ranch, where Pedro Páramo used to live, it’s possible that he will be able to directly confront his father. When Damiana says that Eduviges is “wandering like a lost soul,” she means it literally: as the flashback Father Rentería has revealed, Eduviges is dead and her soul is stuck in Comala, unable to move on, perhaps because Father Rentería denied her the prayers she needed to get to heaven. It is easy to see Comala as representing purgatory—in which sinners await redemption and hope to eventually make it to heaven. Nevertheless, Comala’s people have largely given up this hope.
Themes
Fragment 18. The savvy ranch administrator Fulgor Sedano remembers filing a lawsuit accusing Toribio Aldrete of “falsifying boundaries.” He had a drink with Toribio, who mocked the absurd accusation. And then he rented the corner room from Eduviges and brought Toribio there. Toribio kept mocking Fulgor’s boss until he finally gave into his terror.
This scene is set in the same corner room where Eduviges lets Juan Preciado stay, which shows that Rulfo is not arranging the novel’s fragments randomly: rather, he uses specific characters, settings, and events to bridge the present and the past. This shows how experience and memory intermingle in Comala: like Toribio Aldrete’s screams, the past leaves a mark on the present. And just like Comala’s inhabitants fixate on the experiences of their lives, the past constantly recurs in this novel.
Themes
Fragment 19. Some time before killing Toribio, Fulgor visits Pedro Páramo’s house. He knocks on the door with his whip and sees a new black bow hanging on top of an old, faded one by the front door. He thinks back to his first visit, two weeks ago. (Before that, he hadn’t seen the young Pedro since his birth.) On this first visit, Fulgor planned to put Pedro in his place and got offended when he insisted on being called “don” Pedro. After all, Pedro never even went to the Media Luna ranch.
Much like Father Rentería after Miguel’s death, Fulgor is thrust into an awkward position when he starts working for the pretentious Pedro Páramo rather than his father, Lucas. Pedro seems to believe that, in addition to the ranch itself, he has also inherited the honor and respect that his father commanded. Ironically, then, he takes the principle of inheritance for granted even though he denies it to many of his own children (like Juan Preciado and Abundio Martínez).
Themes
During this earlier visit, Fulgor explained that Pedro’s family is in trouble: they have lots of unpayable debts and have already sold virtually everything they own. Pedro asked who they owe, and Fulgor read off several names. Fulgor suggested that someone was willing to buy family’s land, but Pedro accused Fulgor of being that someone.
What Pedro has inherited are his father’s debts: it’s now up to him to turn around his family’s legacy. There seems to be little hope of doing so through conventional business methods, but Pedro clearly has something else in mind. His hostility towards Fulgor shows that he would view losing the ranch as an unacceptable insult to his character, which in turn implies that he is deeply invested in holding and maintaining power in Comala.
Themes
Fulgor explained that the Páramos owe their greatest debts to the Preciado family, and specifically to Dolores. Pedro asked Fulgor to propose marriage to Dolores on his behalf and organize the ceremony with Father Rentería. Fulgor also asked about Toribio Aldrete, who had been trying to mark out his property with fences, but Pedro asked him to focus on Dolores for now—to tell her that he loves her, maybe “because of her eyes” or something like that.
Pedro’s plot to wipe out his debts by marrying the person who owns them finally reveals the mystery of Juan Preciado’s origin story and explains Pedro and Dolores’s unhappy marriage. Pedro’s willingness to blatantly lie about loving her in order to settle some debts shows that he puts wealth and power above love and human connection, which has no value in his eyes. Indeed, the fact that he sends Fulgor to do his bidding and can’t come up with a better explanation for loving her than “because of her eyes” shows that he is unconstrained by ordinary morality and views Dolores as so beneath him as to not even deserve his consideration. He treats her as a pawn in his personal game, not as a human being deserving of respect.
Themes
Fragment 20. During his second trip to visit Pedro, two weeks after the first, Fulgor wonders how Pedro got so crafty. In fact, Pedro’s father don Lucas always thought of his son as unreliable and a failure—he wouldn’t help with the ranch and even dropped out of the seminary. Don Lucas cared enough about the ranch to keep adding to it and ultimately stay around and ask Miguel for help, rather than simply leaving and moving on.
Fulgor and don Lucas saw Pedro’s disinterest in honest work as a sign that he was lazy, unintelligent, and unambitious. But it’s not the work part that Pedro detests, so much as the honest part. He views manipulation and theft as easier paths to power than playing by the rules, and only time will tell if he’s right.
Themes
Fragment 21. Fulgor charms Dolores into believing that Pedro loves her. He says that Pedro was just secretive about his feelings because don Lucas didn’t think he deserved a wife as beautiful as Dolores. Fulgor asks if Dolores is willing to marry Pedro in two days, but she asks for at least a week—she needs to prepare and, she is ashamed to admit, she’s on her period. He says that none of this matters, since marriage is just about love, and he rejects her plea for one more week. As he leaves, Fulgor reminds himself to have the judge give Pedro and Dolores joint ownership over all their property. At home, Dolores is ecstatic about the upcoming marriage.
Fulgor easily manipulates Dolores into accepting Pedro’s proposal, and she does not have the slightest suspicion of what is about to happen to her. In a way, this reflects the dangers of a society in which women’s power, status, and survival is entirely derivative of men’s: for a young woman like Dolores living in a small town like Comala, marrying well is the most important goal in her foreseeable future. But her naïve hopes for the future will inevitably lead her to disappointment.
Themes
Fragment 22. Fulgor reports to Pedro that Dolores will marry him. To perform the service, Father Rentería wants 60 pesos. He also pointed out that Pedro never attends church. Pedro asks Fulgor why he didn’t ask Dolores for this money and calls him “a baby” for not wanting to manipulate her. (Fulgor is 55, more than twice Pedro’s age.) Pedro orders Fulgor to go threaten Toribio Aldrete—to say that he measured his land wrong and put his fences on the Media Luna ranch’s property. Fulgor points out that Toribio’s fences are actually in the right place, but Pedro insists that, “from now on, we’re the law.” He tells Fulgor to send thugs to Toribio with a fake legal complaint.
Pedro Páramo has corrupted Fulgor just as he corrupted Father Rentería. He also corrupts the law itself, as both an idea and an institution. Like the Church and his father’s estate, Pedro sees “the law” as just another instrument that can be manipulated to his own ends. Given the book’s broader historical context, Rulfo seems to be suggesting that the government institutions created during and after the Mexican Revolution did not actually democratize the country, but rather just used the language of democracy to consolidate elite control over land and resources.
Themes
Fragment 23. On another visit, Fulgor plays with his whip again and looks at the black bows while waiting for someone to open the door. Inside, he explains that he’s settled things with Toribio Aldrete, and Pedro says that the Fregosos are next—after his honeymoon.
The reader already knows that Pedro ends up successfully controlling all of Comala, and here it becomes clear that he plans to keep using the underhanded and manipulative tactics he used against Toribio Aldrete to terrorize the rest of the town into submission.
Themes
