Pedro Páramo

by

Juan Rulfo

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History, Memory, and Narrative Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Death, Hope, and Despair Theme Icon
Power and Morality Theme Icon
History, Memory, and Narrative Theme Icon
Love and Patriarchy Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pedro Páramo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History, Memory, and Narrative Theme Icon

In Pedro Páramo, Juan Preciado goes to his birthplace, the small Mexican town of Comala, to make sense of his past. He wants to find his father, Pedro Páramo, and honor the memory of his recently deceased mother, Dolores. But when Juan arrives, he realizes how little he really understands about the town. It’s no longer the beautiful green valley his mother remembered, but a barren wasteland located “at the very mouth of hell,” full of ghosts. These ghosts roam Comala forever, stuck in a kind of eternal purgatory. They represent the chapters left out of the town’s history, and they give Juan a completely new perspective on his own past. However, they do not fill in all the gaps, since it is impossible to ever perfectly recall and comprehend the past. Rather, Rulfo uses Juan’s journey to show how certain voices are always left out of the stories we tell about the past, which has profound consequences because these stories allow the past to live on in the present through myth, memory, and the written word. Accordingly, Rulfo shows that truly honoring the dead requires seeking out and telling the stories of people who have been ignored, forgotten, and erased from history.

The ghosts Juan Preciado meets in Comala represent these forgotten people, who are left out of official versions of history. When Juan Preciado arrives in Comala to learn about his mother’s past, the first person he sees “disappear[s] as if she had never existed.” Like many of the town’s other ghostly residents, this woman is discernible but actively fading out of the story. Depicting the dead in this way allows Rulfo to show how they are erased from stories over time, whether through forgetting or willful revision. Throughout the book, Juan hears the murmurs and echoes that these disappearing people leave behind. These traces of the past represent stories and knowledge about Comala that are gradually fading into obscurity and will soon be lost forever.

Curiously, even though Dolores constantly reminisced about her childhood in Comala, she never told Juan about most of the people whom he ultimately meets there. For instance, Eduviges Dyada claims that she was Dolores’s best friend—but Juan says he’s never heard of her. This suggests that one reason many souls end up staying in Comala eternally is that they are forgotten. In fact, almost none of the people Juan meets appear in the portions of the novel dealing with Pedro Páramo: their presence is practically erased from the history of the town, and their perspectives are totally forgotten. Indeed, by reading the two halves of the novel together, readers can see how the version of Comala’s story told in the flashbacks actively erases the stories of the people Juan meets in the present. In other words, Rulfo clearly shows that there is no neutral way to narrate the past, as many stories about history emphasize powerful people (like Pedro Páramo) while rendering everyone else (like the rest of Comala) invisible.

However, the novel’s structure and narrative voice show how the past can live on in the present. The novel’s 68 nonlinear fragments frequently switch among different voices and eras. At first, Juan and Pedro narrate their respective plotlines. But Juan’s story largely gets overtaken by the voices of Comala’s ghosts, whom he overhears. Similarly, Pedro’s story quickly shifts to the third person and refocuses on other characters like Fulgor Sedano and Father Rentería. Throughout the novel, voices from the past and the present intermingle, and Comala’s ghostly residents live in a kind of timeless present as they constantly relive the events of their lives. As a result, it can be difficult to tell the past from the present, and that’s the point: Comala’s past is also its present, just as the past always lives on through memories; stories; and the emotional, institutional, and social marks that it leaves.

The novel’s narrative voice also expands or compresses time to show how memory is a living story about the past, not an absolute, objective set of facts about it. For instance, Rulfo spends whole paragraphs on single moments, like descriptions of the rain or characters’ introspection. Conversely, he expresses entire decades in even less space, like when the militia leader El Tilcuate tells Pedro that he is supporting a number of different leaders: Carranza (1913–1915), Obregón (1920), and Father Rentería’s Cristeros (1926–1929). Rulfo uses this technique to illustrate how memory (or history) actually works: it mixes the distant and recent past, personal experience and information learned from others. History is a living body of information that continues to exist, echo, and transform in the present.

If human beings use narratives to keep the past alive, Rulfo suggests that truly doing justice to the past—honoring the dead, understanding the world as history has shaped it, and redeeming historical injustices—requires recovering forgotten voices. Juan eventually realizes that Comala’s ghostly people are condemned to obscurity precisely because nobody is actively keeping their memories alive. Dorotea tells Juan that she is condemned to Comala until others remember her in their prayers: they can save her and help her move on simply by remembering her. This symbolizes storytelling’s redemptive power, as a means of giving a voice to those who have been forgotten to history. But Juan Preciado also gets redemption for himself by digging into the past. He never meets his father or reclaims his property, but he does figure out what happened to Comala after his mother left and return to the place that created him, even if it costs him his life. He fills in the gaps in his understanding of Comala and himself.

On a broader level, the novel itself constitutes Juan Preciado’s attempt to tell Comala’s story so that its history is not forgotten. The novel gives Comala a kind of mythical second life after its abandonment. It also memorializes the traditional society and culture of Juan Rulfo’s native rural Mexico and the landmark event of the Mexican Revolution.

Related Themes from Other Texts
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History, Memory, and Narrative ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of History, Memory, and Narrative appears in each section of Pedro Páramo. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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History, Memory, and Narrative Quotes in Pedro Páramo

Below you will find the important quotes in Pedro Páramo related to the theme of History, Memory, and Narrative.
Fragments 1-12, Pages 3-24 Quotes

I had expected to see the town of my mother’s memories, of her nostalgia—nostalgia laced with sighs. She had lived her lifetime sighing about Comala, about going back. But she never had. Now I had come in her place. I was seeing things through her eyes, as she had seen them. She had given me her eyes to see. Just as you pass the gate of Los Colimotes there’s a beautiful view of a green plain tinged with the yellow of ripe corn. From there you can see Comala, turning the earth white, and lighting it at night. Her voice was secret, muffled, as if she were talking to herself… Mother.

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker), Dolores Preciado (Juan’s Mother)
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

As I passed a street corner, I saw a woman wrapped in her rebozo; she disappeared as if she had never existed. I started forward again, peering into the doorless houses. Again the woman in the rebozo crossed in front of me.

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker)
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:

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 24-36, Pages 41-61 Quotes

This town is filled with echoes. It’s like they were trapped behind the walls, or beneath the cobblestones. When you walk you feel like someone’s behind you, stepping in your footsteps. You hear rustlings. And people laughing. Laughter that sounds used up. And voices worn away by the years. Sounds like that. But I think the day will come when those sounds fade away.

Related Characters: Juan Preciado
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

“Yes, Dorotea. The murmuring killed me. I was trying to hold back my fear. But it kept building until I couldn’t contain it any longer. And when I was face to face with the murmuring, the dam burst.
“I went to the plaza. You’re right about that. I was drawn there by the sound of people; I thought there really were people. I wasn’t in my right mind by then. I remember I got there by feeling my way along the walls as if I were walking with my hands. And the walls seemed to distill the voices, they seemed to be filtering through the cracks and crumbling mortar. I heard them. Human voices: not clear, but secretive voices that seemed to be whispering something to me as I passed, like a buzzing in my ears.”

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker), Dorotea
Page Number: 58-59
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:

What can I do for you?” Pedro Páramo repeated. “Like you see, we’ve taken up arms.”
“And?”
“And nothing. That’s it. Isn’t that enough?”
“But why have you done it?”
“Well, because others have done the same. Didn’t you know? Hang on a little till we get our instructions, and then we’ll tell you why. For now we’re just here.”
“l know why,” another said. “And if you want, I’ll tell you why. We’ve rebelled against the government and against people like you because we’re tired of putting up with you. Everyone in the government is a crook, and you and your kind are nothing but a bunch of lowdown bandits and slick thieves. And as for the governor himself, I won’t say nothing, because what we have to say to him we’ll say with bullets.”
“How much do you need for your revolution?” Pedro Páramo asked. “Maybe I can help you.”

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker)
Page Number: 97
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:

“I need money to bury my wife,” he said. “Can you help me?”
Damiana Cisneros prayed: “Deliver us, O God, from the snares of the Devil.” And she thrust her hands toward Abundio, making the sign of the cross.
Abundio Martinez saw a frightened woman standing before him, making a cross; he shuddered. He was afraid that the Devil might have followed him there, and he looked back, expecting to see Satan in some terrible guise.

Related Characters: Abundio Martínez (The Burro Driver) (speaker), Damiana Cisneros (speaker), Pedro Páramo
Page Number: 121
Explanation and Analysis:

He tried to raise his hand to wipe the image clear, but it clung to his legs like a magnet. He tried to lift the other hand, but it slipped slowly down his side until it touched the floor, a crutch supporting his boneless shoulder.
“This is death,” he thought.
[…]
Pedro Páramo replied:
“I’m coming along. I’m coming.”
He supported himself on Damiana Cisneros’s arm and tried to walk. After a few steps he fell; inside, he was begging for help, but no words were audible. He fell to the ground with a thud, and lay there, collapsed like a pile of rocks.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Damiana Cisneros
Page Number: 123-124
Explanation and Analysis: