Pedro Páramo

by

Juan Rulfo

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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.
Power and Morality Theme Icon

In one of Pedro Páramo’s multiple intertwined plots, the title character rises from relative obscurity, as the son of indebted farmer Lucas Páramo, to own and fully control absolutely everything in his hometown of Comala. Rulfo’s depiction of Pedro Páramo is in part a critique of the unequal, semi-feudal social structure that defined the rural Mexican society where he grew up. But it is also a critique of power in general: Rulfo shows that manipulation and ruthlessness offer a surer path to power than honesty and hard work. Not only does power attract morally corrupt people, but it also corrupts the people and institutions that possess it. When power gets increasingly centralized and directed to the goals of the self-interested people who wield it, Rulfo suggests, society accelerates toward moral decay.

Pedro Páramo’s life shows how self-interested people ultimately gain power and twist it for their own purposes. Pedro’s cruelty first becomes apparent when he marries Dolores Preciado just to get out of the massive debt his family owes her and steal her family’s land. Pedro convinces Dolores that he is in love with her and asks her to marry him as soon as possible. (Actually, he sends his henchman Fulgor Sedano to make the arrangements, which shows how little he cares about Dolores.) Pedro’s willingness to manipulate Dolores’s feelings for personal gain is the first sign of his ruthlessness and thirst for power—and his sinister plot works out exactly as planned.

With Dolores’s land now under his control—and Dolores living far away in Colima, with her sister and son Juan—Pedro Páramo sets about stealing the rest of the land in Comala. Rather than finding ways to legally buy up land, he uses the law as a tool for manipulation: he has Fulgor file a sham lawsuit accusing Toribio Aldrete of mismarking his land. When Toribio complains, Pedro tells Fulgor that, “from now on, we’re the law.” He sends Fulgor to kill Toribio, then takes Toribio’s land once and for all. Using tactics like these, he gradually takes control of all of Comala. This shows how Pedro’s total disregard for morality and the humanity of others is ultimately his greatest asset in gaining power—and, disturbingly, this suggests that power rewards the most cruel and ruthless people, not the most deserving rulers. In a particularly telling episode, a group of revolutionaries kills Fulgor and then threatens to take Pedro’s land and redistribute it to the people of Comala. Rather than fight back, Pedro decides to buy out the militia: he promises them a huge sum of money (even though he never fully pays them) and sends one of his own men, El Tilcuate, to usurp control of the rebel group. The rebels stop threatening Comala and instead become Pedro’s private standing army. In fact, they do not care who is funding them—they are more interested in fighting than standing up for any principles. This suggests that, to Rulfo, even the supposedly idealistic Mexican Revolution was not really about impassioned citizens seeking to pass democratic reforms, but actually about self-interested people like Pedro Páramo looking for another chance to grab power.

Pedro Páramo doesn’t just scam the honest, morally upstanding residents of Comala out of their land and money—he also morally corrupts many of them (and the town itself) in the process. As a result, his unscrupulous corruption spreads like a disease. For example, Pedro bribes Comala’s local priest, Father Rentería, into doing his bidding. Despite his powerful moral conscience, Father Rentería agrees to bless Pedro’s wicked son Miguel after his death in exchange for payment—even though Miguel killed Father Rentería’s brother and raped his niece Ana. Tormented by his decisions, Father Rentería visits the priest in the nearby town of Contla, who tells Rentería that he has turned the Church into an evil institution and lost his own moral way. While Rentería knows what is morally right, in other words, Pedro Páramo convinces him to put his self-interest first. Rentería isn’t blind to morality: he willingly ignores it because he stands to profit, and he realizes what he’s doing every step of the way. Eventually, Rentería joins the Cristero Rebellions—an informal war led by clergy against the new government that wants limit the Catholic Church’s power. This further shows that, although it believes itself to be protecting justice and morality, the Church is really just a self-interested institution that does not practice the moral laws it preaches.

In fact, Pedro becomes the ultimate victim of his own immorality: after he accumulates all the imaginable wealth in Comala, he manipulates his childhood sweetheart, Susana San Juan, into marrying him. Tormented by trauma, Susana spends all her time locked in her room, and after she dies, Pedro realizes that he never truly got to live the life he wanted with her. He spends his remaining days sitting in his chair, totally empty inside, waiting for death. In other words, his wickedness took away the only thing that truly could have made his life valuable. In the process, he also totally corrupts Comala, turning it into the ghost town that Juan Preciado encounters at the beginning of the novel. When Susana dies and Pedro gives up on life, he leaves everyone in town landless and destitute, and the town transforms from a lush, fertile center of agriculture into an arid desert where nothing grows. Pedro quite literally destroys the beauty and abundance he wanted to possess in the first place.

Pedro Páramo’s immorality even transcends the earth: it ensures that evildoers like his son Miguel are rewarded in the afterlife and the good remain in Comala forever, stuck in purgatory, cursed as ghosts. In a sense, for Rulfo, not even God truly upholds morality and fairness—rather, the whole universe is one big political machine, and yet living a morally and emotionally satisfying life requires staying as far as possible from power’s clutches.

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Power and Morality Quotes in Pedro Páramo

Below you will find the important quotes in Pedro Páramo related to the theme of Power and Morality.
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:

“It’s hot here,” I said.
“You might say. But this is nothing,” my companion replied. “Try to take it easy. You’ll feel it even more when we get to Comala. That town sits on the coals of the earth, at the very mouth of hell. They say that when people from there die and go to hell, they come back for a blanket.”
“Do you know Pedro Páramo?” I asked.
I felt I could ask because I had seen a glimmer of goodwill in his eyes.
“Who is he?” I pressed him.
“Living bile,” was his reply.
And he lowered his stick against the burros for no reason at all, because they had been far ahead of us, guided by the descending trail.

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker), Abundio Martínez (The Burro Driver) (speaker), Pedro Páramo
Page Number: 6
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:
Fragments 13-23, Pages 25-41 Quotes

Shooting stars. One by one, the lights in Comala went out.
Then the sky took over the night.
Father Renteria tossed and turned in his bed, unable to sleep.
It’s all my fault, he told himself. Everything that’s happening. Because I’m afraid to offend the people who provide for me. It’s true; I owe them my livelihood. I get nothing from the poor and God knows prayers don’t fill a stomach. That’s how it’s been up to now. And we’re seeing the consequences. All my fault. I have betrayed those who love me and who have put their faith in me and come to me to intercede on their behalf with God. What has their faith won them? Heaven? Or the purification of their souls?

Related Characters: Miguel Páramo, Father Rentería, Ana
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

“Tomorrow morning we’ll begin to set our affairs in order. We’ll begin with the Preciado women. You say it’s them we owe the most?”
“Yes. And them we’ve paid the least. Your father always left the Preciados to the last. I understand that one of the girls, Matilde, went to live in the city. I don’t know whether it was Guadalajara or Colima. And that Lola, that is, doña Dolores, has been left in charge of everything. You know, of don Enmedio’s ranch. She’s the one we have to pay.”
“Then tomorrow I want you to go and ask for Lola’s hand.”
“What makes you think she’d have me? I’m an old man.”
“You’ll ask her for me. After all, she’s not without her charms. Tell her I’m very much in love with her. Ask her if she likes the idea.”

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Fulgor Sedano (speaker), Dolores Preciado (Juan’s Mother)
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
Fragments 24-36, Pages 41-61 Quotes

“Look at my face!”
It was an ordinary face.
“What is it you want me to see?”
“Don’t you see my sin? Don’t you see those purplish spots? Like impetigo? I’m covered with them. And that’s only on the outside; inside, I’m a sea of mud.”

Related Characters: Juan Preciado (speaker), Donis’s Sister/Wife (speaker), Donis
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:
Fragments 37-46, Pages 61-85 Quotes

“We live in a land in which everything grows, thanks to God’s providence; but everything that grows is bitter. That is our curse.”
“You’re right, Father. I’ve tried to grow grapes over in Comala. They don’t bear. Only guavas and oranges: bitter oranges and bitter guavas. I’ve forgotten the taste of sweet fruit. Do you remember the China guavas we had in the seminary? The peaches? The tangerines that shed their skin at a touch? I brought seeds here. A few, just a small pouch. Afterward, I felt it would have been better to leave them where they were, since I only brought them here to die.”
“And yet, Father, they say that the earth of Comala is good. What a shame the land is all in the hands of one man.”

Related Characters: Father Rentería (speaker), Contla’s Priest (speaker), Pedro Páramo
Related Symbols: Rain and Water
Page Number: 72
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

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: