DE LA CRUZ, Romell Ian R31

LAS RUINAS DEL CORAZON

Las Ruinas del Corazon roughly translates to the ruins of the heart. The understanding of the title helps us in making sense of the details and images presented to us by the poem. At first glance, and by just reading the poem, one sees a cannibalistic wife eat her diseased husband as a coping mechanism. But relating it to the title, the poem may be trying to tell us that love is a dangerous thing and that it can make us crazy. To support this claim, I would like to draw attention to Stanza 2 and Stanza 17. These lines tell us that love is, indeed, a crazy thing. It changes you. And by having a ruined, or broken, heart, this craziness only increases because of the loneliness that one will feel. Now, I would like to mention the images mentioned in the poem. In the first two stanzas, Juana the Mad is being introduced to us. Judging from her name, she is already a crazy person. But by stanza two, it is said that she completely lost it upon marrying someone more beautiful than she is. In stanzas 4 and 5, we are told of how much Juana wanted to be with her husband and how she prayed for it to happen. Alas, she killed her husband in the process. Now, they could be together, though he is deceased. The next 10 stanzas tell of how Juana coped with her husbands loss: cannibalism. With this act, we see how completely crazed she has become because of the ruining of her heart brought about by her husbands death.