Literary Theory

and Criticism

Analysis of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo

BY NASRULLAH MAMBROL ON AUGUST 3, 2023

Pedro Páramo was voted by literary critics in the Spanish newspaper El

País (May 5, 2001) as the most important book written in Spanish in the 20th
century. It is generally understood that the technique of the novel of the
Mexican Revolution, that is, the documentary technique of naturalistic realism,
came to an end and a new literary trend was established with Pedro Páramo.
Masterfully blending Mexican folklore and modern experimental narrative
techniques such as stream of consciousness, flashbacks, and consequent
monologues, Juan Rulfo (1918–86) created a phantasmagoric, mythic narrative
as one of Mexico’s founding fictions. In 1969, Carlos Fuentes said, “The work
of Juan Rulfo is not only the highest expression which the Mexican novel has
attained until now; through Pedro Páramo we can find the thread that leads us
to the new Latin American novel.”

The Mexican Revolution and its

aftermath cast a large shadow
over Pedro Páramo, the tale of an
illegitimate son seeking his father
across a sterile landscape of a
devastated town set in the wake of
the revolution. Even though Rulfo
did not directly experience the
armed aspects of the revolution, he
heard stories about it and was
greatly influenced by the turmoil of
the Cristero Revolt, which killed
his father and his uncle. The
aftermath of the revolution, which
consequently left little Juan Rulfo
an orphan, inevitably colored Juan
Preciado, who travels to his mother’s birthplace to search for his father, Pedro
Páramo. Rulfo wrote at a time when the official history of the revolution was
questioned in terms of lack of social justice and equality, unsuccessful land
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reform, and political control by the few oligarchs, among others. Some critics
categorized Pedro Páramo as a sociological novel that criticizes the
unsuccessful social and economic reforms brought about by the new bourgeoisie
who benefited from the revolution. Other critics recognized the Oedipus myth
behind the father-son relationship.
Pedro Páramo is the story of a dead town inhabited by dead people. Comala is a
purgatory of ghosts and souls in penance whose murmurs and disembodied
voices fill the otherwise empty space. The dry and sterile landscape of the town
reflects actual, isolated regions of Mexico after the revolution. The locale is an
in-between space, and the inhabitants have doubled attributes, both real and
spectral. Rulfo says, “Pedro Páramo is the result of a desire to bring a dead town
back to life.” The story begins with the arrival of Juan Preciado, the protagonist
and narrator of the novel. “I came to Comala because I had been told that my
father, a man named Pedro Páramo, lived there. And I had promised her [his
mother] that after she died I would go see him.” He soon finds that Comala is
dead, but it is ironic since he himself is already dead, as the reader later
discovers that he remembers only the arrival in the grave and talks to another
dead person.

There are several editions of the book due to Rulfo’s frequent revision after the
first publication. The last edition authorized by Rulfo consists of 70 fragmented
narratives, which as a whole reconstruct the life of Pedro Páramo with concise,
precise, dry language. The reader gradually comes to know how he rose from
poverty to become the most influential cacique (local chieftain) in Comala by a
ruthless process of exploitation and with the assistance of the local church. His
life is given depth and complexity by episodes concerning not only him and his
son Juan Preciado but also various characters such as Miguel Páramo
(complementing his father’s machismo, boorishness, and cruelty, the only one
of Pedro’s many sons who is fully acknowledged), Father Rentería (a symbol of
the subordination of church to state in anticlerical, postrevolutionary Mexico),
and Susana San Juan (representing the lost innocence of youth and idealized lost
love to Pedro), among others.

The story of Pedro Páramo is completely encased in the structural circle within
which everything is destined to collapse. Rejecting the empirical law of time
(past, present, and future), life and death, reality and dream, the narrative adopts
the circular structure that gives the novel a mythic feature. The fate of total
 Literary Theory
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collapse of Pedro Páramo and Comala is even carved into the novel’s title.
“Pedro” etymologically connotes “rock,” and “Páramo” means “wasteland.”
The last line of the novel echoes the significance of the title: “He fell to the
ground with a thud, and lay there, collapsed like a pile of rocks.”

The novel also depicts the tragic love of Pedro Páramo for Susana San Juan, the
only figure in the novel exempt from Comala’s sterility, despair, death, and
collapse. In contrast to the many other women Pedro Páramo seduces and rapes,
she is his idealized love. When she dies, Pedro Páramo leaves the town dead in
revenge, perhaps against death itself. Pedro Páramo’s monologue for her is
filled with lyricism, which is sharply contrasted with the description of his cruel
and merciless behavior. The very duality of his characterization makes him a
universal model of human love and hatred.
Two poles of Rulfo’s art, regionalism and idealism, made Pedro Páramo a
precursor of magical realist fiction and the boom novels in the 1960s. The boom
period represented an intense output by Latin American authors of world-
acclaimed fiction. Gabriel García Márquez once said that he knew the whole
book by heart, and included a sentence from Pedro Páramo in his One Hundred
Years of Solitude. The mythical town Macondo was inspired by Rulfo’s village
of phantoms. The novel was translated into more than 18 languages. The filmic
version of Pedro Páramao, adapted by Carlos Fuentes and Carlos Velo, was
released in 1966. Rulfo was not satisfied with the execution of the film version
because he felt that it changed the novel into a western.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cacheiro Varela, Maximino. La poesia en Pedro Páramo. Madrid: Hurga &
Fierro Editors, 2004.
Fuentes, Carlos, ed. Juan Rulfo’s Mexico. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 2002.
Leal, Luis. Juan Rulfo. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Zepeda, Jorge. La receptión de
Pedro Páramo, 1955–1963. México: Ediciones RM, 2005.
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