Confusion,
the Critics, and the Ambiguities in
Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo
Ramón
Paredes
(Contemporary Latin American Novel)
Since
its publication in 1955, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo has
became one of the Latin American novels most read, most analized in
magazines and newspapers, and most taught in schools in Latin American
countries (Angel Rama, La Novela en América Latina: 270). In
effect, with Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela and Gabriel García
Márquez’s Cien Años de Soledad (1928), Pedro Páramo
has become one of the Latin American novels with a longer biography.
However, even though so many
critics have analized the novel from almost every possible angle:
semiotical (Martha Portal, Análisis Semiológico de Pedro
Páramo; Iber H. Verdugo, Un Estudio de la Narrativa de Juan Rulfo);
mythical (Hugo Rodríguez Alcalá, El Arte de Juan Rulfo;
George Ronald Freeman, Paradise and Fall in Rulfo’s Pedro
Páramo; Octavio Paz, Corrientes Alternas and in El
Laberinto de la Soledad); symbolical (Nicolás Emilio Alvarez, Análisis
Arquetípico, Mítico y Simbológico de Pedro Páramo), and even
psychoanalytical, the novel continues being as obscure and ambiguous
as it was thirty-two years ago. In fact, what has really happened is
that some foreign critics, for example, unable to understand the
coloquial, popular Spanish spoken in Mexico, have made the novel even
more obscure and ambiguous.[1]
In effect, there are still —as
thirty-two years ago— major ambiguities in the novel which not even
one critic has been able to explain, and which, when he has tried to
do so, what he has really done is to make them more obscure and
ambiguous. Thus, there are three major ambigities, which we consider
fundamental to really undertand the novel, and on which the critics
—in Latin American, and especially in the United States—, don't
ever seem to agree:
1. Who is dead and who is alive in the novel?
2. Did Susan San Juan have an incestuous relantionship with her
father?
3. Does Abundio also stab Damiana, at the end of the novel, when he
stabs Don Pedro Páramo?
THE AMBIGUITIES.
As notices Paul B. Dixon (Reversible
Readings: 63)[2], the first ambiguity that Pedro Páramo
suggests, even in a first reading, is who is dead and who is alive in
the novel? Even though most of the characters raise the question if he
is alive or when did he die, the most noticed ambiguities are related
to Juan Preciado, Abundio Martínez, Eduviges Dyada, and —in some
degree—, Damiana Cisneros. Are they dead or alive? When did they
die?
Juan Preciado
According to most critics —including
Paul B. Dixon (Readings: 65)[3]; Samuel O'Neill (“Pedro
Páramo,” in Juan Rulfo’s Para Cuando yo me Ausente: 125);
Luis Leal (“La Estructura de Pedro Páramo,” in Para
Cuando: 258); and José Carlos González Boixo (in his notes to
the Cátedras ediction of Pedro Páramo: 126), Juan Preciado is
alive until he arrives in Comala, and dies two days later, after his
encounter with Donis and his sister. “Juan is alive,” writes
Dixon, “up until his suffocation.” Juan dies two days after he
arrives in Comala, according to Leal. “Conviene dejar establecido,”
writes Nicolás Emilo Alvarez, “que el personaje de Juan Preciado
estaba vivo a su llegada a Comala” (Análisis Arquetípico:
19).
Other critics, however, have a
different theory. Octavio Paz, for example, believes that Juan
Preciado was dead when he arrived in Comala (Corriente Alterna:
17). According to Nicolás Emilio Alvarez, Maria J. Embeita agrees
with Paz (Análisis: 19). And he quotes Ricardo Estrada as
writing in his article “Los Indicios de Pedro Páramo,” “¿Quién,
quiénes están vivos en Comala..., en la Media Luna? Nadie” (Analisis:
20).
Juan Rulfo himself appears to have
given two different versions on Juan Preciado. In his notes to the
Cátedra ediction of Pedro Páramo, José Carlos González
Boixo cites an interview with Juan Rulfo. “Cuando (Juan Preciado)
llega a Comala está vivo,” Rulfo supossely said to González Boixo.
“Él muere allí” (González Boixo: 126). In other interview with
Luis Leal, however, Rulfo is quoted saying, “Ya desde que Juan
Preciado llega al pueblo (Comala) con el arriero está muerto” (Luis
Leal, Juan Rulfo: 75).
However, the text suggests us the
opposite of this last version by Rulfo. In the first pages of the
book, Juan Preciado usually makes or tries to make a clear distinction
between life and dead. First, as notices Dixon, Abundio suggests to
Juan Preciado to look for “doña Eduviges, si es que todavía vive”
(Pedro Páramo: 15). When Juan Preciado tells Eduviges about
Abundio, she’s isn’t sure he’s Abundio Martinez, because “Abundio
ya murió” (Paramo: 15). Finally, if Dorotea, Donis and his
sister —who, as far as we know, stayed always in Comala— bury Juan
Preciado —who has never before been in Comala—, then he is alive
when he arrives, and die of suffocation two days later.
Abundio Martínez
Some critics (Readings:
71-72) have suggested that there are two Abundios in the novel: the
first being the Abundio that brings Juan Preciado to Comala, and the
second being Abundio Martínez, the one who stabs Don Pedro Páramo.
According to Dixon, “we are encouraged to make a distinction
(between the first and the sec ond Abundio) on the basic of deafness
or hardness of hearing” (Readings: 72). However, if we
believe in Dixon's theory, then we've to conclude that Abundio
Martínez —the one who kills Don Pedro Páramo— is not Pedro’s
son. In any case, we think that there more evidences that there’s
only one Abundio than there’s to suggest the existence of two
Abundios.
According to our theory, when Juan
Preciado meets Abundio in his way to Comala, Abundio is already dead,
therefore Abundio —now being dead— is able to hear. In his chapter
on Juan Rulfo, in Los Nuestros, Luis Harss writes, “muertos...
están todos los habitantes del lugar (Cómala), incluso el [Abundio]
mismo” (Para Cuando: 95). In his essay “A traves de la
Ventana de la Sepultura: Juan Rulfo,” published in his book La
Narrativa de Juan Rulfo: Interpretaciones Criticas, Joseph Sommers
writes, “Abundio... muere después de haber matado a su padre,
porque es su espíritu el que guía Juan hacia Comala” (La
Narrativa: 160).
Eduviges Dyada
Probably because Juan Preciado is
a direct narrator in the novel, the ambiguity of him being dead
or alive at certain point has been noticed for almost every critic who
has written on the book. With Eduviges, however, it’s not that easy:
one can talk about her being dead at certain points because of only
two fragments which, somehow, have some contradictions between
themselves.
In effect, the issue is not if
Eduviges is dead when Juan Preciado arrives in Comala: every critic
agrees that she is dead. The issue raised by José Carlos González
Boixo is that there some contradictions between two fragments. It’s
clear that from the beginning, when Eduviges —now dead— tells Juan
Preciado about the dead of Miguel Páramo, that night —the night
that Miguel Páramo dies—, she is alive. However, adds
González Boixo, the fragment 16 (where Father Renteria rescriminates
himself for “selling” out to Pedro Páramo and not “save”
Eduviges —who has committed suicide—) begins with “Había
estrellas fugaces” (Pedro Páramo: 34). The fragment 15 —in
which several men converse during the night of Miguel Páramo’s
burial— is linked to fragment 16 with the words, “Había estrellas
fugaces” (Pedro Páramo: 33). That’s, somehow Father
Renteria rembers Eduviges’s suicide the same night that Miguel
Páramo was buried.
Some critics —including Paul B.
Dixon (Readings: 72-76) and González Boixo— associate small
details in each different fragment to order the book in a cronological
order. Without or knowing Dixon and González Boixo’s study, most of
the readers also made the same kind of association. When one does so,
moreover, one has to conclude that there’s a contradiction in
Rulfo's text (and we are not saying that there cannot be
contradictions in a text), or the critics have not told us the truth:
since the “estrellas fugaces” appear in the night of Miguel
Páramo’s burial and since it’s the same night that Father
Rentería remembers Eduviges’s suicide, then she is dead when she
faces Miguel Páramo. Rentería remembers Eduviges’s suicide, then
she is dead when she faces Miguel Páramo.
SUSANA DE SAN JUAN AND HER FATHER.
Even though, as we have seen,
there are many ambiguities in Pedro Páramo and even tough we
have seen the critics haven’t helped us to understand them, the
ambiguity that have brought more studies and more contradictions is
probably the relantionship —or the possible “incestuous
relantionship”— of Susana San Juan with her father, Bartolomé.
In Dixon’s study, he cites two
examples to prove the probably incest: a) When Fulgor Seldano tells
Pedro Páramo that Bartolomé has returned to Comala, Don Pedro asks
him: “—Han venido los dos?/—Si, el y su mujer. ¿Pero cómo lo
sabe?/—¿No será su hija?/—Pues por el modo como la trata más
bien parece su mujer” (Pedro Páramo: 85). And b) The
conversation between Susana San Juan and her father. “—De manera
que estás dispuesta a acostarste con él. /—Sí, Bartolomé./—¿No
sabes que es casado y que ha tenido infinidad de mujeres?/—Sí,
Bartolomé./—No me digas Bartolomé. ¡Soy to padre!” (Pedro
Páramo: 88).
“Susana’s calling her father
by his first name,” writes Dixon, “might suggest more of a
husband-wife relantionship than a father-daughter one” (Readings:
68). To support Dixon’s point, we may add that the fact that Susana
calls her father “papá” in the mine shaft, when she was a little
girl. “—No veo nada, papá./—Busca bien, Susana. Haz por
encontrar algo.../—No veo nada, papá” (Pedro Páramo: 94).
In that case, only an incest» could explain Susana’s changes from
calling her father Bartolomé” rather than “Papá.”
However, if we take those two
examples cited by Dixon (examples which are usually used by critics to
make the same point), then we also have to conclude that there’s a
sexual relantionship between, a) Susana and Father Rentería, and b)
Susana and her maid, Justina. In fact, in the novel itself, there are
more suggestions of a sexual relantionship between Susana and Father
Rentería, and between Susana and Justina, than between Susana and her
father Bartolomé.
For example, between Susana and
Father Rentería. In page 96, Susana asks Father Rentería, “—¿Eres
tú, padre?/—Soy tu padre, hija mía.” First, it’s
most usually that a daughter or son tutear his or her father
than the same person would a priest. Secondly, the same respect exists
from priest to believer: a priest does not tutea a believer.
However, that is not the best example. We could think of the last two
visits that Father Rentería paid to Susan. Even though Susana is “crazy,”
it’s strange how easy she feels being naked in front of Father
Rentería, and how easy he watches her naked. And especially, how he
has his mouth “casi pegada a la oreja de ella... [while he] encajaba
secretamente cada una de sus palabras... ‘Tengo la boca llena
de ti, de tu boca. Tus labios apretados, duros como si mordieran
oprimiendo mis labios’” (Pedro Páramo: 117-118). Finally,
the relantionship between Susana and Justina is even more obscure. In
page 92, Susana reproches Justina and Justina says, “—Cuando venga
Pedro Páramo le diré que ya no aguanto. Le diré que me voy. No
faltara gente buena que me de trabajo. No todos son
maniáticos como tú.” And Susana replies, “No te irás de
aquí... No te irás a ninguna parte porque nunca encontraras quien
te quiera como yo.” Justina “le mordía las piernas. La entretenía
dándole de mamar sus senos, que no tenían nada, que eran de
juguete. ‘Juega—le decía—, juega con este juguetito tuyo”
(Pedro Páramo: 92-93). Later, Susana calls Justina “en la
medianoche,” and then “Se recostó sobre su pecho, abrazándola”
(Pedro Páramo: 93).
WHOM DOES ABUNDIO STAB?
The visit that Abundio Martínez
pays to La Media Luna at the end of the novel is probably the text
less clear in the book, and it’s probably the most controversial —among
critics.
According to most of the critics
who have written on the book or on Juan Rulfo (Luis Leal, Luis Harss,
Joseph Sommers, Luis Mario Schneider, Luis Ortega Galindo, Felipe
Garrido, Jorge Ruffinelli, Manuel Duran, and many others read for this
paper), Pedro Páramo is stabbed, at the end of the novel, by Don
Pedro’s son, Abundio Martínez. For example, Joseph Sommers writes,
in his article “A traves de la Ventana de la Sepultura: Juan Rulfo,”
that “Abundio muere después de haber matado a su padre (Pedro
Páramo)” (La Narrativa de Juan Rulfo: 161).
However, there are two or three
critics who argue that Abundio Martínez stabs Don Pedro Páramo and
he also stabs Damiana Cisneros. “Surely he (Abundio) has
stabbed someone,” writes Paul B. Dixon. “But there are apparently
two persons he might have stabbed. Abundio is obviously distraught by
Damiana’s yells... Suddenly her shouting stops, she drops to the
ground and has been carried into the house. Abundio might well have
stabbed Damiana” (Reading: 73). In his notes to the Cátedra
edition of Pedro Páramo, José Carlos González Boixo writes
that “Leyendo atentamente el texto [‘Damiana Cisneros dejó de
gritar. Deshizo su cruz. Ahora se habla caldo y abría la boca como si
bostezara./ Los hombres que hablan venido la levantaron del suelo y la
llevaron al interior de la casa./ —¿No le ha pasado nada a usted,
patrón? —preguntaron./ Apareció la cara de Pedro Páramo, que
sólo movió la cabeza./ Desarmaron a Abundio, que aún tenía el
cuchillo lleno de sangre en la mano.’] se observa que Abundio ha
matado también a Damiana. Sólo así se explica que le quiten el
cuchillo, lleno de sangre, y que, al mismo tiempo, pregunten a Pedro
Páramo, si le ha ocurrido algo” (González Boixo: 193). When, in
the last two dialogues of the novel, first Damiana asks Don Pedro
about bringing him lunch, he answers, “Voy para allá. Ya voy,”
“Damiana, ya muerta, le invita, simbólicamente, a acompañarle al
mundo de los muertos” (González Boixo: 195). (In support of
González Boixo’s point, we might consider Luis Leal’s article,
“La Estructura de ‘Pedro Páramo’,” in Juan Rulfo’s Para
Cuando yo me Ausente. “Y resulta que Juan (Preciado) se muere
entre fantasmas, ya que Damiana también está muerta” (Para
Cuando: 259.)
However, the most stranger
criticism, it appears, is Samuel O’Neill’s essay, “Pedro
Páramo,” published in Homenaje a Juan Rulfo (New York: Las
Américas, )974, pp. 285-322), and later selected by Rulfo himself in Para
cuando yo me ausente. First, when Mr. O’Neill mentions Abundio
Martínez, he adds, “asesino de Damiana” (Para Cuando:
107). Later, refering to the last fragment of the novel, he writes,
“no nos damos cuenta de que (Abundio) ha matado a Damiana sino
muchas líneas más adelante, cuando Abundio es desarmado” (Para
Cuando: 124). And he casually mentions that “ un (sic) crítico
(Mariana French’s article in Revista de la Universidad de México,
XV (July 1961), p. 21) estima aún Abundio mató a Pedro
Páramo, además de Damiana, aunque este hecho no se clarifica
nunca en el episodio del ataque” (Para Cuando: 124).
Finally, he concludes that “Abundio aparece al comienzo de la novela
y también termina la novela como el asesino de Damiana y talvez
de Pedro Páramo” (Para Cuando: 138)
CONCLUSION.
As we have seen, through the
years, the critics —who are suppossed to help the reader to
understand the text—, haven’t helped the reader to understand
Juan Rulfo’s book. On the contrary, what they have done is make the
obscure more obscure and make the ambiguos even more ambiguos: they
have, we could say, made the text even more complicated what it really
was. It is almost safe to assume that, sometimes, some foreign critics—unable
or with difficulties understanding the language in which a text was
written- speculate to explain some thing that doesn’t need an
explaination? In O’Neill’s case, one can’t even think of words
to describe it: Because, how could one forget or ignore Pedro Páramo’s
body dando un golpe seco contra la tierra” and “desmoronando como
si fuera un montón de piedras”?
Notes
[1] The
three best examples are found in Paul B. Dixon’s “Three Versions
of Pedro Páramo,” in his book Reversible Readings:
Ambiguities in Four Moderm Latin American Novels; in Luis Ortega
Galindo’s Expresión y Sentido de Juan Rulfo; and George
Ronald Freeman’s “La Caída de la Gracia: Clave de Arquetípica de
Pedro Páramo.”
For example, in Dixon’s case, he
cites the mine shaft where Susana is sent down by her father
Bartolomé to find gold. According to Dixon, “Entonces ella no supo
de ella, sino muchos días después...” (Pedro Páramo: 95), ella
stands for the calavera, when in reality, ella refers to
Susana who passes away. In other instance, at the end of the novel,
when Abundio Martínez stabs Don Pedro and Damiana cries, “¡Están
matando a Don Pedro!” (Pedro Páramo: 127), Dixon suggests
that there might be more than one (Abundio) killing Don Pedro. “Why
would Damiana say ‘están’ if she were refering to Abundio alone?”
(Readings: 73) asks Dixon. If Dixon knew the coloquial, indígena,
popular Spanish spoken in Mexico, he would know how often the people
use the indefinido “ellos.” (See Gordon Brotherson’s
article in Juan Rulfo’s Para cuando yo me ausente: 212).
In Ortega’s case, the confusion
is even worse. For he’s from Spain, he’s unable to understand the
coloquial Spanish spoken in Mexico. Thus, he makes an issue of, “Vine
a Comala porque me dijeron que aquí vive mi padre, un tal
Pedro Páramo. Mi madre me lo dijo” (Pedro Páramo:
7); “—No lo conozco—le dije—. Sólo sé que se llama Pedro
Páramo./—¡Ah! Vaya./—Si, así me dijeron que se llamaba”
(Pedro Páramo: 9); “—¿Y a qué va usted a Comala, si es
que se puede saber? —oí que me preguntaban./—Voy a ver a
mi padre —contesté./—Ah —dijo él” (Pedro Páramo: 8);
“¡Despierta!, le dicen./ Reconoce el sonido de la voz.
Trata de adivinar quién es” (Pedro Páramo: 27); and
finally, “¡Despiértate!, vuelven a decir. La voz sacude...”
(Pedro Páramo: 27). In those cases, it’s evident that Juan
Rulfo was trying to keep as close as he could to the coloquial Spanish
spoken in Mexico —and even other Latin American countries.
The same confusion is evident with
the text refering to Donis and his sister. Ortega Galindo (Expresion:
204-206) and George Ronald Freeman (La Narrativa de Juan Rulfo:
68) make a mystery of “No hablaría si no me acordara al ver a ése
rebulléndose, de lo que me sucedió a mí la primera vez que me
hiciste. Y cómo me dolió y de lo mucho que me arrepentí de eso” (Pedro
Páramo: 52). They are unable to understand that that is the
way that most Mexicans speak when they talk about a sexual act.
The end of misunderstanding,
however, is found in Galindo and Freeman when they take what Donis’s
sister tells Juan Preciado, “Yo sé tan poco de la gente. Nunca
salgo. Aquí donde me ve, aquí he estado sempiternamente. Bueno no tan
siempre. Sólo desde que él me hizo su mujer,” and make
theories about Genesis, the Bible, symbolism. For a Mexican —and
even for a Latin American, sometimess—,such analysis couldn’t be
more silly: that belongs to the popular Spanish spoken in Mexico.
Finally, both Ortega and Freeman
are unable to underntand what the bishop means when he tells Donis’s
sister, “¡Apártense!” For Ortega Galindo (Expresión: 206), it
means “get out of my way.” To Freeman, it means “el castigo dado
a Dan.” For us, however, it’s so simple: the bishop just suggests
her “Don’t live together”—that is, apártense.
[2] Even though we will usually quote Paul B. Dixon’s essay, we
think it’s needed to explain that we don’t trust his essay. The
fact that he doubts Florencio’s existence, that he’s unable to
establish the differences (which are in the novel) among Florencio,
Bartolomé San Juan and Don Pedro Páramo, that he is unable to really
understand the coloquial, popular Spanish spoken in Mexico, are enough
evidences to disqualify his study. However, to establish the critics’
different in relation to some ambiguities in the novel, we decided to
use his essay.
[3] However, Dixon points out that if Eduviges and Abundio are dead
when Juan Preciado meets them (theory, according to the critics, easy
to prove), then Juan Preciado is dead when he arrives in Comala (Readings:
65-66).
Works
Cited
Alvarez,
Nicolás Emilio. Análisis Arquetípico, Mítico y Simbológico de
Pedro Páramo. (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1983.
Dixon, Paul
B. Reversible Readings: Ambiguity in Four Moderm Latin American
Novels. (Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1985.
Freeman,
George Ronald. “La caída de la gracia: clave arquetípica de Pedro
Páramo”, en La Narrativa de Juan Rulfo. (México:
Sept/Setentas, 1974, pp. 117-140.)
González
Boixo, José Carlos. Notes e Introducción to the Cátedra edition of Pedro
Páramo. (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1983.)
Harss,
Luis. “Juan Rulfo, o la pena sin nombre”, en Los Nuestros.
(Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1966.)
— — —
“Juan Rulfo, o la pena sin nombre”, en Juan Rulfo’s Para
cuando yo me ausente. (México: Editorial Grijalbo, 1983.
Leal, Luis.
“La estructura de Pedro Páramo” en Juan Rulfo’s Para
cuando yo me ausente. (México: Editorial Grijalbo, 1983.)
— — —
. Juan Rulfo. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983.)
Ortega
Galindo, Luis. Expresión y Sentido de Juan Rulfo. (Madrid:
José Porrúa Turanzas, S.A., 1984.)
Paz,
Octavio. Corriente Alterna. (México: Siglo XXI, 1967.)
— — —
El Laberinto de la Soledad. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 5ª edición, 1967.
Portal,
Martha. Análisis Semiológico de “Pedro Páramo.” (Madrid:
Narcea, S.A., 1981.)
Rama,
Angel. La Novela en América Latina. (“Panoramas: 1920-1980”).
(Colombia: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, 1982.)
Rodríguez
Alcalá, Hugo. El Arte de Juan Rulfo. (México: Instituto de
Bellas Artes, 1965.)
Rulfo,
Juan. Pedro Páramo. (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
Novena Edición, 1968.)
— — —
Para cuando yo me ausente. (México: Editorial Grijalbo, 1982.)
Sommers,
Joseph. “A traves de la ventana de la Sepultura: Juan Rulfo” in La
Narrativa de Juan Rulfo. Interpretaciones críticas, ant., intr.
and notes by Joseph Sommers. (Mexico: Sep/Setentas, 1974, pp.
141-166.)
— — —
Yáñez, Rulfo, Fuentes: la novela mexicana moderna. (Caracas:
Monte Avila, 1969.)
Verdugo,
Iber H. Un Estudio de la Narrativa de Juan Rulfo. (México:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982.)
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