Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

Imagine walking into a deserted town, exhausted from the scorching rays of the sun. It becomes more and more difficult to muster up the last ounce of energy to take another step, and eventually you drop to the ground. In this example setting is enhanced in a way that a tone of hopelessness for the character is developed. First, the setting is developed in a manner that places a hardship on the character. Furthermore, the town is devoid of life ensuring that any help to the character is out of the question and the sun itself is creating the hardship for the character. Similarly, Juan Rulfo uses the setting of his novel, Pedro Páramo, in order to influence the tone, which ultimately leads to his purpose of writing the novel. Comala, the location where the events of the novel takes place, is depicted in a way that parallels Purgatory, while the timeline is distorted so that the barriers between past and present are distorted, for the purpose of creating an intended effect on the reader.

Considering time is vital when discussing the tone in both Pedro Páramo. Rulfo does not develop a linear timeline, meaning that Comala does not exist in one time. Instead, he switches between the present and past, such as shifting from Juan Preciado's mother telling him that "'[his] father is dead'" (Rulfo, 24), to "Father Rentería...reciting the mass for the dead" (Rulfo, 25). Through this distortion of time, Rulfo is able to keep the reader predicting of what will happen next, thus developing a tone of perplexity. In addition, because Rulfo uses this technique, he can essentially place events in any order he pleases, meaning that he can place events next to each other that emphasize a certain point. For instance, the scene with Father Rent...

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...uch as Eduviges Dyada who was still “wandering like a lost soul” (Rulfo, 33). In addition, because Rulfo switches back and forth between the past and present-the dead being of the past and the living of the present-he is able to eliminate the barrier between the two, furthering the fluidity between them. The fact that the second half of the novel occurs while Juan is dead underground also expands on the idea that death is not terminating. Another aspect of this idea is that as one dies, something else replaces it, such as the people of "abandoned houses" (Rulfo, 8), that now have "empty doorways overgrown with weeds" (Rulfo, 8). From this, the reader can see that death is not something to be afraid of and that death is not an end, but another opportunity to live.

Works Cited

Rulfo, Juan. Pedro Páramo. Trans. Margaret Sayers. Peden. New York: Grove, 1994. Print.