Pedro Paramo

        Pedro Paramo is an interesting story by Juan Rulfo that first introduced the idea of "magical realism" to me. While his story is mainly about how the town died after its main source of wealth and food refused to work its fields, Rulfo also uses surreal elements like ghosts and spirits as the voices of the town to explain interrelationships between townspeople.
        I wrote my last term paper on this novel, and I focused on the Marxist view of social stratification in the town, Comala. I found it interesting that Rulfo was born into a family of wealth and prestige, but after the revolts during the Cristero War broke out, his family fled for their lives to the outskirts of town. Since Rulfo experienced both rich and poor upbringings, he had proper insights into the effects of both on a person. Because of this understanding and yet confliction of identity since he didn't truly belong in one category, Rulfo used many different ghosts from all kinds of upbringing in Comala to be the narrators of the story.
        Pedro Paramo was an interesting read for me because I had to really focus on figuring out who was supplying the information at what time. Since Rulfo kept changing who was telling the story and rarely told the reader outright who had taken control over the narrative, I had to reread certain passages in order to understand the plot and conflict resolution. I think I enjoyed it so much because Rulfo left room for interpretation, especially when describing the strange relationship between Pedro and Susana. I like thinking of multiple situations or concepts for a certain story, and this gave plenty of room for the reader to connect the dots and pepper in some imagination to the plot.
        A final fascinating focus of the novel was on Rulfo's fixation with symbolism. Even though he did not introduce each different passage by identifying the voice, Rulfo did use different symbols to represent different characters. For example, he always introduced the perspectives of Pedro and Susana with images of water. In one passage from Pedro, he opens it with the line, "Water dripping from the roof tiles were forming a hole in the sand of the patio" (2630). When townspeople told the story of Pedro's son, Miguel, Rulfo always writes about a horse's gallop or his lonesome neighs.