A review of Pedro Paramo
Rulfo’s beautiful prose and powerful imagery makes for an incredibly compelling read, as the reader tries to discover what tore this small town apart, and who Pedro Paramo was and how he came to wield so much power.
Author: Juan Rulfo
Reviewed by: Johann Badenhorst
Pedro Paramo is a classic novel about a young man searching for his father.
The narrator’s mother’s dying wish is for him to go to the fictional town of Comala in Mexico to find his father who had wrecked their family many years ago.
Fulfilling her final wish, the narrator arrives in the town, only to find it empty and neglected, and populated by ghosts, voices and hallucinations.
Pedro Paramo is a dreamlike, surrealistic novel with no discernible plot or character development.
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Instead, the history of the town is unfolded with stories told to the narrator by spectral beings who believe they are still alive, and have vivid hallucinations.
These hallucinations, including lynches and bloody coups, allow the reader to piece together the tragic and violent history of the town and its terrible leader, Pedro Paramo.
The novel is filled with memorable characters such as Eduviges Dyada, who believes her empty and neglected house is still the welcoming hostel for weary travellers that it once was many years ago, or the ghost of a horse that gallops and whinnies through the town at night.
The novel switches from present to past tense regularly, the present being the town haunted by ghosts of its dead inhabitants, and the past tense is the town of the living.
Pedro Paramo is a classic of 20th century literature and American writer Susan Sontag said: “It is a book that seems, in retrospect, as though it had to be written.’’
Rulfo’s beautiful prose and powerful imagery makes for an incredibly compelling read, as the reader tries to discover what tore this small town apart, and who Pedro Paramo was and how he came to wield so much power.
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