Juan Rulfo’s Magical Realism And Its Powerful Message
In Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Paramo the settings, time and place in particular, highlight the magical realism. They also help Rulfo convey his idea that Mexico faces dire problems in regards to Mexican political and religious issues.
In Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Paramo the setting, specifically time and location, highlights the magical realist. Rulfo uses the choice of place and time to create an allegory of purgatory, which he uses to convey the political and spiritual turmoil of Mexico in the period of the novel. Rulfo uses Comala to show that Mexico suffers due to sinful and bad actions by the Church. Rulfo illustrated this allegorically with the character Father Renteria. He also used the character Pedro Parramo as a symbol of corrupt Mexican politics. Rulfo can use magic to suggest the corruption in the church and in the government through the character who lives purgatory.
Juan Rulfo’s novel was set in Comala. Rulfo describes the intense heat in Comala with hyperboles. Rulfo emphasizes that Juan Rulfo enters Comala at the end of August. August has always been one of Mexico’s hottest months. Rulfo described the heat of August with the smells of saponaria in the “dog days”. He decided to add “Their sleepy eyelids were bulging in the August heat” shortly after describing Comala. The intense heat is described in a similar way to the horrors of hell. Rulfo portrays a terrifying image through words like “stench”,”venomous”,and “eyes were swollen”. Rulfo conveys the intensity and heat of the summer by mentioning August, which is the hottest month. The imagery and diction both suggest hellacious connotations through imagery similar to a Christian hell. Rulfo uses Abundio to make it very clear that Rulfo has created an allegorical purgatory. The town lies on the very edge of hell, in the middle of coals. People from that town are said to return home for blankets after they die and go into hell. Purgatory, the place where souls expiate their sins and go to heaven before they die, is often thought of as the middle of heaven and Hell. Rulfo, in this dialogue, metaphorically places Comala near the mouth or hell. Purgatory in the metaphysical sense would be the place where Comala is. Purgatory is also a way to show Rulfo’s optimism and his consciousness of the corruption in the Mexican church and politics. Rulfo’s belief in the hope of Mexico’s political system and its religious system is shown by his allegorical setting. Comala, where the story is set, is also a symbol of hell. The comala pan is used to heat tortillas. The town is named after a pan that can get extremely hot and enhances the magic realism in the novel. The novel gains more realistic qualities by setting it in a real town in Mexico. The allegorical and realistic settings of purgatory work together to make the audience wonder about each character’s reality and where they stand in purgatory.
Juan Rulfo’s novel conveys an impression of timelessness by the way it is written. This feeling of timelessness is emphasized by the fact that it does not follow a linear, realistic time but rather occurs in short, illogical passages. Three distinct plot lines run through the novel. The plots of Juan Preciado, Pedro Paramo, and Father Renteria are loosely interconnected but weaved together. However, there is often confusion about which plot is being told. The magical realism is enhanced by the fact that the reader must decide which plot strand the passage belongs to after determining the author’s voice. This confusion creates a magical, whimsical tone in the story that causes you to question what is real. Rulfo starts the novel in mid-sight. The novel begins with the exposition where Juan Preciado comes to Comala. It then tells of what happened prior to Juan’s arrival and why Comala in a state of crisis. Rulfo could play with time in his novel by writing it in medias-res. The novel is written in medias-res, which implies that characters are dead throughout the story. Rulfo said, “It isn’t just a look that no one lives in Comala.” While Abundio was talking to Pedro about Comala. There is no one living here. Rulfo’s magic is created by having the dead act as though they were still alive. Each voice also has a different level of awareness about their deaths. Rulfo communicates Dorotea’s awareness through her dialogue. He wrote “After finding you, I was determined that my bones would find rest… They buried us in your grave and I fit perfectly in the hollows of your arms”. Death awareness is directly related to characters’ awareness of time. Characters who do not realize their own death will mention the passage of time more than characters who are aware. The verb tenses are used to show this. The past tense of the word “determined” shows that she knows she has passed. The plot contains a lot repetition. Things are constantly recurring. Rulfo communicates this via Fulgor. Rulfo introduces Fulgor and tells us about Fulor’s encounter with Pedro Paramo. Rulfo later wrote about their initial encounter. Rulfo did not write about their first encounter in order in order to prove that time in the book is nonlinear. Rulfo shows that purgatory is a place where people suffer for their sins, in a cycle of repeated suffering. They reflect on their lives while telling stories. Juan Rulfo’s novel is a magical realism, and he demonstrates this by illustrating that time does not exist after death. Things happen out of order.
Through the time and location of the novel, rulfo creates a purgatory-like setting. This allegorical environment is what sets the foundation for magical realism in this novel. Rulfo conveys the idea of corruption in the mexican political and religious system through magical realism. Rulfo also uses the magically realistic setting of Comala to illustrate his optimism about the future of mexican politics and the church, while acknowledging the current corruption. In the novel he believes they are facing punishment and consequences for their sins, but in reality they can all be saved if the mexicans change their ways.
