Finally, I have also chosen to use the shorter, choppier sentences as well as the character dialogue that are so prevalent in Pedro Páramo in consistence with Juan Rulfo’s style. The effect of these terse statements is to show brief glimpses into a character’s thoughts. For instance, the line “Voices. Slow, scraping footsteps, like people carrying a heavy load. Unidentifiable sounds” (66) reveals snippets of small details that a character notices by paying particular attention to how a noise specifically sounds. The phrase “...like people carrying a heavy load” (66) allows the reader to be able to personally identify with imagery and be able to relate to what the character takes note of. The effect of dialogue in Pedro Páramo primarily serves to allow characters to portray emotions while simultaneously revealing information. An example of this is the line, “I know that within a few hours Abundio will come with his bloody hands to ask for the help I refused him” (124). This exposes Pedro Páramo’s fears of Abundio and his regret for snubbing Abundio’s earlier pleas for aid while also insinuating that Abundio will return to exact revenge, on which the following pastiche is founded. The pastiche begins with the events that would immediately follow Damiana Cisneros’ death.
I stared at my hands; they were bloody. I felt sick although I had already vomited. I stumbled along with my tired body.
“Where are you taking me,” I asked the men that were dragging me towards town.
“Why did you do it? Pedro deserved it, but Damiana was innocent,” they asked.
“I don’t know. I need to sleep,” I said.
I thought that it didn’t matter. “Damiana Cisneros had stopped screaming now” (122). That was all I wanted.
We had stopped outside the large Texas Madroño tree near the middle of Comala. The dead town rose from its slumber and became alive with people. That’s when the noises began again.
“Voices. Slow, scraping footsteps, like people carrying a heavy load. Unidentifiable sounds” (66).
“Abundio tried to kill the patron?” was one murmur.
“He’s completely drunk, so disgusting. That idiota sold his burros for booze and now look where it got him,” responded another.
“Hush now, they’ve brought rope.”
I tried to distinguish the hazy images around me. A rope hanging from a bough. My now tied hands. A noose around my neck.
Dozing and lazy faces.
More noises. The grunts of men with straining arms. The soft steady drip of sanguine crystal falling from my hands. Quiet whispers from curious and hating eyes.
My own throat as it struggles to breathe heavy air.
“I felt it, in and out, less each time . . .” (57).
Nothing but silence from the whispers.
Pedro Páramo could not hope to sleep.
He would be coming soon. With the whispers and echoes. With the lidless dead eyes bloodshot from eternal slumber. “...With his bloody hands to ask for the help I refused him” (124).
Footsteps outside scraping along the ground. The moaning of wind, calling his name. The slight scraping of sheets against his sweating skin. An echo tugging at his mind.
Pedro Páramo waited in his bed. The steady dripping became the crash of ocean waves. He covered his face, trying to crush the murmurs yelling in his head. His eyes snapped open. Wet hands were at his throat, crushing, twisting, murdering, avenging.
“I need help. I need money. My wife needs to be buried,” says a screaming whisper.
“He tries to identify it, but he sinks back down and drowses again, crushed by the weight of sleep” (23). He thinks of sleep, and what it means.
To end the whispers. To be dead to the world. To be at peace.
Pedro Páramo closes his eyes and smiles listlessly. He thinks of Susana and how he will soon see here.
The murmurs were gone with the arrival of never-ending sleep.
I staggered away from the patron’s house with trembling feet. I couldn’t hear my ragged breaths or my dragging footsteps. Though the murmurs were gone so had the rest of the sounds.
I found that I had taken myself to Eduviges Dyada’s house at almost the outskirts of Comala. I knocked stiffly and imagined a wooden and dull thump that would wake Eduviges. I imagined her walking lightly over creaking floorboards. The door opened.
“Please, I need help; may I stay here for the night?” I said.
Eduviges floated like a ghost down the hall and open a room. I walked in to the prepared room; it was as if she had been waiting for me. I looked at the bed and realized that I was tired.
“I need to bury my wife.” I told her. Again, she said nothing.
“’Don’t you hear me?’ I asked in a low voice” (56).
Her lips moved and no sound came out. She was voiceless like the sleeping patron.
So then I really was soundless. The rain should be hammering on the roof. A mouse should be scratching in the corner. The low bay of bulls should sounding from the fields.
Yet I heard none of them. But the echoes were gone.
Eduviges left footstep-less. I lay down on the bed. I would get my burros back. I would still bring the mail, although I was deaf. I would no longer speak. “There wasn’t much point in saying things [I] couldn’t hear, things that evaporated in the air, things [I] couldn’t get the taste of” (16).
I closed my eyes and savored the thought of sleeping and beginning life again in the morning.
“I slept fitfully” (32).
Works Cited
Rulfo, Juan. Pedro Páramo. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Northwestern University Press. 1994.
