Though Juan Rulfo did not write a great number of works, his contribution to the world of literature is undoubtedly thought to be most prominent. He is considered to be one of the most important Spanish language writers of the 20th century and his reputation substantially rests on the novel “Pedro Paramo”, published in 1955.
The principal female character in this novel is Susana San Juan, the only true love of Pedro Paramo, another main character of the novel. At the beginning of the story the reader encounters Juan Preciado, the narrator of the story, who, being the son of Pedro Paramo, had promised his mother at her deathbed that he would go to the town of Comala to meet his father. However, Comala turns out to have been ghost town for many years and Juan Preciado hears voices from the town's past. In the course of the novel Preciado dies and the events take place at the times of Pedro Paramo.
Pedro Paramo was the owner of the lands, surrounding Comala, therefore being the most powerful man in this town. However, he achieved all his power and wealth with a help of violence and treachery. He treats all the people, inferior to him with disregard and abuse. He knew Susana San Juan since he was a child. They used to play together and he still remembers flying kites with her. He loved and desired this girl being an adolescent, but she moved from the town and he lost his chances of making her his. Susana San Juan became the object of Pedro Paramo's desire. He kept her image in his mind throughout all his life, enduing it with characteristics, which the real Susana hardly possessed. It is important that though the years were passing and Susana San Juan finally returned to the town of Comala after thirty years of absence, in Pedro's mind she still existed as an image of a young girl. Due to that fact, the most desirable women for Pedro Paramo were young girls, whom he used to substitute in his mind for Susana, imagining that he was making love to her. When Susana San Juan returns to Comala, Pedro finally gets close to the possesion of the woman, whom he had made the object of his lifetime desire. But the insanity of Susana makes the sexual intercourse with her absolutely impossible. Pedro continues to surrogate lovers whom he imagines to be Susanna. “He thought of Susana San Juan and then of the girl he slept with a short while ago. That startled, trembling little body. And when he embraced her, he tried to change her body into that of Susana San Juan” (Rulfo, 107). However, Pedro partially realized, that he would never be able to possess the woman, whom he had been dreaming of throughout the whole life, even though she lived next to him, as he desired. “Pedro Paramo's drive to possess Susana becomes desperate as he is condemned to look on helplessly at life slowly draining from the semiconscious body of the woman he has made into the sole object of his affective being” (de Valdes, 41). When Susana dies, his last hopes die also, though the real Susana had little in common with Susana, existing in his mind.
In my opinion, it can hardly be said, that Pedro Paramo loved Susana San Juan. He rather loved idealized image of the woman, which existed only in his imagination, based on the distant remembrances of the girl he used to play with in his childhood.
Works Cited
Rulfo, Juan. Pedro Páramo. New York: Crove Press, 1994. Print.
De Valdes, Maria Elena. The shattered mirror: representations of women in Mexican literature.Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998. Print.
