Pedro Paramo

Juan Preciado returns to the town of Comala, which his mother had left when he was just a baby. His father is Pedro Paramo, the landowner, enforcer, and tyrant of the entire town. Comala is literally a ghost town; Juan is taken in by a series of maternal spirits that guide him through the history of the town and its death, brought on by Paramo. Paramo owns all the land, and with the willing assistance of the church, most of the town is dragged into corruption, philandering, and decay along with him. As landowner, Paramo comes to infect the land, and violence suffuses the entire town.

Rulfo first describes Comala by the way the town looks and smells. On the way to Comala, Juan Preciado feels “the August wind blows hot” which smells “venomous with the rotten stench of saponaria blossoms. (4)” The weather in August would naturally, be hot during August, but the wind in personified here, allowing it to “blow

Preciado also compares Comala to the cheerful town he had been in only day before, “Now I was in this hushed town. I could hear my footsteps on the cobbled paving stones. Hollow footsteps, echoing against walls stained red by the setting sun (7).” Again, using sensory language, Preciado could hear his footsteps on the cobbled paving stones, those similar to what one may find leading into a cemetery. The “hollow footsteps” provoke a feeling of emptiness and the “walls stained red” paint the reader a picture of death and slaughter. When Preciado arrived in Comala he noticed there was “nothing but abandoned houses, their empty doorways overgrown with weeds.” The weeds that had taken over the town were called Creosote bushes, “A plague that takes over a person’s house the minute he leaves (8).” Again, the U.S. Department of Agriculture describes the creosote plant to be a common desert plant able to survive the hottest and driest conditions. This remarkable plant has an extensive root system, containing allelochemicals which inhibit the growth of other plants with extensive and deep root systems and with special adaptations to survive

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