The Roles of Cultural Belief Systems in Respects to Theme in Pedro Páramo

One of the foremost themes of the novel is the concept of belonging to a place, in particular the connection to a homeland. A disturbance in the main environment signifies as the stimulating factor for the disruption of the man’s sense of belonging. There exists an fragmented sense of existence in the old land, something that is established primarily by the ominous, malicious serpent like figures that

Miguel Piñero is a famous Port Rican writer, who wrote several poems portraying what Latin people has been through in the seventies in the United States of America. The writer chose an interesting titles for his poems which indicate what the reasons behind the struggle of Latin people face in USA. At the end of the poem” Seeking the Cause”, according to the write, Pinero in this poem listed the causes of the person’s death, which are his skin color, blood, race, and speech. However, the writer has a transition at the end of the poem which reveals that the dead person was the main cause of the death. In addition, in his second poem “La Bodega Sold Dreams”, the writer mentions how his dream of becoming a well- known poet was repressed due to life’s difficulties. Reaching his dream was symbolized by a traffic light that keeps switching which prevent him from achieving his dream as a poet.

In Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the concept of appearance versus reality is manifested in three of the major characters around whom the novel revolves. The surface impressions of Santiago Nasar, Angela Vicario, and Bayardo San Roman are deeply rooted in Latin culture; underneath the layer of tradition, however, lies a host of paradoxical traits which indicate the true complexity of human nature.

Of the many literary devices used by writers to make their work more powerful and layered, symbolism is one of the most effective, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a text that relies heavily on its use to develop its narrative. The novella recounts, in the form of a pseudo-journalistic reconstruction, the murder of Santiago Nasar in a small Colombian town in the mid 1900’s. Through the course of the novel, Marquez employs various symbols to reinforce key ideas, themes and techniques. This helps the novella break the monotony of a linear storyline and unfolds the plot in a unique way that compounds both effect and meaning.

This essay will be going through the different types of love, and the power that they wield. Throughout the novel, different characters hold different powers of love. First, Clara’s love towards Ferula and Pedro Segundo will be discussed. And second, Esteban’s obsessiveness with Clara will be looked at closer. The bonds of love are stronger in relationships that aren’t acceptable compared to relationships that are acceptable in society.

It is hypothesized that the two excerpts convey messages about the representation of goodness and evil attributes. An expository approach is essential to the study of this key idea, for the reason that no single punitive perspective can sufficiently address this issue. The research will be used to convey and interpret ideas from both passages. I will research the stories portrayal of wicked factors, while clarifying and expressing the importance within both accounts. By means of thorough investigation, the reader will apprehend the significance of why the authors included these themes within their stories.

The novel, which was banned by the Spanish Crown during the time of the Spanish inquisition, is the story of the birth and life Lazarillo de Tormes as he serves various masters and his struggle for survival. His struggles are real. Many of the rhetorical devices

Continuing in the theme of conformity; if the boys are united by their heteronomy, Cuellar’s castration, in contrast, is the source of his ostracism. His unfortunate accident is a wound that ‘time opens instead of closes’, and as the story progresses, Vargas Llosa juxtaposes the boys socially inclusive youthful pastimes of football and studying mentioned earlier in the novel with his comparatively solitary penchant for the ocean and surfing “a puro pecho o con colchón” (94) in chapter five. In this passage, his distance from the others is symbolised by the isolation of the sea; the narrator says the water “se lo tragó” (95) and later, the boys state that “se perdió” (96). Clearly, Cuellar’s failure to partake in the testosterone fuelled rituals of sexual maturity in the city has seen him shunned from the rest of the boys and resigned to hanging out with “rosquetes, cafichos y pichicateros” (96) instead – the modern, metropolitan outcasts. Evidently, Cuellar is incapacitated by this highly heteronormative lifestyle, as the inherent masculinity of the city is a fixed identity that will perpetually exclude him, or anyone else who cannot fulfil Peruvian societies idea of gender appropriate behaviour.

Although prostitution may be one of the world’s oldest professions to this day it is seen as a degrading and disrespectful career especially when regarding female prostitutes. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the town is very critical and strict about chastity and premarital sex. Maria Alejandrina Cervantes is the town madam which by society’s standards makes her to most marginalized, but ironically she is not brought down by her society’s rules. Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses characterization and irony to demonstrate Maria Alejandrina Cervantes’s contradictory role and to develop the theme of going against society in Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

As a realist novel from Latin America, Pedro Paramo served an enormous impact on Latin American writers and readers from all over the world. Upon its release in 1955, Pedro Paramo barely sold 4,000 novels, yet the novel has sold millions worldwide and is translated into over 30 different languages. The reason why Juan Rulfo, the author, was deemed a literary figure in Latin America is largely because of this novel. The novel is seen as a representative of Mexico’s modernization. The novel itself is only a mere 124 pages long, and is almost pocket sized, yet the content and the years of history that is eluded to in the novel has had a long lasting effect on Mexico City, the setting in the novel, and the world of Mexican contemporary writers. By using the New Historicism approach to the novel, readers will be benefitted greatly because they can unravel the history of Mexico City and the Mexican Revolution and revolts that is reflected in the novel.

The theme of revenge in “The Cask of Amontillado” is the driving force for the entire short story. The

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Marquez employs the motif of flowers within the novel to illustrate the role of women within a Latin American society; the cultural and symbolic implications of this associate flowers with purity, victimization, gender barriers, and deceit. In doing so, Marquez creates a microcosm of Latin America, exposing the core of Columbian culture and society with all its aspects such as ethnicity, and social norms and conventions that led to a series of insecurities and poverty in the community, and its affect on the role of women. The cultural context of this novel must first be considered before examining the symbolic importance of flowers.

Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a masterpiece in many senses of the word: at the time of its conception, it was hailed as a revolutionary work of literature that defined a genre, in later centuries regarded as an acerbic social commentary, a slightly misshapen romantic tragedy, and even as a synthesis of existentialist and post-modernist features. At the centre of this Spanish satirical chronicle is the perplexing character Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s personality and perspective is rapidly established fromsince the beginning of the novel, revealing unabashedly to readers that he is mad. The source of his madness lies in the extent to which Don Quixote acts on his delusions and projections unto reality as he saunters through Cervantes’ Andalusia. Don Quixote’s delusions have two primary functions in the novel: demonstrating the reality and tragedy of Cervantes’ manifestation of idyllic themes of love and chivalry, and revealing certain characteristics about narration.

In Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, various forms of oppressive behavior are manifested in the town of Comala – these range from the simple, readily apparent abuse of power to keep a population in line, as Pedro Páramo, having complete control over Comala, regularly does, to the very sinister use of religion as a means of reinforcing the patriarchal ideal held by contemporary Mexican society. In describing the oppression of society-at-large, Rulfo shows the sinister relationship that exists between power and the corruption of one’s moral standards through Pedro Páramo and Father Rentería.

Understanding the setting of Pedro Páramo is of key importance when discussing the novel because it greatly influences the intended effects on the reader, as seen by the first few pages of the novel. Juan Preciado, the protagonist, travels to Comala "during the dog days, the season when the August wind blows hot" (Rulfo, 4), resulting in a tense, boiling, and fatigued atmosphere. Rulfo takes this a step further by developing a town that "sits on the coals of the earth, at the very mouth of hell" (Rulfo, 6), leading to two effects. First, to create extreme tension, and second, to mirror Purgatory which formulates into despair for the rest of the novel. Christians, specifically Catholics, believe that Purgatory is a realm that exists between the afterlife and the living, where a soul goes to become purified, usually through prayer. The problem that occurs in Pedro Páramo is that the souls have not been purified, meaning that they are stuck in Purgatory. This is because Father Rentería, the one who blesses the