Author Question: The story beginsand endswith references to the summer heat, andthere are several days of rain after ... (Read 103 times)

olgavictoria · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

The story beginsand endswith references to the summer heat, andthere are several days of rain after the marriage takes place. Is this just scene-setting, or is there a larger significance to the descriptions?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Why might Rulfo have ended the story by reminding us that the old man hasleft behind children and grandchildren?

What will be an ideal response?

iceage · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Even without cues from the author, we would be tempted to associate the summer heat with the fires of lust, especially at the beginning of the story. Arredondo makes the connection all but unmistakable when she refers, at the beginning of the second paragraph, to the arrogance that precedes combustion, and ends that paragraph by having her narrator, Luisa, tell us that I was certain of having the power to dominate passions, to purify anything in the scorching air that surrounded but did not singe me. The very last sentence of the story reinforces this connection.

The several dreary days of rain, following an afternoon of menacing dark clouds (par. 32) before the marriage, present a classic instance of the pathetic fallacy, which in its broadest definition signifies the ascription of human feelings to nonhuman things, but oftenas hereindicates the use of nature to reflect emotions appropriate to a character or situation.

Answer to Question 2

We might be tempted to see in this fact a hint that one of Juvencios descendants will be motivated to avenge his death and thus perpetuate the cycle of bloodshedthough, given his attitudes and actions, it seems unlikely that Justino would be motivated to do so. At the very least, it is a reminder that acts do not take place in a vacuum, and murder has a profound, life-altering effect on the loved ones of the victim, creating searing wounds that never can be healeda fact that Juvencio did his best to brush aside, but one that caught up with him in the end.