He does everything in his power to get Susana's father to return to Comala and to get Susana as a wife.

Don Pedro learns that Susana is now a widow. All his life, don Pedro has longed for Susana, who moved away when don Pedro was a child. The priest who brought Miguel to don Pedro is riddled with guilt and wants to refuse to pardon Miguel when he dies in an accident, but ultimately don Pedro buys a pardon for Miguel from the priest.ĭon Pedro is obsessed with his own personal bitterness. After Dolores moves away, don Pedro takes in one of his illegitimate sons, Miguel, who grows up to be a rapist and murderer.

She dies in bitterness, begging Juan to find don Pedro and make him pay.

Dolores refuses to return unless don Pedro sends for her, which he never does. However, don Pedro only wants to acquire wealth to give to his lost love, Susana, a girl that moved away from the town when don Pedro was a boy.ĭon Pedro tires of his wife Dolores quickly, and he seems pleased when Dolores leaves with his son Juan to go live with her sister. Don Pedro is an ambitious, ruthless man, and he is willing to kill whoever gets in his way or play any angle that will keep him in power. When his father dies, Pedro finds he is in debt, and he marries Dolores, Juan Preciado's mother, because he owes her family the most money. Juan hears the voices of the other people buried around him and learns stories about the town and its people. Juan himself, after being taken in by a woman and her brother who are living in sin, dies in Comala and is buried there, never able to meet his father, who is now dead as well. Comala turns out to be a kind of purgatory, full of its dead souls, who wander the town, usually unaware that they are dead. In the town, he stays with a woman who is also a wandering soul. He meets a stranger on the road, who later turns out to be dead. The novel opens as Juan Preciado is headed to Comala after his mother's death. Through a complex narrative told from multiple points of view, which skips forward and backward in time, author Juan Rulfo explores the life of don Pedro, a man who is both a villain and a tragic figure. Pedro Páramo's estranged son, Juan Preciado, comes to find his father after his mother's death, but instead he finds only a town deserted except for its ghosts.

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