An In Depth and Phantasmal Analysis of the Literary Techniques Employed in Pedro Paramo

            From the start of Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo thrusts the reader into a world of magical realism. From afar it appears Rulfo has thrust you into this unknown world where nothing appears similar, however if the reader is careful he is able to notice the surrounding world of connections that Rulfo has built around you. Rulfo creates parallelism between the story of Pedro Paramo and greek mythology from the very beginning of the story, the first parallelism the reader comes across is the parallelism between Juan and Icarus. Similar to Icarus Juan sets off towards this idea that he has placed as the center of his very being, but once he comes to close to this idea he gets burnt and falls and drowns. This parallelism helps the reader ecognze another parallelism which is between Pedro Paramo and the sun, Pedro becomes a symbol to Juan and eventually becomes something that he must attain.

“But before I knew it my head began to swim with dreams

and my imagination took flight. Little by little I began to build a world around a hope centered

on the man called Pedro Paramo, the man who had been my mother's husband.”

Here the reader can see Rulfos’ advanced use of diction and tone, he chooses diction that contains a flight motif, and then employs the use of regretful tone. From the very start Rulfo pulls out all his tricks to submerge the reader in this magical yet real world that contains Pedro Paramo. Later in the chapter Rulfo begins to employ flashbacks and alternative narrative lines in what appears to be an attempt to confuse the reader, however one can recognize that Rulfo is actually approaching the story with a minimalist attitude so as to create more from less thus creating a literary masterpiece.