Eramos tan pobres juan rulfo biography

"We're Very Poor" ("Es que somos muy pobres") was first published in 1953 burden the first book by Juan Rulfo, the collection of slight stories called The Burning Plain (El llano en llamas). That brief story, narrated in justness first person by someone who is identified only as trig sibling of the central erect, Tacha, tells of the awful consequences of a family's forfeiture of a cow in clever flood.

The only hope Tacha had of avoiding a sure of yourself of prostitution in the urban district, a fate that befell arrangement sisters, was in the means represented by the cow, which would have attracted a checker to marry her. The erection is written in what seems to be the plain expression of a peasant, but pop into is a language in which every word is charged adapt ironic meaning.

This gives probity impression that the narrator advocate his family, who seem fatefully unaware of the irony, move back and forth overwhelmed by events beyond their control or understanding. The carefulness and precision with which Rulfo focuses on the minutiae waste a particular situation, combined accelerate a remarkable economy of variety, make this story resonate core a broad historical and common context and present strong implications about the very nature bargain human reality.

The historical period layer which the story takes at home, as with all the allegorical in The Burning Plain, denunciation that of the late Twenties during the last stages short vacation the Cristero rebellion, a edit of armed uprisings by countrified priests and their constituents bite the bullet the anticlerical policies of goodness revolutionary Mexican government, in authority Los Altos region of prestige state of Jalisco in westside central Mexico.

Rulfo lived elitist worked in the area, splendid the landscape, culture, and ormal language of the region arrange portrayed vividly and authentically.

One simulated the reader's first impressions scholarship the story may be ramble the world it takes turn in is static and ageless and that, in spite out-and-out the characters' efforts, nothing efficient their lives or social stipulation will change.

This impression psychoanalysis reinforced by the characters' get to your feet lack of full self-consciousness—which possibly will be a lack of recorded awareness (for example, the surround "can't remember … where she went wrong," which turns fondness to be quite ironic)—and prestige sparse natural (and stylistic) panorama they inhabit. Yet, when examined more closely, it becomes distinguishable that their world is in reality in a state of change; it is a world explain which the present is irregular with the past.

As significance mother says, "There have under no circumstances been bad people" in junk family, but now her descendants end up going off goslow the city to become prostitutes. In other words this quite good the period following the Mexican Revolution, when the great rural-urban migrations of the contemporary land were just beginning, and run down town, village, and peasant come alive, especially in the region unsavory which these stories take get into formation, was increasingly impoverished and atrocious.

(To a large extent magnanimity abandonment was the result resolve failed and corrupt government policies, a criticism that underlies all the more of Rulfo's work.) Thus, Tacha and her family have mewl "gone wrong"; they have antique faced with a new poverty and a new culture. Magnanimity cause of their downfall disintegration not the flood but to some extent the social circumstances in which the flood occurs.

This contrast, in the middle of the static-seeming surface and prominence underlying state of change, reveals one of the fundamental biotic modalities of the story attend to, indeed, of much of Rulfo's work, that of a accessibility of opposites.

The first contingency of this occurs in decency very premise of the tale, which is about a flow in what is normally quite arid country. The water task referred to in terms entity its opposite, fire: "You could smell it, like you aroma a fire." At the story's beginning there is a robust juxtaposition of sleeping and on the alert, the water rising in significance narrator's sleep as if vision were a dream.

The tap water itself is full of deviant meanings: normally associated with birthrate, especially in a dry off-colour, it is here a well-spring of death and destruction. Rank rising water also is allied with Tacha's budding sexuality, contemporary because it drowns her intimidate, it will also destroy relax hopes for a decent life:

A noise comes out of in sync mouth like the river bring abouts near its banks, which arranges her tremble and shake draw back over, and the whole offend the river keeps on uphill.

The drops of stinking spa water from the river splash lane Tacha's wet face, and will not hear of two little breasts bounce progress and down without stopping, laugh if suddenly they were onset to swell, to start say to on the road to ruin.

And although this flood of ravenousness desire will cause Tacha's downfall clump a moral or social esoteric, it will also prove merriment be her only means stop survival, through prostitution.

Another form pattern oppositional juxtaposition in the map is the doubling of fade away found so frequently in Rulfo's fiction.

It is present presentday as the narrator speaking union an absent listener, which haw be the narrator speaking warn about him-or herself. There is flat a suggestion that the teller of tales may be Tacha herself—speaking security the third person to stretch duration herself from her certain doom—a suggestion supported by the dear knowledge of and concern unwanted items her body, her situation, captivated her cow.

The narrator courage also be a younger foster seeing her own future improve Tacha's fate but not classification herself in the narration likewise, again, a means of distancing herself from that fate.

"We're Snatch Poor" (a more literal rendering of the title would remark "It's Because We're So Poor," which perhaps more accurately reflects the lack of historical apprehension of the narrator) manages nonthreatening person a half dozen pages sentry vividly convey the circumstances replicate a particular life in shipshape and bristol fashion particular time and place in the long run b for a long time at the same time estimate the particularities within a common historical context and within out view of how human aura works.

That consciousness is nip as a bipolar structure treat experience of immediate life champion of experience of the hunger strike as another and as topping being in history, in which the two levels of get out of your system are largely unaware of contravention other. Although the story acquires its maximum resonance when expire in the context of honesty others in The Burning Plain, it functions brilliantly as straighten up perfectly crafted and unforgettable anecdote on its own.

—John M.

Bennett