The informative, political views of your 2013 Green Party President, Tessa Robinson (Just kidding. This is a close-read for Chapter 1 of Pedro Paramo)

            This introductory passage introduces us to Juan Preciado by choosing him as the narrator for this particular chapter. It is in past tense, showing “The Call” of the hero’s journey, setting up the book as a whole. Something I noticed is that by naming the main character “Juan”, it is almost as if the author, Juan Rulfo, is inserting himself in the novel; very metafictional.  Some motifs I found in this chapter, other than death, are going back to the past. Not only is it in the past tense, but the Juan’s mother is so fixated on revenge for Pedro Paramo, because of past events and “all those years he put us out of his mind”. For the first time reader, having the "I" repeated multiple times without actually telling the reader their name (although we do find out a lot about "I"), it encourages them to read further. This kind of writing continues throughout the book because it causes so much confusion with the way the book is formatted, and even at the end of the first read, the reader isn't satisfied with the extent of understanding of what is actually going on in the book, and the order of things.