Juan Rulfo essays

Juan Rulfo essays Juan Rulfo was born in Apulco, a small village in the province of Jalisco (Mexico), the 16th of May in 1917. His family was prosperous and owned extensive land in the region. In the late 1920s, however, his life was deeply affected by the Cristero revolt (1926-1929), a series of religious uprisings in Western Mexico by members of the Roman Catholic Church against the Mexican federal government, led by President Plutarco Elias Calles; and the governments secularization measures. The conflicts exposed Rulfo to the horrors of war and destroyed his familys wealth. Rulfos mother died of a heart attack. His father was murdered. After his parents died during the revolt, he was sent to an orphanage in Guadalajara. Though much of his childhood was filled with tragedy and sorrow he would later become one of the major novelists and short-story writers of his time. Rulfos career as a writer began in 1945 with the publication of his short stories in the literary review Pan. This first collection of short stories was later to be known as El llano en llamas (1953). Another book, a novel Pedro Paramo followed soon after (1955). Unlike many of his more prolific contemporaries, Rulfos reputation is based on just two literary works. His writing became important to the genre of magic realism, a discipline that incorporated techniques such as interior monologue, flash backs, the voice of the dead, and a stream-consciousness style of writing. Rulfos literary works have a connection with his personal life. He spent most of his childhood in the town San Gabriel, which later became the setting for his novel Pedro Paramo and many of his stories, and where he attended elementary school (Juan Rulfo-Pagina Oficial). The novel Pedro Paramo originated from a story about a trip Rulfo took concerning the personal significance of deruralization in Mexico; this journey was to a town from his own rural past.(I...