Lorca Journal 5

Potential Themes:

• Following passion can be dangerous. 
• People are constantly faced with the internal struggle of self control vs. indulgence. 
• No matter what we do, our fate, or time of death, cannot be changed. 

1. The Moon symbolizes time and this is shown by his actions. The Moon walks slowly onto the stage which represents the passage of time. This ties in with the theme of being unable to escape fate or our time of death. The moon even directly says "They cannot get away!" and "They cannot escape!" (82). The Bridegroom and Leonardo may not be ready for death, but because the fates or the Moon has declared it's their time, they must die. In a way, we can examine this as being destiny. I thought of the beggar woman as symbolizing death. She is even listed as "death" in the character list at the beginning of the play. Lastly, I thought of the woodcutters as acting like a chorus, so they could symbolize the common man.

2. It seems that once the runaway couple is caught, Leonardo is captured and killed. I am still unsure how the Bridegroom died, but there could have been a fight between the two, potentially involving knives as well. I came to the assumption that the two died from the beggar woman. The beggar woman comes on stage and "opens her cloak and remains at center stage, like a great bird with immense wings" (93). The beggar woman could be representing crows with her bird-like actions, and crows are often used to symbolize death.

3. Once the Mother realizes her son is dead, she seems to be desiring peace. She starts off by saying "Here is where I want to be.  And at peace" (100). This seemed a bit odd to me because the woman who is responsible for death is standing right in front of her, yet it seems like the Mother is trying to emotionally cleanse herself. Then all of a sudden, I saw a vengeful side to the Mother. Her lines at the very end of the play "through the astonished flesh, and stops there--at the place where, trembling and entangled, lies the dark root of the scream," makes it seem as if the Mother stabbed the Bride (105). I felt like Lorca wanted us to almost experience catharsis then slap us in the face again with a new death.

4.  An element of tragedy I saw in the play was the fall. A character, in this case Leonardo and the Bride, follow their instincts without a doubt, and this causes them to fall. Another element of tragedy I saw was the aspect of experiencing pleasure in the pain of the character's. When the Bridegroom finally takes action and chases after his Bride, the audience experiences a moment of pleasure, even the Bridegroom is devastated by his wife leaving him. The audience may also experience pleasure when Leonardo and the Bride run away together, even though that the audience knows darkness and death is lurking around the corner.