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The Use Of Religion In The Novela Pedro Paramo By Juan Rulfo

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In the novela Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo uses religion as a symbol that contradicts with the characters lack of morals and lack of faith. The town people of Comala are obsessed with the thought of afterlife, pray and attending church regularly, but these habits that have lost their true meaning. Rulfo uses these symbolic activities to make the characters nihilistic and initialism natures more apparent. Father Renteria plays the God like figure, being that he is the only priest in the novel allowing him to be the mediator between life on earth and the afterlife. It is noticed in the ways people come to him to receive forgiveness for their sins and wrong doings. At the scene of Miguel Paramo’s funeral, Father Renteria “left without offering the final benediction to the people who filled the church” (25). The reasoning behind this was that Miguel Paramo killed Father Renteria’s brother and raped his niece, Ana. This left the people of the service having the corpse “weigh heavily on the soul of everyone present” (25). Father Renteria's occupation demands integrity, purity, and the power to believe his own teachings. Father Renteria may have had those attributes, but it changed in his time in Comala. The realization and consequences of his own change make him question himself leading to the town to question not only him, but also their afterlife future, givibg a perspective light on Comala's religious and psychological condition. Pedro Paramo tells Father Renteria to “Weigh him

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