Blood Wedding - Journal #5

Theme
It is better to have had passion and died, than have none and live.
(To be honest, that's all I can come up with without listing off stuff like 'Death or Honor')

1. Symbolism

Woodcutters
I think these guys are like a variation of the Chorus. They know things that other characters do not, such as the coming of Death and the Moon.

First Woodcutter: Death! Death is coming, Beneath the giant leaves!
Second Woodcutter: Don't start the flow of blood!
First Woodcutter: Death, lonely death, Beneath the withered leaves.
(Lorca 88)

The repetition of the lines makes me think of a large Chorus, where many people are saying the same thing. Maybe at the same time, maybe not.

Beggar Woman
Ok, the stage directions make this one blatantly obvious. The Beggar Women is Death in disguise and directly influencing events in the play. Why Death chose to be a Beggar Woman intrigues me.

Beggar Woman: (At the door) A piece of bread, girls! (97)
As a Beggar Woman, Death can walk around and say whatever it wishes because no one really cares.

Moon
The moon is creepy. I mean, seriously. He/she/it WANTS blood to feel warm and wanted. The moon speaks with the Beggar Woman often, and both want people to die, so would it be a stretch to say both symbolize different twists on the concept of Death? I'll have to look into that later and do some comparisons between the Moon and the Beggar Woman.

2. When they are caught, Leonardo and the Bridegroom die. This leaves the Bride with both of her lovers dead and the blame on her. She had her fun with Leonardo, her moment of 'passion', and now it seems to be a good time to die (which in fact she wants to do anyway).

3. The mother is quite upset, but not in a 'tear my hair out' kind of way. She is trying her best to be strong, refusing to kill the Bride despite the requests to do so.

4.
"I was a woman consumed by fire, covered with open sores inside and out, and your son was a little bit of water from whom I hoped for children, land, health! But the other was a dark river filled with branches that brought close to me the whisper of its rushes and its murmuring song." (101)

Lorca used symbolism here to reveal the Bride's motivations.

"What do I care about your honor? What do I care about your death? What do I care about anything at all? Blessed be the fields of wheat, because my sons lie under them. Blessed be the rain, because it wets the faces of the dead. Blessed be God who lays us down together to rest." (102)

This section is mostly repeated from earlier, and it uses the symbols of wheat and water, as well as God to express the Mother's grief.

"The bridegroom will find them - with the moon or without the moon! I saw him start off - like a raging star! His face, the color of ashes, revealed the fate of his whole family." (80)

This line from the woodcutter kinda tipped me off that the woodcutters were not normal characters and could possibly serving a 'Chorus' role. He seems certain that the bridegroom will find the runaways, and seems to know more than he should about the whole sitaution.

5. I think a big one is sympathy for both sides. On one hand I feel bad for the Bride, who may have acted selfishly, but it was because of passion. Then there is the mother who suffers so much through the entire play and even some before the play!