Blood Wedding
By Garcia Lorca
Garcia Lorca
 Lorca is one of the most important characters to emerge in Spain’s
cultural history. His most famous surrealist masterpiece is Blood Wedding.
He was part of a group known as the “Generation of 27” of which
Salvador Dali was a member.
 The group was crippled by the Civil War and Lorca was murdered by a
group of people suspected to be Nationalists. At that time a ban was put
on his works, and it was not lifted until 1953.
 Lorca was born in a village outside of Granada, and he accentuated the
importance of his rural background in his writing.
 Lorca moved to Madrid in 1919, but didn’t become famous as a
dramatist until 1927. He moved to New York and wrote much of his
poetry.
 In 1930 he returned to Spain and wrote his famous “Rural Trilogy” Of
Bodas Sangre, Yerma, and Casa De Bernarda Alba.
Surrealism
 Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary
movement that experimented with a new mode of expression
called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to
release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious. Officially
consecrated in Paris in 1924, followers were influenced by the
psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883).
Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and
prose drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally
restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce
surprising, unexpected imagery. The cerebral and irrational
tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and
whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade
earlier.
 http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collectiononline/movements/195237
Flamenco
 Flamenco is a genuine Spanish art, and to be more exact
a genuine Southern Spanish art.
 It exists in three forms: Cante, the song, Baile, the dance,
and Guitarra, guitar playing.
 Gypsies are very often named as the fathers of Flamenco,
and at least it can be taken for certain that they played
an important part in its creation. But also the popular
songs and dances of Andalusia have influenced early
Flamenco considerably.
 http://ib11english.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuild
erpictures/lorcayouth.jpg
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbadDj9KF1s
Tragedy in the Spanish Countryside

Blood Wedding begins with the struggle for a man, the bridegroom, to find the
woman of his dreams and marry her. However, the woman to whom the bridegroom
wishes to be married was previously engaged to a man named Leonardo.
 The bridegroom is caught in a quandary because Leonardo is a member of the Felix
family, caught in a brutal family feud with the Bridegroom’s family. As a result of this feud,
the Bridegroom’s father and brother were viciously and mercilessly murdered.
 As the plot progresses, the bride is still madly in love with Leonardo, despite the fact that
he has since married the bride‘s cousin. In reality, the bride only tries to mask her
emotions for Leonardo with a marriage to the bridegroom. This proves to be troublesome
because the bride’s desires take hold and she runs away with Leonardo after the
wedding has taken place.
 A hunt ensues, with the bridegroom madly searching for his bride. Also, the bridegroom is
looking to get revenge on Leonardo for the Felix’s despicable crimes, and for Leonardo
stealing the bridegroom’s woman. Hence, Blood Wedding is a unique play that captures
the drama of human interaction, and manifests it in an magnificent portrayal of Spanish
and Andalusian culture.
Themes

are
Some themes present in Blood Wedding
 the cycle of life,
 the progression of time,
 choice,
 deception,
 fate,
 and nature.
Symbols
The function of symbols in the play is that they: develop plot, themes, and characters; create irony through
juxtaposition; and contribute to the non-realistic style of the play. Some symbols are unambiguous (such as the knife);
some multifaceted (such as blood); some are mysterious.

In Act Three particularly the symbols become more poetic, more concrete, and more important: plot gives way to
almost completely symbolic writing, as summarized in the critical excerpt below:

"As the play progresses, the symbolic elements that stress the omnipotence of fate become the central focus of
the drama. While earlier acts contain allegorical lines and symbolic metaphors, the first scene in the final act is
completely symbolic. García Lorca borrows a technique from medieval morality plays and personifies Death and
Fate as an old beggar woman and the moon, respectively. Death, at the instruction of the playwright, does not
appear on the character list, as if her appearance is a surprise. In human form, these figures speak with
proclamations negating the ability of free will to overcome destiny. What’s more, they conspire to ensure the
murderous encounter; the Beggar Woman who is Death gives the Bridegroom directions to find the fleeing couple
and then accompanies him down to the river. The Moon, which in medieval texts is often a symbol of fate, shines
at the opportune moment to reveal Leonardo and the Bride. Even the choice of the minor characters as
woodcutters is highly symbolic: a woodcutter chops down a living tree, killing it. In this sense, the Woodcutters are
a perfectly natural choice to report and comment on the pursuit and encounter.

Do you agree with this writer's opinion that the symbols emphasise the theme of the omnipotence of fate in the
play?
Symbols – task for you!
 Follow your symbol throughout the play. Find specific examples from the
text. Find commentary on your symbol. Discuss your symbol with the
class:
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The bull
Flowers
Settings –Colours: Yellow, White, Gray, Black, Blue
Horse
Blood
Moon
Forest
Life vs Death
Wedding
Lace
Example of textual
discussion in outside source
 The governing metaphor of Blood Wedding is an extended allusion to a ritual enactment
that, like the play itself, is elemental in Spanish consciousness but reaches beyond
nationality toward archetype: the bull fight. The mother tells the Bridgegroom that he,
like his father before him, is a bull−man, and she calls the Felix family matadors. The
wedding of the Bride and Bridegroom arises, as the handmaidens sing, ‘‘like a bull,’’ a
bull that is destined to be destroyed by the matador, Leonardo. If we pursue this figure
we find that it leads to the central thematic pattern of the play. The bull, here as in
ancient thought, embodies the principle of natural order. It symbolizes human fertility
within a natural cycle of fertility. Those characters who are associated with the bull have
no individual identity. They are that which their position within the cycle of fertility
demands—‘‘the Mother,’’ ‘‘the Son,’’ ‘‘the Bride's father.’’ The matadors, on the other
hand, do have individual identity; they are the Felix family, their name expressing the
irony of their destinies. Leonardo Felix, still more precisely identified, is the matador, a
solitary figure who is the antagonist of the natural order, or the individuating principle in
human consciousness. At the moment of truth the matador confronts nature, challenges
it with his singularity, defines his manness in resisting, rather than in cooperating with it.
Yet his very individuation contains death. Like the bull fight to which it alludes, Lorca's
play imitates the elemental conflict in man's nature. Source: R. A. Zimbardo, ‘‘The Mythic
Pattern in Lorca's Blood Wedding,’’ in Modern Drama, Vol. 10, No. 4, February, 1968, p.
364.
 The stream of life for Leonardo are his wife and son, the tribal promise of
immortality, but he turns away from them in pursuit of personal passion.
He is Felix because he wants his own happiness, his own desire and it is
this that threatens communion, the harmony in nature that the
bridegroom promises. The ballad of the horse, which Campbell says is
meaningless, contains the whole idea of Leonardo, the principle of
individuation so crucial to the theme. The horse is wounded by winter,
the death of nature; his hooves and mane are frozen because he will
not be reborn in the stream of life. Moreover we are made to
understand why he cannot drink:
 “deep in his eyes stuck a silvery dagger.’’ Leonardo, the horse, cannot
look outward to the harmonious whole; he can only look inward to the
self. The horse must die in his own blood because he will not be reborn in
the stream of life. Source: R. A. Zimbardo, ‘‘The Mythic Pattern in Lorca's
Blood Wedding,’’ in Modern Drama, Vol. 10, No. 4, February, 1968, p.
364.
 In contrast to these dwellings is the forest to which the lovers
flee. The forest has long been that setting in literature where
society's rules mutate, change, break down, or no longer
apply. It is a wild place, beyond human−made, communal
order. These lovers, clearly, cannot be together within their
community, and so their only recourse is to attempt to escape
its bounds. Their true home, in some sense, therefore, is this
forest. (Enotes p.16)
What does the play mean?
Another Look at Themes

The theme of choice is evident through the characters of Leonardo
the bride, and the bridegroom. The bride is very conflicted because she
forces herself to marry the bridegroom, when in reality she is still in love
with Leonardo. Leonardo, despite being married, is also still madly in love
with the bride. Their combined choice to run away with each other after
the marriage is one that manifests their latent and pent up desires left over
from their previous relationship. The choice of the bridegroom is his
woman. Despite the fact that she lives in a cave located hours away, the
bridegroom still loves the bride and takes her as the woman he wants to
remain with for the remainder of his life.

The theme of deception ties into the theme of choice. The bride is
deceitful and deceptive by masking her residual yearnings for Leonardo
with a marriage to another man. This choice is dishonest because deep
down the bride knows how she feels, and the only reason she even
attempts to marry the bridegroom is because she is manipulating him in
order to distract herself from her ‘troubling’ desires for Leonardo.
Lullaby
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFiwH0BHNY
0
Themes Cont’d

The theme of fate also ties into the themes of choice and deception.
The choice on the bride’s part to marry the bridegroom, despite the fact that
she still retains feelings for her ex, causes the outcome of the deaths of both
men in the end of the play. There is a certain degree of irony in action
because what are the chances that a woman would try to choose both
men and yet lose both instead of winning one? Fate plays a very important
role in the drama of Blood Wedding with its surprising twists and turns in the
plot, and the final result as well.

Finally, the theme of nature is present in Blood Wedding. Nature is
pertinent to understanding Lorca’s play. Blood Wedding is full of references
to nature, such as the moon, the trees, the river (“arroyo”), death in the form
of the beggar woman, the vineyard, orange blossoms, and many others.
These references to nature reinforce the fact that the play is based on a true
story. Also, including nature in the play help to stress the other literary devices
such as plot, conflict, climax, etc. Therefore, Blood Wedding is a warped,
original work that holds the attention of the audience in a death grip, as is
the style of Federico Garcia Lorca.