http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqxJMC
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Flamenco
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 How might the Flamenco be seen to run through
Blood Wedding?
 Blood Wedding is a simple tragic tale as one with the
spirit of flamenco; with its pain, with its passions;
with its withheld eroticism.
Symbolism and metaphor – Lorca
comments on his own work
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When asked what he would call the most gratifying
part of Blood Wedding, Lorca said, "The one where
the Moon and Death intervene as elements and
symbols of fate. The realism that predominates the
tragedy up to that point is broken and disappears to
give way to poetic fantasy where I naturally feel as
comfortable as a fish in water."
How effective are the representations of: The
Beggar Woman, The Moon, The Woodcutters
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 In Act 3 Scene 1, Lorca uses The Beggarwoman to symbolise
death; a character to represent a personification of the moon;
woodcutters to comment on both sides of the story; stage
symbolism (at the end) to represent the deaths; violins to
represent the forest, and poetic verse for Bride and Leonardo.
• Beggar Woman suggests how death is seen by mere mortals as a curse on
human wishes and hopes.
• The Moon enters the final act of the play craving tragedy as if tragedy
were needed in order for its own life to be sustained. This suggests how
tragedy is an unavoidable part of life. The Moon offers to flood the land
brightly with its light so the lovers will have no place to hide.
• Are the Woodcutters sympathetic to the lovers? “..blood that sees the light
of day is drunk up by the earth.” Contrasted with: “There are many clouds
and it would be easy for the moon not to come out”.
Life verses Death
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Dualism: opposed or contrasted aspects;
State of being divided.

This is the elemental force that drives all the
characters.
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The images within the play strongly oppose
each other, all of which are centred around
two forces - life & death. There is an
irresolvable tension in these two forces death is inevitable.
The images re-occur within Lorca's plays, to make
us constantly emotionally involved; intensifying our
emotions so that we feel the push & pull of forces
upon the characters. This occurs because Spanish
culture had very strong association with the images,
such as the horse symbolising male power &
sexuality. The audience would, therefore, respond
emotionally to the image. All the images within the
play are those that were common in Spanish culture.

The imagery was the most direct way that Lorca
could gain the audiences emotional response.

Effects of the poetry & its duel imagery function:
All the other images that Lorca uses are
tense but resolvable, but always come back
to this main theme of life & death.
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To increase the atmosphere;
To create empathy between the audience & the
characters;
To vary the dialogue - heighten moments with a
change if pace & form;
To create a verbal picture - heighten the senses;
As a thematic function to tell the story.
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e.g.
the knife vs. blood
the knife = death,
blood = life.
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death
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1. Death is the end and the enemy of mortal life.
 Death as a mortal end is developed through the Mother, who laments
regularly on the death of loved ones but largely calmly deals with these
painful loses nevertheless.
2. Death can also be seen within the play not only as the killing of the
physical body but also puts an end to that which makes us human by
breaking human bonds which connects us to each other. Lorca plays on this
idea of death through the development of actions of his characters.
 The passionate bonds of lovers also meets with death in this sense. The
Mother also exemplifies elements of this kind of death as the killers of her
husband and son reside in jail, seemingly contentedly, and have escaped
“real” punishment, while she is punished by having been deprived of
loved ones and they have been deprived of life. Death is a punishing curse
destroying precious connections.
 This second representation of death is characterized in the play as a cruel
and cold Beggar Woman who acts as the lovers “enemy” by revealing their
whereabouts to the hunters.
Death continued…
The theme of death-in-life is generally most closely associated with
the female characters, although it is also closely associated with
Leonardo and the Bride, in particular. It is linked to Leonardo and
the Bride since, to them, not to be able to love each other is not to
live fully. Hence, at the end of the play, both would prefer death
than endure the death-in-life of separation. As the First Woodcutter
says, “Better dead with the blood drained away than alive with it
rotting.” In terms of the female characters, the theme of death-in-life
takes on broader connotations. Women as beings whose lives occur
behind “thick walls” is underscored throughout the play. For
example, at one point in the play, the Mother asks the Bride: “Do
you know what it is to be married, child?” The Bride says she does
but the Mother emphasizes her point anyway: “A man, some
children, and a wall two yards thick for everything else.” Their
lives, in the private realm of the home, is like life within a thickwalled coffin. It is a death-in-life because these exaggerated limits
on women’s social roles prevents them from pursuing all of the joys
and varieties life has to offer. The men come and go; but the women
are mostly at home.
The individual verses society

 Leonardo and Bride find their social positions intolerable and rebel
against their fates. Breaking the bonds of marriage and destroying the
equilibrium of the community.
 The characters lacking proper names (with the exception of Leonardo),
Lorca actively designates them to their societal role and position. In
other words, characters will follow set expectations: the Bride for
example is intended to become a wife and mother. Lorca paints human
beings to conform to a limited number of roles and possibilities
according to social living and life. Only Leonardo contests these rules,
who is individualized by being given a proper name.
 Could Lorca be trying to challenge Spanish society at the time who
were unwilling to encourage change?
 Perhaps, as the play seems to generate sympathy for the lovers,
therefore it may also be seen to generate sympathy for the forces of
change.
Further symbols found throughout the play – what is
the collective effect of such symbolism?
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 Water
 Blood
 Horse
 Thorns
 Flowers
 Bull/ oxen
 Consider again how symbolic each of the characters
are throughout the play