Violence and Revenge Theme Analysis

In Blood Wedding, Lorca studies the allure of violence, investigating the odd way that humans are drawn to acts of revenge and retribution. By telling a tale about two families that have long been at war with one another, the playwright invites audience members to question the motivations that lie behind the various acts of violence fueling the feud. The Bridegroom’s mother, for her part, seems to understand the utter vapidity of the conflict between her family and the Felix family, framing violence as a petty thing while waxing poetic in the first scene about how absurd it is that “a thing as small as a pistol or a knife can put an end to a man.” However, even she ends up buying into the rivalry, as she yearns to see her enemies suffer for having killed her husband and son. By complaining that imprisonment isn’t a harsh enough punishment, she adopts the same brutal mentality that keeps the feud alive. What’s more, when the Bridegroom chases down Leonardo with the intention of killing him for eloping with the Bride, the audience once again witnesses an unnecessary impulse toward violence. Indeed, these characters are so caught up in exacting revenge on their enemies that they don’t stop to consider that this kind of behavior does nothing but perpetuate itself. In keeping with this, the Bridegroom dies in his quest for retribution—a quest that champions revenge for its own sake. By spotlighting this mindless cycle of violence, Lorca suggests that revenge is unproductive and harmful, since it does nothing but create misfortune for everyone involved.

In the play’s opening few lines, the Bridegroom’s mother expresses her disdain for violence. In fact, she displays a hypersensitivity to the mere idea that a person might use a weapon to hurt someone else. When her son says he’s going to cut grapes in the vineyard, the thought of him using a knife rattles her. “The knife, the knife…Damn all of them and the scoundrel who invented them,” she says. “And shotguns…and pistols…even the tiniest knife…and mattocks and pitchforks.” By listing these instruments, the mother calls attention to the fact that seemingly anything can be used as a weapon, categorizing “shotguns” with everyday agricultural implements like “mattocks and pitchforks.” By grouping these items together, she emphasizes how perverse it is that humans gravitate toward violence by using otherwise harmless objects to inflict pain upon one another—a fact that illustrates how quickly and easily people resort to violence. “Is it fair?” she asks. “Is it possible that a thing as small as a pistol or a knife can put an end to a man who’s a bull?” As she says this, the audience sees that the old woman’s grief regarding the death of her husband and son has enabled her to recognize the tragedy of physical aggression, which is capable of taking away something precious—life—with such ease and thoughtlessness.

Despite her contempt for violence, the Bridegroom’s mother unfortunately buys into the exact same obsession with revenge that leads to such conflicts in the first place. Lorca reveals this when the old woman complains that her enemies aren’t suffering enough for their crimes. “Can someone bring your father back to me? And your brother?” she asks the Bridegroom. “And then there’s the gaol. What is the gaol? They eat there, they smoke there, they play instruments there. My dead ones full of weeds, silent, turned to dust; two men who were two geraniums…The murderers, in gaol, as large as life, looking at the mountains…” By suggesting that imprisonment isn’t a sufficient form of punishment, the old woman adopts a vindictive mindset, one that fills her with rage when she considers that her family members’ murderers are looming “as large as life” in “gaol” (jail). Upset that her loved ones have been “turned to dust,” she believes the members of the Felix family don’t deserve to live. This is precisely the kind of thinking that leads to violence in the first place, and the old woman’s preoccupation with retribution blinds her to the fact that it doesn’t really matter whether or not the murderers are still alive, as her loved ones will still be dead regardless. Plus, the murderers are in jail, so it ultimately wouldn’t make any difference to her everyday life if they were executed. Nevertheless, she tacitly condones violence by playing into the narrative of revenge.

Although the Bridegroom’s mother is supposedly so afraid of violence, she has no problem encouraging it when her son’s bride runs away with Leonardo Felix. Urging the Bride’s father to rally his family to help her own clan track down Leonardo, she says, “The hour of blood has come again. Two sides. You on yours, me on mine. After them! Get after them!” As such, the audience sees that she has suddenly become an impassioned supporter of violent retribution. When she asserts that “the hour of blood has come again,” she perpetuates the aggressive mentality that has driven the feud between her family and the Felix family all along, the same mentality that has left her with a dead husband and son. As such, the audience comes to understand that the Bridegroom’s mother has gotten swept up in the strange appeal of revenge. Similarly, her son also gets wrapped up in the idea of making his enemy pay for stealing his bride, calling his pursuit of Leonardo “the greatest hunt of all,” a phrase that denotes his belief that revenge is a respectable and meaningful endeavor. Of course, what he fails to see is that killing Leonardo will do nothing to help his situation, since even if he does defeat him, it won’t change the fact that the Bride doesn’t love him. Because of this, his desire to exact revenge only puts him in harm’s way. When both he and Leonardo end up dying as a result of his bloodthirstiness, the audience sees how self-defeating it is to invest oneself in violence and retribution. By outlining this avoidable tragedy, Lorca communicates the futility of revenge, which only leads to unnecessary sorrow.