Don/Doña Analysis in Pedro Páramo

In Spanish, don (used for men) and doña (used for women) are honorific terms similar to the English titles Mr. and Mrs. or Sir and Madam.

Don/Doña Quotes in Pedro Páramo

The Pedro Páramo quotes below are all either spoken by Don/Doña or refer to Don/Doña. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

People began arriving from other places, drawn by the endless pealing. They came from Contla, as if on a pilgrimage. And even farther. A circus showed up, who knows from where, with a whirligig and flying chairs. And musicians. First they came as if they were onlookers, but after a while they settled in and even played concerts. And so, little by little, the event turned into a fiesta. Comala was bustling with people, boisterous and noisy, just like the feast days when it was nearly impossible to move through the village.
The bells fell silent, but the fiesta continued. There was no way to convince people that this was an occasion for mourning. Nor was there any way to get them to leave. Just the opposite, more kept arriving.
[…]
Don Pedro spoke to no one. He never left his room. He swore to wreak vengeance on Comala:
“I will cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.”
And that was what happened.

Related Characters: Pedro Páramo (speaker), Susana San Juan

Page Number and Citation: 116-117

Explanation and Analysis:

Don/Doña Term Timeline in Pedro Páramo

The timeline below shows where the term Don/Doña appears in Pedro Páramo. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

History, Memory, and Narrative Theme Icon

...but Comala is so empty that Juan can hear his own footsteps echoing off the abandoned buildings. He glimpses a woman wearing a rebozo, but like a ghost, she vanishes and... (full context)

...invites Juan to visit his home deep in the hills. He tells Juan to find doña Eduviges and says that his own name is Abundio. (full context)

Fragment 5. Back in the present, doña Eduviges Dyada invites Juan inside her house, which initially looks empty. But Juan soon realizes... (full context)

Doña Eduviges knows Juan’s mother, Dolores. Actually, she explains, Dolores has just informed her of Juan’s... (full context)

Pedro’s grandmother sends him to buy the mill from doña Inés Villalpando and inform her that the family won’t be able to pay its debts... (full context)

...to put Pedro in his place and got offended when he insisted on being called “don” Pedro. After all, Pedro never even went to the Media Luna ranch. (full context)

...weeks after the first, Fulgor wonders how Pedro got so crafty. In fact, Pedro’s father don Lucas always thought of his son as unreliable and a failure—he wouldn’t help with the... (full context)

...that Pedro loves her. He says that Pedro was just secretive about his feelings because don Lucas didn’t think he deserved a wife as beautiful as Dolores. Fulgor asks if Dolores... (full context)

...met Pedro Páramo. But the other man—his brother-in-law—insists that Galileo definitely sold the land, and don Fulgor will be visiting him soon. He tells Galileo to “rest in peace,” just in... (full context)

Fragment 32. Night turns back into afternoon, and Juan feels himself in the city with doña Eduviges and the burro driver, and then sleeping next to Donis’s sister on a smelly,... (full context)

...fragment, Juan asks if Dorotea was talking in her sleep. Dorotea replies that it is doña Susana, who is buried nearby. She was the last wife to Pedro Páramo, and she... (full context)

...could be anyone, since Pedro Páramo killed dozens of people. After someone mistook Pedro’s father don Lucas for someone else at a wedding, they shot and killed him, and Pedro took... (full context)

...could have everything she could possibly imagine. Pedro even offered a job to her father, don Bartolomé San Juan. But the messenger kept failing to find Bartolomé and deliver him the... (full context)

...lit up every night. The women wonder whether Susana might have died. Angeles sympathizes with don Pedro, but Fausta thinks that marrying Susana was Pedro’s punishment for being a wicked man. (full context)

...delirious: he makes a vulgar complaint about his life and falls back asleep. Abundio asks doña Inés for some liquor. He needs it to cope: his wife, Refugio, died last night.... (full context)

Doña Inés initially doesn’t understand what’s happened, but soon she starts claiming that she sensed the... (full context)

Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo

Don/Doña Term Analysis

Don/Doña Quotes in Pedro Páramo

Don/Doña Term Timeline in Pedro Páramo