Horns Symbol Analysis

At the time of this book’s publication it was a common practice to depict a cuckolded man (a man whose wife has been unfaithful to him) with horns coming out of his head. Experts have not been able to agree on a single explanation for why horns began to be used as the symbol for a man with an unfaithful wife, but, in keeping with this convention, animal horns appear several times throughout the text of Lazarillo de Tormes, always as a symbolic foreshadowing that Lazaro’s fate is to become a cuckolded husband. Although it is painfully clear, based on his own account, that Lazaro’s wife is also the archpriest’s mistress and that Lazaro therefore suffers from what is seen by others as the ultimate social disgrace, he is nevertheless determined by the end of the book not to admit to the reality of his circumstance. Instead, Lazaro is content to benefit from the arrangement with the archpriest, who gives both Lazaro and Lazaro’s wife money, even though it has cost Lazaro his dignity and sense of morality. Lazaro’s evident satisfaction with his own state of disgrace is representative of the hardened, cynical perspective on life that he has developed over the course of the book. Moreover, his willingness to feign ignorance of the ways in which he is being deceived by a religious figure of such high office (i.e., the archpriest) demonstrate his moral indifference toward the hypocrisy of the church.