Growing Up Theme Analysis

Lazaro’s story, marked by milestones of learning and loss of innocence, is a story of a boy growing older. But Lazaro’s process of coming of age is unlike many other examples in literature, distinguished above all by the character’s development of a deeply cynical worldview and his loss of a sense of morality. His mother’s parting words—a prayer that Lazaro should “learn his worth”—loom over the entire story. If it is true that Lazaro has, in fact, realized his worth at the end of the book by settling down as a lowly town crier and a cuckold, then perhaps his mother’s words are an omen that the essential worth of a human is very little indeed.

Lazaro himself foreshadows his own loss of innocence early on in the text when he remarks that he has much to learn from the cruel and conniving blind man if he hopes to survive. Lazaro’s time serving the chaplain years later marks a major pivot point in the text, as Lazaro begins to find financial security for the first time. However, his decision to spend his first savings on nicer clothes and a fine sword is reminiscent of the figure of the squire, who was concerned above all with appearances. This also marks the end of the streak of compassion Lazaro showed for the squire, and it foreshadows a shift in his values, from merely striving for survival and helping others when he can to having an interest in self-betterment.

In the final chapter, the narrator changes his name from Lazarillo (-illo being a diminutive ending in Spanish) to Lazaro. This change of name reflects a shift in identity, cementing a loss of innocence and signaling the moral transformation that has occurred. This shift is evidenced, for example, in the deal Lazaro strikes with the archpriest to turn a blind eye to his own wife’s infidelity. Here, again, coming of age and finding one’s place in the world are synonymous with moral corruption. Ultimately Lazarillo de Tormes is the life story of a poor boy who is subject to one brutal violence after another until he grows up to become a passive, unfeeling, and immoral person, doling out the same injustices he suffered as a child in exchange for a bit of money or power.