Identify the setting (both location and time).  Be cognizant of Rulfo’s manipulation of time in his narrative.  If it helps, create a time line.

Who is the narrator of the novel?  Is there only one?

Who is the narrator addressing in the grave?

Beyond the title character, Pedro Páramo, who are the main figures in the novel?  Generate a list of characters for reference.  Many of the characters’ story lines intersect.

Examine gender and the significance of the roles both women and men play in the novel.  How is each gender treated by the author?

How do Pedro and Miguel treat women?

Throughout the novel, Rulfo upsets the story’s flow in a variety of ways (e.g. abrupt shifts in speaker, random monologues, etc.).  Cite some example of how Rulfo fragments the novel.

Identify obvious motifs and images that are related to either the characters (e.g. Susana San Juan’s association with light), or the setting (e.g. Comala’s association with heat).  There are several.  How are they significant?

Consider Spanish vocabulary.  For example, the name Pedro Páramo roughly translates from Spanish. Pedro/Peter would be Piedra = “stone, rock” and Páramo = “abandoned, bleak, rugged, windy plateau.”  How do these enhance Rulfo’s use of language?   Think of the “pile of rocks” that Pedro is reduced to at the end of the novel.

Familiarize yourself (generally) with the Mexican Revolution as it serves as a backdrop for several of the events surrounding Pedro in the second half of the novel.  Start with the term “caciques.”  There are clear political and cultural events surrounding the main story.

What is the Cristeros War (p. 81) that Dorotea says “drained off” the last of Pedro Páramo’s men?

Look at the themes of the supernatural and the surreal.  How is reality (such things as time) blurred?

Consider the binaries within the text:  life/death, light/dark, salvation/damnation.  What does Rulfo’s exploration of these issues add to the story?

“Magical Realism” blends elements of reality (what is real) with elements of the fantastic.  Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo serves as a clear example of this form of writing.  How so?

How does Juan Rulfo offer at the end of his novel?