Topic Sentence

In Blood Wedding, written by Federico Garcia Lorca, Bride's desire for control in her life ultimately leads to her suicide in which she takes total control of her life by ending it, this need for control is a result of the arranged marriage.

Journal #9

List of themes Lorca creates in the Blood Wedding

Nature and how it contrasts the characters
Nature plays a huge role in the Blood Wedding specifically the moon, and this interested me a lot because to me nature is something that is almost entirely out of our control so to see the characters trying to control each makes for an interesting story. The moon especially to me is just intriguing that I just want to sit and think about it more and more why Lorca chose it. And also why a woman is supposed to play it

Gender roles and their significance to the events that occur
Kind of going off of that last theme with nature is why the moon is supposed to be played by a woman. I guess thats one thing that I ignored previously which is who is playing the roles. Lorca could be sending a message with who gets casted. But anyways the theme part I think that Lorca is criticizing roles set by society in general not just the role women have and why as a result people die. Like it's the death of societal roles in some way

Age and it's effect on the character and the events
One of the interesting things to me was the use of vineyards and grapes to connect families, and from my understanding of wine the older the better, so I think that it is almost as if Lorca is trying to show that the elderly people in the play are better. Although some of the older characters do a lot of manipulating. So I don't really know where that is going but I think for sure the vineyards play into a theme of age and it's significance to the characters

Journal #8 Blood Wedding

Literally the atmosphere becomes murky in act 3 when compared to act 2. In act 3 scene 1 the atmosphere is described as murky. As a reader this makes me think that the plot is supposed to get more confusing, or the characters are about to become more confused. Or I am about to get confused. That's what murky makes me think of, gets me set up for confusion. Anyways the part that I found was interesting between act 2 and act 3 was that both being at night. I think that it is very significant that they both begin at night or a couple of reasons. The first is that night is usually when people sleep, I don't know of many nocturnal people, and sleep is a biological need to perform well, so the fact that Lorca is depriving these characters of sleep may lead to the confusion. Who knows, maybe the bride wouldn't have run off if she had a good nights sleep. Maybe Leonardo and the Bridegroom wouldn't have killed each other if they had had a good night's sleep. This makes me wonder if maybe Lorca has sleeping problems. Maybe he had insomnia and spent countless nights just staring at the moon and it haunted him. So he wrote a book in which the moon is an actual character, reflecting his own life. I guess on large scale the changes in the set change the way I see the play, but what they really do is make me think about Lorca's own life. And through thinking about Lorca's life I think about the atmosphere of the play. So it's kind of the long way to it. Anyways overall I think that the set changes make everything more confusing because the atmosphere is "murky" and I would love to see it performed live.

Journal #7 Blood Wedding

Lorca adds a lot of youth to the second act and I think that it serves several purposes to add youth. The first being from a business perspective. By adding youth, the youth of the population will feel more of a connection and then will be more likely to buy it. It's a smart idea to add youth to the play because he more copies he sells the more money he makes, and who wouldn't want more money? Another reason why I think Lorca added youth is because he is dealing with some topics that seem kind of cliche in some ways, but Lorca writes them in a different manner. So the youth is just kind of a subtle reminder to the reader that Lorca is dealing with old topics in a young and fresh way. Otherwise without the addition of the youth the reader might just think that people falling in love and then dying or committing suicide is boring because there is a million books about people that fall in love and then die. Basically I think Lorca added youth to remind people that he wasn't being cliche. The overall impact that the addition of youth has on my reading and interpretation of the play is it makes me make more connections to the play than I normally would. When I was little and I read books with older characters I really felt like I had no connection to them and some of the meaning was lost. But now that I am older I feel like there is more of a possibility of the characters being more like me. Especially when I read Shakespeare, most of the characters like Romeo and Juliet were young, around my age. So I think Lorca added youth so that younger people can feel more of a connection and get more involved to come to conclusions.

Journal #6 Blood Wedding

The character that seems to be the most miserable is Leonardo. However I would like to clarify that this doesn't mean he has experienced the most misery, it just means that he is the most miserable. For instance I think that the Bride is going through more misery than Leonardo, but Leonardo lets his misery affect him more than the Bride lets her misery affect her. Leonardo openly expresses his misery to the other characters when he says "Two oxen and a tumbledown hut are almost nothing. That's what hurts." (pg. 46) his pain is understandable though, not being able to marry the person you love because of social status would be a pretty lame situation to be in. Does he need to act out in such a way though? I don't think so. I think his misery should be channelled into doing something effective and worthwhile for society rather than just wallowing in self pity. That is why I think Leonardo is the most miserable character. Like I said earlier though, that doesn't mean he is experiencing the most misery. I think that the Bride is experiencing the most misery. When she says "And it draws me under, and I know I'm drowning, but I follow" it shows to me that she is experiencing a deep pain and yet she is continuing on with her life and trying to move past it. I have more respect for the Bride because she is at least trying to make a positive out of a negative whereas Leonardo is just being a square. Having said that though I do respect Leonardo for trying so hard, because if the world didn't have any Leonardos we wouldn't have very many hard workers. If it was a world full of Brides we might not progress as far as we should. What stops the characters from pursuing what would end their misery is societal limitations. It is not appropriate for a man to go after an engage woman. I have no idea why Lorca would do this, honestly I am pretty sure it is because he read a news article with this story in it so he wrote a play.

Journal #5 Blood Wedding

It seemed to me that the Wife and the Mother-in-law were characterized a lot by the dialogue the use and how poetic is sounded. I found this interesting for several reasons. First of all I thought that it was very stereotypical to make the lady characters more poetic because that is as stereotype that exists in America today. However I am not sure that it existed in Lorca was writing this, so it is entirely possible that during his time women were thought of as not being able to write well. If this is true then Lorca would be critiquing the society he was living in. If this is not true then Lorca would simply be emphasizing what the culture already believes. I don't know enough of Spanish culture to make a guess. This effects my opinion of the women of the book because they seem more educated when they talk in a poetic style. It feels to my that when someone speaks with a sense of poetry that they not only know what they want to say but they manipulate it in a way to convince other people. So in a sense I distrust them a bit, but at the same time I trust them more than I would a different character. The thing I noticed is that they seem very caring and concerned about the well being of the Boy like I think would be stereotypical of a mother. Unfortunately I do not know enough about Lorca's home life to know if he had an effective mother or not. So I think this is what he thinks of as a good mother and whether or not it reflects his life or is a critique of bad parents I do not know. Overall though it makes me trust the character more because it makes me think of my mother and that makes me feel a stronger connection to the character.

Journal #4 Blood Wedding

The symbol of black clothing

When the neighbor walks into the house to talk with mother and she is described as "dressed in black with a shawl wrapped around her head" (pg. 6) When the pair talk they discuss how the neighbor's son's hands had been cut off by the "machine" and I think Lorca specifically chose to have the women dressed in black to reflect her emotions about her son's incidents. I find this interesting because I thought someone said in class that white was worn for sadder occasions and black was for happier occasions (I am not entirely sure) but this would be an example of when black clothing was worn at a sad occasion. Also the mother had just been discussing her husbands death with the bridegroom when the woman entered so I think that black clothing shows up as a symbol of misfortune from the beginning of the play whether or not it is supposed to be a happy color in spanish culture.

The symbol of grapes

Grapes come up early in the first scene when the bridegroom asks for a knife to cut some grapes. From there the mother goes into some sort of mental break down about how knives kill things. Later on however the bridegroom talks about how he saved up enough money to buy his lady friend a vineyard. I thought that it was interesting how the grapes are used to put the mother in a position to recall the memories of her late husband but then they come up again to give her a vision of her son's new family and how the family name will continue. I am not sure how important family names were during this time, but it seems like in the first scene the grapes are the connection between the family name dying with the death of the husband and the beginning of the new life with the bridegroom and his family.