Blood Wedding Journal #1

Discussion: Point of View/Characters: From whose point of view is the story told? Does this change? How reliable is the narrative voice? How well does the reader get to know the characters? How credible are they? How are they presented? How does the writer persuade us to like/sympathize with some characters and dislike others?

(I will start with the characters in Act I and probably add to this as we read further on)

Bridegroom: He is one of the first two characters we meet in the play. We immediately learn about his sad family history and feel sorry for his loss, but also look forward to his future life with his new life. Later on, when we see him interacting with the bride, we notice that he loves her more than she loves him. Also, the bride is not at all interested in marrying him. It makes us wonder why they are getting married in the first place, and it makes the bridegroom look foolish because he can't see that she doesn't want him.

Mother: She is one of the first two characters we meet in the play. We immediately learn about her sad family history and feel sorry for her loss, but also feel sorry that she will soon be losing her son when he gets married. She seems kind of crazy because she is obsessing over knives and cannot let go of her dead loved ones and keeps shifting the conversation towards them.

Wife: Because she begins by singing to her baby in a poetic sort of way, she seems very loving and tender. However, (to me at least) she soon seems kind of nagging and clingy towards Leonardo. She also appears to be jealous of his former relationship with the bride. Later in the play, it is revealed that her relationship with Leonardo is very tense and strained.

Leonardo: Leonardo comes into the play and seems to be busy and short-tempered. Later on, it seems that he is only curt with his wife, and it becomes obviously that he truly loves the bride and not his wife. However, I did not feel sympathy for the wife because it seemed like everyone else was against Leonardo. It also seemed very sad to me that Leonardo and the bride love each other but are not together.

Father: The father doesn't seem to play a huge role, but he does seem very concerned with having sons to do his work. This contrasts with the mother's concern with having daughters because the sons will always leave, but daughters spend time with you.

Bride: The bride is my favorite character in the play because she seems to have the most going on. She is marrying one guy, but she doesn't really love him. In fact, it seems that she even hates him because she is always telling him to leave her alone. I always start laughing when he refers to their "alone time" and she seems kind of grossed out by it. While she is the most deceptive character in the play, I seem to trust her the most because I feel like while she might not be honest with other people, she is definitely honest with herself. Rather than trying to convince herself that she can live happily with the bridegroom, she decides to ditch him at their wedding.