Lazarillo de Tormes: A Picaresque Tale of Survival
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
In this first treaty, we are introduced to Lazarus, a boy of low and shameful extraction, named after the river Tormes, where he was born. His father was a thief, and he lived with his mother in Salamanca. She married a Black man and had a son. One day, Lazarus, being older, finds his mother in the service of a blind beggar, beginning his first adventure. Like others, he has to look for food to satisfy his hunger and survive. The blind man was very greedy, and Lazarus had almost no food, so he resorts to all sorts of traps to eat and drink more than he was allowed. As Lazarus loved wine, he made a hole under the jar of the blind man, plugged with wax. With the excuse of the cold, he would get between her legs, and when it melted from the heat of the fire, he drank the small stream that fell. But when the blind man realized this, he punished Lazarus brutally. Two other stories are told, one with a bunch of grapes and the other with a sausage. The relationship between the two ended one night when it rained a lot. Lazarus told the blind man that to cross a river, he had to jump with all his might. The blind man obeyed, and Lazarus directed him headfirst against a pillar. Before he could recover, Lazarus had already gone.
Lazarus and the Priest
After leaving the blind man, Lazarus begins to beg and strikes a deal with a priest who needed an assistant to give mass, so he stayed with him. But the priest was very greedy and treated him very badly, only eating well when they went to a funeral. One day, he found the key to the cabinet where his master kept the bread. Lazarus ate it and made the excuse that the mice came in through the holes. Soon, the priest was cheating, but still, as bread became suspicious of a snake that had previously been hanging around there. Lazarus, fearing that he would be discovered, got the key in his mouth, but one night he went through and began to hiss like a snake. His master was frightened and hit a club where he was. The whistle went for a light and discovered he had given to Lazarus in the head and that this was the key. So when he recovered, he went home.
Lazarus as Town Crier
In the seventh and final treaty, Lazarus achieved the office of town crier of Toledo, which he expects to charge off and win something for old age. The Archpriest of San Salvador offers to marry her maid, which makes Lazarus happy, but the gossips whisper of his wife’s relations with the archpriest. The novel ends when everything becomes clear, and the protagonist is seen in prosperity.
Summary and Time Period
Summary: This is a Spanish picaresque novel anonymously, whose full title is “The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, and their fortunes and adversities.” It was published in 1554. It is the biography of a rogue serving different masters, invariably taking advantage of them. It is a short novel divided into seven treaties.
Time: Whatever time frame of Lazarillo (both historical references may refer to events that occurred in 1510-1525 as in 1520-1538), the story of their fortunes and adversities develops in the first half of the sixteenth century and extends literary life in the picaresque novel of the XIV and XVII.
Lazarus and the Squire
Lazaro goes to Toledo and encounters a squire who offered him the position of being his servant. Seeing her clothing, Lázaro agrees without objection, but after reaching a dark house, dark and sad, that’s where you stay, you realize that in fact is in total misery and attempts to conceal his situation. Like their former masters, he has starved it, so that he had to fix to get your food. In addition, the squire, by class prejudice, is considered incapable of work and begging, so that Lazarus had to ask the charity for both. When he was tired of this routine, he left.
The Pardoner and Other Masters
5: The fifth master of Lazarus was a pardoner, who turned out to be a crook because he was allied with a bailiff to get people to buy bulls. Seeing that nobody bought them decided to invent a fictitious fight a fight in which the pardoner makes people believe that the sheriff does not die thanks to God and the sheriff had bought a bull. After seeing what his master was able to do decided to get away from him.
6: He was with another master who painted tambourines but left because he suffered mucho.Después went with a water carrier with which he earned enough money and that after 4 years managed to buy decent clothes. When he got it he told his master did not want to work and left.