Blood Wedding

“How is it that something as small as a pistol or a knife can do away with a man who is like a bull?”

The Mother suggests a paradox to which the play will return: the capacity of small, crude implements to murder. Honor killings imbue innocuous items, such as the small knife a farmer uses to cut grapes from a vine, with death and danger.

“I looked hard at your father: nobody else. And when the Felixes murdered him I just went on staring at the wall. One woman, one man and that’s it.”

The Mother illustrates the hard reality of the social order, one which causes suffering to all the major female characters by the end of the play. Her regular recitation of the wrong done by the Felixes turns her pronouncement into a prophecy of how things will end for the Bride and for Leonardo’s wife.

“The horse is weeping,

Its hooves are hurt,

Its mane is frozen.

And in its eye

A dagger of silver.

Down by the river,

Down by the river,

Blood is pouring

Stronger than the water.”

The Mother-in-law’s addition to her grandson’s lullaby quickly becomes prophetic as it twists away from its traditional Andalusian roots. Symbols of tragedy are presented here: the knife, the river, the tortured horse, blood, and water. The repetition of “Down by the river” foreshadows the dual deaths by the river. The assertion that blood is stronger than water suggests that violence will eclipse peace in the end.