"Blood Wedding" Reflection

Just before Christmas break, we finished reading Blood Wedding, by Federico Garcia Lorca. I thought it was a pretty good play. It was about a bride and bridegroom who got married, but the bride was in love with another man named Leonardo, who was also already married. During the festivities following the wedding, the bride and Leonardo run off to the woods together. The bridegroom is livid, and joins a search part to find them. In the ensuing chaos, the bridegroom and Leonardo find each other and both are killed. Throughout the play, there was quite a bit of foreshadowing to their deaths, which I appreciated a lot more once I learned the outcome of the play. Also, it was interesting to notice that Blood Wedding represented a lot of themes similar to those found in Shakespeare, especially the tragedy of ill-fated lovers. Although I'm not a big fan of tragedies, I actually liked Blood Wedding better than most. I'm not really sure why because I thought Leonardo was selfish: he left his wife for another woman right after their child had died. And she was pregnant again! I never can condone cheating, so I certainly was not fan of Leonardo. Also, the bride seemed very petty and childish; she would lead the bridegroom on and then just as quickly push him away. She acted as if Leonardo stole her away and she had no power over it, but she certainly did. Even the bridegroom seemed to be a weak character, for he couldn't even see the true nature of his bride. However, I felt a little more pity for him because he had to deal with his crazy mother who couldn't see that he was still alive. She was so obsessed with the death of her husband and other son that she could not see the value of the Bridegroom until he too was dead. Though these characters seem the opposite of endearing, I actually enjoyed the play. Perhaps it was the fact that it was something new to me since I usually only read upbeat stories with a happy ending. But I thought Lorca did an excellent job pulling all of the characters together and weaving a plot that entertained the viewers and left room for one's own interpretation.