Lazarillo De Tormes

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1554

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Religious Hypocrisy and the Spanish Aristocracy

Lazarillo de Tormes is a book about religious hypocrisy and the amorality of society. However, Lázaro’s story goes further than this, as his character transformation reveals the stark outcomes of such a society. The theme of corruption and hypocrisy is inextricably bound with the picaresque genre, which features young, impoverished protagonists (rogues) who mature while bouncing from one master to another. The genre’s purpose repeatedly illustrates the main theme of the book: that the religious elite are hypocritical, and that unjust aristocratic ideologies (like noble birth) lead to empty, corrupt lives.

Through each master, Lázaro is continuously victimized by nefarious and immoral men, and shocked by the emptiness that comes with the concept of noble birth. As time passes and he ages, Lázaro begins to accept these traits as inevitabilities and becomes like the very people he once despised, ridiculed, and served. The story argues that the corruption of the wealthy and the religiously powerful begets further corruption, tyranny, and hypocrisy, as do unjust cultural ideas like nobility and aristocracy. For all that Lázaro detests those who starved, hurt, or shocked him, he becomes just like them.

The picaresque genre allows the author to create numerous examples of these truisms. The blind master teaches Lázaro the benefit of trickery and deception; trickery and deception are how Lázaro survives him. Likewise, when Lázaro is beaten and abused, he uses physical violence to free himself. Later, those affiliated with the church affect outward piety but, as Lázaro reveals, they are internally greedy, avaricious, and sexually and morally depraved. Repeated exposure to such corruption and moral degeneration transforms Lázaro into someone very much like those who harmed him. In the end, he is unwilling to work, like his master the squire, and he accepts the archbishop’s advice to ignore reality and continue living a dishonorable life so he can keep his material comforts. Lázaro’s naivete, his morality, and his work ethic have all been eroded away; social corruption and unjust circumstances have refashioned him into a complacent, dishonest, and manipulative hypocrite.

Honor and Dishonor

Another of the text’s key themes is honor, especially how honor is bestowed onto individuals in society. As the novel reveals, honor has little to do with behavior, hard work, or occupation, and everything to do with parentage. If one is born to wealth or nobility, then they are automatically granted honor. But as we see with the squire, when doled out in this way, honor is shallow and destructive. No emphasis is placed on the value of hard work. Lázaro’s father is a low-born mill worker. His stepfather is Black and lives with a white woman, and so his work and his wages are taken from him. Neither man is granted honor. Lázaro suffers the same fate: While he can attain comfort in being a town-crier or in having a wife who is the archbishop’s concubine, he can never find honor. He is low born, and nothing can change that fate.

The squire’s character most clearly reveals the shallowness of honor. Because he is of high birth, the squire would rather starve than reveal his poverty. As he watches his master swagger toward town, Lázaro thinks, “Who would not be deceived by his demeanor and his smart cloak and jacket” (34). Only Lázaro knows that the man has no proper bed to sleep in nor any money for food, that he eats the stinky crust of bread that Lázaro begged for and carried inside his dirty shirt for a day and half.

This moment demonstrates that so-called honor, as it is handed down from the Spanish aristocracy, is really tawdry and dishonorable. But honor is also lacking among the religious elite. The friar goes around town “visiting,” which is likely a euphemism for immoral sexual conduct. The seller of indulgences tricks poor people out of their hard-won money, and the archbishop uses Lázaro as a front to hide what everyone knows, that he’s having an affair with a woman. These men demonstrate that dishonor also characterizes powerful and supposedly divine institutions like the aristocracy and the Catholic Church. The author uses these myriad examples of dishonor to support and reinforce the novel’s theme about hypocrisy and amorality, and to critique the moral degradation in his society.

Starvation and Depravity

Starvation is a recurring theme in the novel, one that serves two purposes. The first is to show the literal physical starvation of the poor and sick, which is exacerbated by the corrupt aristocracy and the duplicitous, deceitful members of the Catholic Church. The beggars and thieves shown throughout the novel, including Lázaro, illustrate how social corruption trickles down and harms the poorest and most vulnerable.

But the starvation that Lázaro experiences is also a central thematic metaphor. Lázaro is repeatedly starved by his masters; even when he gets food, it’s often a measly portion. When he is serving the priest, he is only allowed an onion every four days. This is extreme deprivation, but even when Lázaro is given food, it is acidic, pungent, and sharp, illustrating that when the poor and vulnerable are given a pittance, it is still painful and bitter. For example, papal indulgences are marketed as insurance against suffering in hell or purgatory, but they’re really a means to extort the poor and enrich the church.

Starvation is also a metaphor for the decay of a society without ethics or compassion. Lázaro is so hungry he either has to use trickery and deception, as is seen with the blind man and the priest, or he has to beg. Starvation thus demonstrates that when people are deprived of basic needs and necessities, whether food or a chance to improve of one’s social station, they often resort to illegal or dishonorable actions to ensure their survival. As Lázaro achieves some degree of wealth and material comfort, starvation also comes to represent depravity, as those who climb the ranks in pursuit of self-interest are literally starved of morality.