Le Cid

A sword appears several times as a symbol of the violence that afflicts the characters and, particularly, of the death of the Count at the hands of Rodrigo. In Act I, Scene 4, Diego draws his sword on being provoked by the Count; but he is unable to use it, signifying his impotence. Later, Rodrigo contemplates the sword which he must use to avenge his father: “Dear and cruel hope of a soul noble but still enamored, worthy enemy of my greatest happiness, thou sword which causest my painful anxiety, hast thou been given to me to avenge my honor?” (11). Rodrigo acknowledges the sword, and the fatal duel it represents, as both the tool he must use to defend his father’s honor, and the tool that might sever him forever from Chimène.

After the duel, Rodrigo shows up at Chimène’s house still carrying the sword, which Chimène describes with horror as “this hateful object” and “dyed with my blood” (25). Rodrigo offers her the sword to kill him with: “Plunge it in mine, and cause it thus to lose the death-stain of thine own” (25). Chimène declares that the mere sight of the sword causes her unbearable distress: “Ah! What cruelty, which all in one day slays the father by the sword, and the daughter by the sight of it!” (26). Although not literally used to harm Rodrigo or Chimène, her outburst over the sword describes how the duel between Rodrigo and the Count has harmed her as well, as though the sword might as well have caused her physical harm.

In Act V, Scene 5, Sancho enters Chimène’s presence carrying the sword he just used in his duel with Rodrigo. Chimène looks at the sword and assumes that Rodrigo died in the duel: “What! Still reeking with the blood of Rodrigo!” (45). Thus, repeatedly the sword serves to symbolize the horror of death and the cruelty of violent vengeance.

Blood is used as a metaphor for kinship and family loyalty as well as for violence and death. When Rodrigo confronts the Count, he speaks of the courageous spirit of his father which he carries within him: “This fire which I carry in mine eyes, knowest thou that this is his blood?” (13). Later, after the duel, Chimène tells Rodrigo that the sword is “dyed with my blood” (25) (i.e., her father’s blood). So close are family ties in Le Cid that Chimène feels as if the sword that killed her father pierced her as well.

As mentioned above, Chimène regards with horror the bloody sword carried by Sancho in Act V, Scene 5, because it conveys the impression that her beloved Rodrigo has died a violent death. This sense of blood is also conveyed when, in urging Rodrigo to go to war, Diego says that Rodrigo’s soldiers will steep their hands “in the blood of Africans” (31) (i.e., the Moors). As with the intermingling of joy and sorrow, blood in Le Cid carries seemingly conflicting implications of both kinship and bodily harm.