Plot summary: in “Paso del Norte,” an impoverished man who has failed in his pig-selling business decides to emigrate to the North in search of work to feed his wife and five children. Before leaving, he visits his father to ask him to look after his family. Still, the conversation becomes an exchange of recriminations for a life of abandonment, poverty, and family resentment. The son finally sets off on his journey, and after being guided to the border by contacts, he tries to cross the river into the United States with other migrants, but they are ambushed by gunfire in the darkness. Although injured, he and his friend Estanislado manage to get out of the water, but the latter dies shortly afterward. The protagonist, battered and defeated, is returned to Mexico. Upon returning to the village, his father coldly informs him that his wife has left him for a muleteer and that he has sold the house to pay for the grandchildren’s expenses. Without a family or a home, the man resigns to start over and searches for his wife. The story portrays the desolation of the migrant, the failure of the dream of the North, and the breaking of family ties amid misery.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of Paso del Norte, by Juan Rulfo.
The story “Paso del Norte” by Juan Rulfo tells, through extensive dialogue between a son and his father, the story of a man desperate for poverty who decides to emigrate to the North, to the United States, in search of a better life. Still, he returns defeated, wounded, and with nothing, facing reality even harsher and more heartbreaking than the one he left behind. The story is structured on two levels: the dialogue between father and son, full of recriminations and disappointments, and the son’s account of his failed attempt to cross the border into the United States.
The story begins when the son visits his father to tell him his decision to go “pa’l Norte” (up North). The conversation between the two quickly turns into an argument. The son explains that he can no longer make a living from selling pigs, that there is hunger, that the economic situation is unsustainable, and that he needs to find a way to make a living. The father is distant, sarcastic, and reluctant to help. He rejects his son’s request to care for his daughter-in-law and grandchildren while trying to seek his fortune in the North. Both men dwell on old grievances: the son accuses the father of not having guided or helped him, throwing him out on the street without even teaching him the trade he knew. For his part, the father reminds him that he is now a grown man and must fend for himself, as he always has.
Despite initial resistance, the father agrees to take care of his son’s family. The son promises that he will return soon with money and that he just needs a chance to get ahead. He says goodbye, hopefully leaving his family behind with the idea of returning to a better economic situation.
Then, the story changes tone and setting and moves to the son’s experience in his attempt to cross the border. Through the account he gives to his father, we learn what happened during his journey. First, the son moves from his village to the city, where he is told to look for a contact in Ciudad Juárez. This contact promises to help him cross the border and gives him a piece of paper with instructions and a supposed job contract to go to Oregon to harvest apples or work on the railroad tracks. The son pays for this service, full of hope for the future that awaits him.
However, upon reaching the river that separates Mexico from the United States, everything goes tragically wrong. While crossing at night, hidden and guided by flashlights, they are ambushed and shot at. The son narrates how the bullets began to whiz and kill his companions. Only he and his friend Estanislado manage to survive, although with serious injuries. With his arm shattered, he tries to drag Estanislado out of the water, but he dies shortly afterward. The scene is distressing: the son attempts to revive him, to keep him alive, but it is in vain.
The following day, an immigration officer finds him next to the body. After a brief conversation, in which the son explains how they were attacked without even seeing their attackers, the officer gives him money to return to his homeland and warns him not to show his face there again. Thus, defeated and wounded, the son returns to his village, taking only sadness and the memory of failure.
Back in the present, the dialogue with the father continues. Instead of consoling him, he reprimands him harshly, calls him naive, and announces a new misfortune: during his absence, his wife, Tránsito, left with a muleteer, and he, the father, sold the house to pay for the children’s upkeep. He tells him that he still owes him thirty pesos. The son, surprisingly resigned, accepts the news without flinching. He wants to find work to pay his father what he owes him. Then he asks him where Tránsito went, and, after getting a vague answer, he sets off to look for her, saying he will be back.
The story ends on a note of utter disillusionment. The son leaves “out there” just as he arrived: without certainties, without support, with failure in his wake and facing a life of abandonment and uprooting. The story reveals the drama of migration and poverty and the deterioration of family ties, loneliness, indifference, and loss of hope, which affect the characters. Rulfo’s profoundly human story shows a man who has lost everything: his family, his home, his dreams, and even the possibility of redemption.
Characters from Paso del Norte, by Juan Rulfo.
The central character is the son, an adult man who, at the story’s beginning, is desperately looking for a way out of the misery in which he lives with his wife and five children. He is overwhelmed by poverty and feels he has no options in his homeland. His former job as a pig trader no longer allows him to feed his family, so he decides to emigrate North to the United States, convinced by the rumors of success and abundance circulating among his acquaintances. The son represents thousands of poor men who, cornered by the lack of opportunities, abandon their roots and families to look elsewhere for a chance to survive. Despite his determination, he is also a vulnerable character, sensitive to affection, and deeply needs recognition and affection from his father. During their initial conversation, a relationship marked by emotional abandonment and lack of paternal guidance is evident. Despite his shortcomings, the son still retains the hope of being able to build something better. When he finally returns wounded, defeated, and disillusioned, his resignation makes him a tragic character: he has lost everything, even the little he had, and stoically faces a new desolation. His voice structures a large part of the story; through it, we learn about his physical and emotional journey.
The father is the second central character in the story. He is an older man, bitter, cynical, and unemotional. Initially, he shows no interest in his son’s problems and refuses to help him. His attitude is harsh, sarcastic, and even cruel. Not only does he refuse to look after his grandchildren, he constantly criticizes his son’s decisions, reminds him of his independence as a reproach, and shirks all responsibility for his well-being. He is a complex character who, after a life of loss and abandonment, seems to have hardened his heart: he was left alone after the death of his wife and daughter and considers the arrival of his son more of a nuisance than an opportunity for reconciliation. However, beneath his tough exterior, a shadow of resentment and pain occasionally filters through, as when he mentions the emptiness left by the death of his family or when he acknowledges, albeit bitterly, that his son still remembers him. Despite his coldness, he does look after his grandchildren during his son’s absence, but he charges for this, sells the family home, and leaves his son even more destitute. He can be seen as a symbol of a generation hardened by necessity, incapable of showing affection, or imagining a different life.
A very present character in the story, although she does not appear directly, is Tránsito, the son’s wife. She is mentioned several times and becomes a central point in the discussion between father and son. We know that the father never accepted her, that he despised her and treated her with disdain, which caused a distancing in the family. Tránsito appears, above all, as the figure of the young and impoverished woman trapped in a dead-end life who finally decides to leave with another man during her husband’s absence. Her abandonment at the end of the story is not narrated with drama but with coldness, as just another event in a chain of dispossessions. However, her action is decisive: her flight marks the end of the son’s illusion and his total emotional defeat.
The immigration agent who interrogates the son when he returns wounded to Mexican territory is also an important secondary character. His role is brief but forceful. He represents the border authorities acting out of suspicion, violence, and bureaucracy. Initially, he is brutal and authoritarian, and he beats the son without listening to his side of the story. However, when he sees his wound and condition, he takes pity on him and gives him some money to return home. His ambiguity — between abuse of power and cynical charity — reflects the way the system treats migrants: as disposable bodies that must quickly disappear from the landscape.
Finally, Estanislado, the friend who accompanies the son in his attempt to cross the border, plays a fundamental role in the story. He is the one who convinces him to go north and who dies tragically during the crossing. His presence embodies the dimension of brotherhood and solidarity and the tragedy of the migrant who does not survive. Estanislado, dying, asks the protagonist for help, and the protagonist does everything possible to save him. His death symbolizes the absolute failure of the migratory project, the broken promise, and leaves the protagonist alone with the weight of memory and guilt.
Commentary and analysis of Paso del Norte, by Juan Rulfo.
“Paso del Norte,” a story by Juan Rulfo included in his book El Llano en llamas (1953), is a short but intense narrative that deals with the human drama of forced migration, abandonment, extreme poverty, and the fragility of family ties. Through a structure based mainly on dialogue and testimony, Rulfo constructs a profoundly human story, where the characters are neither heroes nor ideal victims but ordinary people faced with extreme circumstances.
The story is structured on two narrative levels. On the one hand, there is the dialogue between a father and his son, which becomes an exchange of reproaches, misunderstandings, and wounds from the past. On the other, the son tells the story of his failed attempt to cross the border into the United States. Both planes intertwine without needing an external narrator to guide them, so the reader must fill in the gaps and reconstruct the story based on what the characters say, are silent about, or suggest. This form of narration, which demands the reader’s active attention, is one of the most notable characteristics of the story.
One of the central aspects of the story is the theme of migration. The son, driven by necessity, leaves his family to look for work “in the North,” as others have done before him. His decision is not motivated by personal ambition but by hunger, lack of opportunities, and desperation. The story accurately reflects the experience of many migrants who, like him, set off hoping to find something better and end up facing a much crueler reality: violence, deception, and death. The crossing of the river that separates Mexico from the United States is not presented as a heroic rite of passage but as a brutal ambush that dismantles the protagonist’s illusions. The promised North becomes a place of death.
In addition to dealing with the subject of migration, the story reflects on the bond between parents and children, particularly when this bond has been eroded by years of silence, mistrust, and emotional distance. The dialogue between father and son is full of mutual recriminations. The son accuses the father of not having raised him affectionately, not having taught him a trade, and launching him into life without preparation. The father, for his part, responds harshly and reminds him that he was already an adult when he left home and that he should take responsibility for his family. Despite the sometimes violent tone of his words, there is a certain bitterness and resignation in the father that betrays a life marked by loss: he has seen his wife and daughter die, and then his son leave. He is a hardened character who has replaced affection with a logic of survival.
In terms of style, the story is mainly based on dialogue and orality. Rulfo does not use a traditional omniscient narrator. Instead, the characters speak, tell, interrupt, and contradict each other. This literary choice gives the story a particular rhythm, similar to a real conversation. But it is not just a question of form: the oral nature of the story also allows the author to capture how the characters perceive the world accurately, how they express it, and, above all, how they relate to each other. The language of the story is direct, sometimes harsh, and has no unnecessary embellishments. However, layers of depth and meaning are hidden in this apparent simplicity. Every sentence, every answer, is loaded with history and tension.
Another essential element of the story is the absence of sentimentality. Although what is narrated is deeply painful — poverty, the death of a friend, the abandonment of his wife, the loss of his home — Rulfo never resorts to easy dramatics. Everything is told with a coldness that is even more moving. The son does not cry, shout, or complain openly; he relates what happened with the same matter-of-factness with which he lists the failures in a life where nothing surprises him anymore. This coldness does not mean a lack of emotion; it is quite the opposite: it represents how constant suffering ends up becoming every day.
The title of the story, Paso del Norte, is no coincidence. It refers to the geographical point where the border is crossed but also has a symbolic value. The “pass” refers to transit, to change, to the attempt to leave a miserable life behind to start a supposedly better one. But that pass is also a trap, a place of death where what was intended to be left behind is multiplied in the form of loss. The title can also be interpreted as a reference to roads of no return and to those who believe that there is a way out, which only leads to new forms of dispossession.
An especially significant element in understanding the meaning of the story is the difference between expectations and the real impact of decisions. The son leaves convinced that crossing the border will bring him money, work, and dignity. He has heard stories of those who have returned with modern gadgets and prosperity. But those stories, like Carmelo’s gramophone, are isolated illusions. When he returns, he has not only lost his time and his health but also his family and his home. All he has left is an empty land, a broken fatherhood, and an uncertain future.
In short, “Paso del Norte” is a story that shows with heartbreaking clarity the failure of economic promises, the erosion of family ties, and the harshness of life on the margins. Through a dialogued structure, an austere language, and a profoundly human vision, Rulfo portrays a situation that is still current: migration as a consequence of hopelessness, the dissolution of the family as a result of abandonment, and the constant struggle of human beings not to disappear completely. Anyone approaching this story should be aware that the story is not there to entertain but to invite reflection on what happens when society offers no alternatives to those who have the least and when even family ties are broken under the weight of necessity.
