The chosen title Blood Wedding, automatically tells the reader and audience about the story before a page is turned. They can tell the principle themes from the very start, and these are love, death and a hint of tragedy; but how far is the title Blood Wedding a paradox. A paradox, being a contradicting statement, where blood can be looked upon meaning death and violence and wedding having a more peaceful connotation of two people uniting together. However the two words on their own can be explored to have many different connotations, resulting in a vast number of meanings when put together, resulting in the title being juxtaposed.
The word blood is widely used throughout the play with the first reference coming from the mother of the bridegroom. This is talked about before a wedding is mentioned. The mother talks about Good blood . This exploits a different meaning of the word blood. Instead of meaning violence and death the mother is talking about how her husband was from a good background and talking about family blood.
The mother uses this connotation of the word blood many times throughout the play; when talking with the father she talks about the death of her son,
I wet my hands with his blood and licked them with my tongue because it was mine
This man was her son, and came from her therefore she sees his blood no different from her own.
Looking at blood in this sense the reader can see the association the two words blood and wedding have. A wedding is the unity of two people as already stated. The joining of two families that could also mean the joining of family blood, each others blood was their own once the bride and groom were married.
In the dictionary the word blood has many meanings, apart from the ones mentioned, family relationship and bloodshed, one definition taken from the dictionary is, temperament or disposition which can also mean anger. Anger is featured throughout the play mainly coming from the mother who speaks about the death of her son and husband constantly in the play.
Another connotation of blood in this play could be passion. Red is the colour of passion that is also the colour of blood. The first woodcutter in the play refers to blood when he says, the blood was strongest , through this he is referring to passion but you can sense a hint of heredity. He follows this with you have to follow the bloods path , as we have seen blood takes on many different meanings. On the one hand blood is life and spilt blood is death. On the other hand blood is heredity.
The different meanings of blood all come together in the woodcutters scene that relates to the story in the way in which various threads of the action fuse in the final act, which is very dramatic and theatrical for the audience.
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