How Does Lazarillo Use Picaros In Spanish Literature

The picaro is a poor vagrant or vagabond character in Spanish literature that attaches himself to a wealthier individual to evade arrest, since vagrancy was a crime in sixteenth century Spanish society, and ultimately provide for the character’s well-being. The picaresque genre follows the misadventures of these picaros and are often comical, mischievous, and irreverent, as picaros frequently play tricks on their masters. Thematically, the picaresque examines corruption and social injustice in a society that is cruel to the impoverished, meditating on these humanist ideals through caricatures and satire. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities neatly conforms to this genre: after the death of his father and his stepfather’s

Lazarillo writes that “despite all [the blind man] made and owned, I never saw a greedier or stingier man… he used to kill me with hunger.” Therefore, in order to survive, Lazarillo resorts to playing tricks on the blind man to obtain sufficient nourishment: he reports to the magistrate that “if I hadn’t been able to help myself out with my cleverness and shrewd schemes, I would have perished of hunger many a time… In order to do this, I played mischievous tricks on him” (307). Lazarillo thus outlines the various ways he tricked the blind man into giving him food and slyly exact revenge for his cruelty. He intentionally “led him over the roughest paths, on purpose, to do him harm and hurt” (309), hides coins in his mouth, punctures small holes in the wine jug, and switches a sausage with a turnip so that he might eat scarcely enough to survive. His encounter with the blind man ergo explores the picaresque’s concerns with cruelty to the poor. Similarly, after he escapes the blind man Lazarillo is employed by a priest in Maqueda, who proves to be even more destitute and brutal than the blind man—he had escaped “from the frying pan into the fire, because in comparison with this priest, the blind man was as generous as Alexander the Great” (314). He is hypocritical and sly, and “at the end of three weeks with