"San Manuel Bueno, Martyr"

11. Why doesn’t Lazarus move his mother and sister to the city?

12. How is Lazarus’s first communion presented?

13. According to Lazarus (after becoming Don Manuel’s intimate friend) what is Don Manuel’s motive?

14. Describe Don Manuel’s attitude toward religion and social revolution.

15. According to Don Manuel, what is true religion?

16. What does Angela represent to Don Manuel?

17. What is Don Manuel’s greatest temptation?

18. How would you describe Don Manuel’s faith?

19. Why does Lazarus say that Don Manuel cured him of his progressiveness?

20 What symbolic value does the scene of Don Manuel’s death hold?

21 What is the basis for the analogy between Don Manuel and Moses?

22. How does the village react to Don Manuel’s death?

23. According to Lazarus, what are the two types of dangerous men?

24. What advice does Lazarus give the new priest?

25. What is Angela’s view of the incredulity of Don Manuel and Lazarus?

26. What phrase ends Angela’s narration?

27. Who is the narrator of the last pages of the work?

General Considerations

1.Who is narrating the story?

2. What is the pretext for writing it? To whom is it directed?

3. Where does the story take place? Does the setting have any symbolic value?

4. How is the passage of narrative time marked?

5. What progression does one note in the development of the characters?

6. What narrative and descriptive techniques are employed in order to present the narrative?

7. What is the main theme of the work and how is it presented?

8. Explain how the title of the work relates to the novel.

9. What is the role of Unamuno in the work?

       Themes  

1. The importance of Angela as narrator.  

2. The function of the interpolated stories (Aunt Rabona’s daughter, the calf, the leader of the acrobats, etc.).    

3. Symbolic value of the characters (names, for example “Lazarus” “Manuel” “Angela”) and places (the lake, the mountain, the monastery, the submerged village and tolling bells).

4. Reality vs Illusion  

5. Angela’s manuscript and the author’s intervention at the end: the structure of the work.  

6. Biographical elements: the relation existing between the religious crisis in Unamuno’s life with that of Don Manuel.