Preview

La Llorona

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
775 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
La Llorona
La Llorona or the Crying woman is a legend that goes back century’s in the Mexican culture. Some of the earliest recorded sightings are legends of The Aztecs, who say that the goddess Cihuacoatl took the form of a woman dressed all in white and spent the nights weeping about the impending doom of the native people by the Spanish conquistidors.
Later in a story reflecting the Greek story of Medea, a woman has children by the conquer Cortez’ and when he is called back to Spain and decides to take her children with him, she kills them and then dies herself. She is later seen weeping by the lake and named La Llorona.
A number of cultures have stories of her, but, she seems to have originated with the Mexican people.

Some popular versions:
In Kansas City, however, the story of La Llorona is that of a beautiful young woman who attracts the attention of a wealthy man's son even though she is very poor. The lovers secretly marry and set up a household; they have several children. Unfortunately, a day comes when the young man's father announces that he has arranged a marriage for his son to a young woman within their social class. The young man tells his secret wife that he must leave her and that he will never see her again. She is driven mad by anger and a broken heart, and takes their children to a river, where she drowns them to spite her husband. When her husband finds out, he and several townspeople go to find her, but she kills herself before they can apprehend her. She goes to Heaven and faces the judgement of God. God asks her, "Where are your children?" to which she replies, "I do not know." God asks her three times and she replies with the same answer. God then damns her to walk the earth in search of her children. According to this tale, it is wise to avoid La Llorona, as she is known for drowning passers-by in an attempt to replace her dead children. Alternatively, right after she drowns her children, La Llorona realizes what she has done and,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The story “Woman Hollering Creek” is about a woman named Cleófilas, a lover of telenovelas, who married a man named Juan Pedro Martínez Sánchez. At first, Cleófilas thought her life would be perfect and follow the same structure such as the telenovelas she watched once she married a man. However, it was the exact opposite because she had married an abusive man who would cheat on her. When she was taken to the hospital with her second child, the nurses saw the signs of abuse and one of the nurses, Graciela, called her friend Felice to take Cleófilas back to Mexico to her father. As Cleófilas was on her way, she was fascinated by Felice and made her happy to be away from her husband.…

    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Xochiquetzal Essay

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Xochiquetzal was of the Aztec culture. Her birth place is unrevealed, but possibly Teotihucan. She was a citizen of Omeyocan. Her home was also the home of many other Aztec gods. It is believed that she resided in a…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    El-Norte

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The siblings Rosa and Enrique cannot be strictly called emigrants or refugees because of the rather peculiar nature of their emigration. They are emigrants because they wish to have a better life far away from their village where they were peasant farmers. They possibly may be called refugees because they had to leave their village to spare their lives. For the sake of proper designation by the authorities, they could be called refugees as they are more that than just emigrants..…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    • Juana: A 12 years old girl with black hair, she was thin, very innocent, poor, aggressive and honest. She had a hard life and always felt guilty of the death of her little sister. Her purpose was to find her father in “El otro Lado”. She is the main character of this book and she will live the hardest times of her life trying to find her missing father.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Medea And Feminism Essay

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Medea displays several characteristics of feminism by giving power to a woman. Medea’s husband, Jason, has married another woman. Then, Creon banishes Medea and her two sons from Corinth. However, she is not the kind of woman who sits back and weeps when betrayed, but rather plans revenge, finding a way to kill them all. She does not feel the need to lower her self-worth in comparison to that of a man's and within this, are the signs of feminism. Through the school of feminist criticism and analysis, Medea suggests that women do not see themselves in stereotypical constructed roles and responsibilities.…

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In every culture, stories from their culture linger in the minds of those who care enough to realize what they are intended to. In Texas and Mexico, folk tales are widely known of but people in the towns fail to understand the concept of them. In the short story “Woman Hollering Creek”, La Llorona plays a big part in the Spanish tales. La Llorona is a tale of a woman who drowned her children after allegedly being abused by her husband. In hopes to save her children from the misery of abuse, she chooses to drown her children in a lake and proceeds to kill herself. The story of La Llorona ties into the story “Woman Hollering Creek” because Cleofilas begins to find herself stuck in the same position of La Llorona. According to the article “La Llorona” the author states, “she is the most widely known ghost in Mexico” (West 17). To this day, Hispanic children learn of La Llorona. According to author of the book “Tales of San Antonio Ghosts”, Docia Schultz Williams states, "Mothers, grandmothers and aunts of little Hispanic children have long told them to stay clear of rivers and streams and to come in before dark or 'La Llorona might get you, '". This quote reveals how throughout the years, the story of La Llorona has changed, but the whole conception of the story will never be forgotten. The life of Cleofilas is see in numerous ways as the life of La Llorona. In the article, “Haunting the…

    • 2042 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Through these two women, the modern reader can achieve a sense of understanding as to two of the primary roles that women played during the revolution in the early 20th century. Camila is a young women who embodies a primarily domestic role, providing comfort, care and shelter to the rebel soldiers as so many women did during this time in Mexican history. War Paint provides a stark contrast to the mild Camila; as her name suggests, she is a fierce and hardened warrior, a soldadera.� Her role in the revolution is much different: she actually joins the ranks of the rebel band led by Demetrio Macias, and fights alongside the men. While the two women are highly developed characters who accurately represent the portion of society from which they come, there are many women who participated in the revolution whose roles did not fall into the "domestic" and "warrior" categories. Many women were journalists, lobbyists, and propagandists; some were nurses, tending to the wounded…

    • 2405 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Revenge In Medea Filicide

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages

    According to the rules nature, a mother is to nurture her offspring and do utterly almost anything to protect it from danger. In some cases, however, this does not apply. For the sake of greed, revenge, or hatred, some mothers have gone to the extremes to kill their children. This action is known as filicide. This act exists today but has long existed since ancient times. It is seen in early texts such as Euripides’s Medea, where a crazed Medea kills her children in order to attain revenge on her cheating husband. This tale parallels real life tragedies such as the story that waved national news in 1997 when Susan Eubanks killed her four children to gain vengeance towards the men in her life. Although hundreds of years separate these two stories,…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Griselda Blanco also known as “The God-Mother and The Black Widow” was a female drug trafficker that committed numerous murders while she was trafficking cocaine from Colombia to the USA. Griselda was born on February 15, 1943 in Cartagena, Colombia and since a young age used to traffic drugs to Southern California, Miami and New York from Columbia.…

    • 1563 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    La Amistaad

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Baldwin says: "all of the claims here. . . speak to the issue of ownership." Is he correct?…

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Medusa

    • 939 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Medusa, originally a beautiful young woman whose crowning glory was her magnificent long hair, was desired and courted by many suitors. Medusa was a priestess for the temple of Athena. Because she was a priestess for the virgin god Athena she had to stay a virgin as well and couldn’t take a husband. Yet before she could be betrothed to a husband, Poseidon found her worshipping in the temple of Athena and ravished and raped her. Athena was outraged at her sacred temple being violated but was not mad at Poseidon but instead was mad at Medusa. Because this sort of behavior was expected from Poseidon and Athena was a god herself, she sided with Poseidon. She punished Medusa by turning her beautiful tresses into snakes and giving her the destructive power to turn anyone who looked directly at her into stone. One of the best-known legends about her tells of how the Greek hero Perseus killed her. Once there was a king named Acrisius, he had a beautiful daughter named Danae. The oracle of Apollo told Acrisius that Danae's son would one day kill him. Acrisius could not let that happen, so he locked Danae in a bronze tower so that she would never marry nor have children. The tower had no doors, but it had one very small window. Danae was very sad, but one day a bright shower of gold came through the small window. Having not heard from his daughter in a while, Acrisius decided to check on her to see what she was up too. He walked into the tower and saw Danae with a baby on her lap, smiling her said, "I have named him Perseus." Acrisius was furious; his first reaction was to kill both mother and child but decided against it in fear for the wrath of Zeus so he decided to shut Danae and baby Perseus up in a large chest and cast them out to sea. Somehow they got safely to the island of Seriphos where Polydectes was king. The king wanted to marry Danaë, but Perseus opposed the marriage. Polydectes decided on a plan to get rid of Perseus. Polydectes pretended to be marrying a…

    • 939 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On Monsters

    • 890 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Moreover, many people are monsters because of the pain and suffering they instill in another human being. Repeatedly in the media, we witness news about parents harming their own children and children harming their own parents. Medea, a character vividly described by Asma as a “monstrous mother,” is a prime example of the monstrous person. The tale of Medea is about a mother consumed by much hate and anger with her husband, Jason; for “cheating” on her by proposing to another woman in order to climb the political ladder. In the event of all her…

    • 890 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    El Espinazo Del Diablo

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Guillermo Del Toro’s 2001 film, El Espinazo del Diablo translated to The Devil’s Backbone, is a chilling ghost story set in Spain in the middle of their civil war. A young boy named Carlos arrives at an orphanage that is haunted by a ghost. The ghost isn’t the only looming presence, as there is a large bomb in the center of the courtyard. It is here at the orphanage that the young boys, along with their headmistress, caretaker, and doctor, must attempt to retain normalcy as a distant war creeps ever closer. Del Toro uses this film to show how war affects those who aren’t directly connected to it by fueling their inner turmoil and how this leads people to seek an outlet resulting most commonly on relying on violence or superstition.…

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    La Oroya

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages

    s is true that La Oroya is the most polluted towns in South America? If so what happens to the people who are living there? - Anonymous…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gulnoza

    • 2420 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Key Benefits of Studying at Westminster International College Full-Time Master of Business Administration (MBA) Reasons to Study an MBA About Cardiff Metropolitan University About the LSC Group How to Apply…

    • 2420 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics