Character Clues
Character Analysis
Actions
People in Comala are divided up between whether they act or are acted upon. And it's pretty much the Páramo boys and their allies who do the evil acting: They kill, rape, and steal, while the rest of the townspeople just kind of have to live with it.
Direct Characterization
Pedro Páramo gets called a lot of things throughout the novel. Abundio, the mule driver, calls him "living bile" (2.37), and Bartolomé San Juan, Susana's father, calls him "unmitigated evil" (45.15). It's not hard to figure out what people think of Pedro when they're throwing around terms like that.
Location
The townspeople are also divided among whether they live on the Media Luna ranch or not. It's not that all the people who live at the Media Luna are better off, but they are somehow allied with the Páramo family… whereas the people who live in Comala are just the family's victims.
Names
Many of the names have meanings that tell us more about the characters involved. Let's start with the title character, Pedro Páramo. Pedro is related to the name Peter, and means "stone." Check out the last sentence of the novel to see how that kind of ties that character all together.
The last name Páramo means "plateau" or "moor" in Spanish. This connects the Páramo family to the land, which, in fact, they own.
Next, there are some names that are related to money. Juan and Dolores Preciado's last name means valuable in Spanish, and Father Rentería's last name sounds like Renteríao or renta, both of which have to do with rent, or payment. These names are kind of ironic, since Dolores ends up being despreciado, or looked down on, by Pedro, and Father Rentería is completely dependent upon Pedro Páramo for income.
Abundio is another character who gets an ironic name. He's so poor that he has to sell his mules to pay for his dying wife's medicine, and he also can't afford to bury her when she finally dies, yet his name means "abundance."
Once we get past these abundance-poverty names, there is plenty more irony in the names Rulfo gives his characters. For example, Dorotea (or La Cuarraca, which means "The Limper") means gift of God, and we know that she is, sadly, not particularly lucky or gifted.
Miguel, who literally gets away with murder, has a name that means "God is Just." Everything in the novel—especially Miguel's actions—points to a very unjust God.
Social Status
The dividing line between people in pre-revolutionary Mexico was whether they owned land or didn't own land. The fact that the Páramos, and whomever the decide to grant land to, are the only ones with land in the town tells us a lot about their situation compared to the rest of the townspeople's.