The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Book Report/Review Example

Brother Juniper witnesses the collapse of the Bridge and the untimely death of five people who were on the bridge when the tragedy happened. The incident disturbs Brother Jupiter so profoundly and he questions whether this incident was a divine intervention or a chance. To find answers to his questions, he devoted his life to research the lives of the five people who were killed on the bridge. Through his search for connections between all these people to determine why God intended to take the lives of these people he explores the lives of five people and reveals their internal struggles for survival.

All the five people struggle to find love and in their quest for love, they meet an untimely death on the bridge of San Luis Rey. The Marquesa De Montemayor, also known as Dona Maria, is one of the victims. In the novel, Dona Maria was deprived of love and her quest for love led her to an untimely death. The Marquesa De Montemayor lived a passionate life of obsession; after realizing that she suffered immense pain due to her quest for love, she renounced her life to the righteous path by giving up her obsessive ways and decided to begin her life afresh.

          The Marquesa De Montemayor, who was deprived of love by her parents and her husband, drained her emotion and love on her daughter. She was also resented by her daughter who moved to Spain after she got married. Deserted by all the people she loved she lose control of her life and became an emotional and eccentric woman. She was unable to accept the love of people around her although she felt the need to be loved. She suffered a life of alienation and lack of love from an early age and she married a “ruined” lord who was insensitive to her needs and showed her no love.

She obsessed over her daughter as she felt the need to be loved in return by the people around her. The idea of being loved turned her into an eccentric noble woman, “[Dora Maria] was one of those persons who have allowed their lives to be gnawed away because they have fallen in love with an idea several centuries before its appointed appearance in the history of civilization” (Maria 27).           The Marquesa De Montemayor possessive and selfish love drove away the person most dear to her heart.

   To escape from the suffocating love of her mother, Clara married a Spanish lord and left Peru. Dona Maria, was inconsolably pained by the act of her daughter wrote letters to her daughter frequently. Her letters were filled with love and maternal concerns for her child. She wrote endearing, emotional letters to her daughter and professed her suffering because of the negligence, “Oh, my treasure, how can we punish you enough for letting your cold endure so many weeks?” (Wilder para. 11).

Although she wrote the letter in the guise of love, her letters illustrated to reinforce her egoistic and compulsive nature. “The Conde delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart” (Maria 16). Clara seldom wrote to her mother and the only letters that Dona Maria received from her daughter were filled with resentment.

The criticism from her daughter only enraged her and encouraged her to write more letters.             The Marquesa’s obsession with her daughter and the frustrations from her daughter’s letter resulted in her suffering which was manifested in the negligence of her appearance, compulsive drinking, superstitious nature and her withdrawal from the world around her. When she learned that her daughter was pregnant, her