Character Analysis
Dolores is the narrator's, mother, and the reason for his whole horrible journey to Comala. She gets her son to promise her right before she dies that he'll go searching for his father, Pedro Páramo, to make him pay. Yeah, that's right: Juan's Comala expedition is a literal guilt trip.
Dolores had been tricked in to marrying Pedro because he owed her family money that he couldn't pay, and she hated her life with him. She complained so much that he finally sent her to live with her sister, and that's why their son, Juan, never knew his father.
Dolores is one of the only mothers in the novel who isn't crazy or barren. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that she got out of Comala and away from Pedro Páramo while the getting was good.
The narrator has several moments where he remembers his mother's words, and they appear in italics in the middle of his narrations. They are usually beautiful descriptions of her memories of Comala, which really bear no resemblance to the ugly place poor Juan ends up:
There you'll find the place I love most in the world. The place where I grew thin from dreaming. My village, rising from the plain. Shaded with trees and leaves like a piggy bank filled with memories. You'll see why a person would want to live there forever. Dawn, morning, midday, night: always the same, except for the changes in the air. The air changes the color of things there. And life whirs by as quiet as a murmur... the pure murmuring of life… (36.5)
Dolores thinks that a person would want to stay in Comala forever, but little does she know that the people she left behind are trapped there forever, and it's probably the last place on earth they want to be. Her relationship with the past is very different from the rest of the characters', and this probably is due to her distance from Comala.