38 pages • 1 hour read
AnonymousLazarillo De Tormes
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1554A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 is one paragraph long. Lázaro’s former neighbors recommend he contact a friar (who is a relative of theirs) as a potential employer. Lázaro contacts the friar of the Order of Mercy. Lázaro mentions that the ostensibly religious friar doesn’t sing in the choir and won’t eat in the monastery. Instead, he enjoys anything that has nothing to do with the church: “He loved going out, worldly affairs and visiting people” (47). The friar visits so much that he wears out more shoes than anyone else in the community. The friar gives Lázaro his first pair of real shoes, but Lázaro wears them out in a week. He claims he leaves the friar because he is exhausted from all the running around. He adds that there are some other issues that make him leave, too, but he doesn’t name what they are. He only mentions that he leaves due to “one or two other things that I shan’t bother to mention” (47).
Chapter 5 Summary
Lázaro’s next master is a seller of papal indulgences. People buy papal indulgences believing they offer protection against an afterlife in hell or in purgatory. From the start, Lázaro characterizes his new master as an expert salesman, saying, “I never saw one more adept or shameless in my life” (48). When the seller arrives at a new church to sell the papal indulgences, he always gives the priests and other clergy presents like delicious, extra-large fruit. After they thank him, the seller is able to determine their level of intelligence or education. If they speak in Latin, he won’t speak in Latin, so as to appear more humble than they are. But if they don’t speak Latin or are otherwise less educated, he will only speak Latin. The gifts also act as bribes, to ease the seller’s peddling of indulgences.
When the seller tries to use honesty to sell the indulgences and no one buys them, he reverts to dishonesty. He would “make trouble for everybody or else he would resort to very crafty tricks” (48).
One day Lázaro and the seller arrive in Toledo. After several days the seller is unable to sell very many indulgences and is frustrated. Lázaro explains that the seller summons everyone from the village to try and sell his goods. That night, in front of the townspeople, the seller and the constable gamble and get into a fight, and the seller accuses the constable of being a cheater. The constable reaches for his sword, and the seller grabs a lance that is lying on the porch. The townspeople scream and rush forward, separating the two men. As they are separated, the constable tells the seller that he is a fraud and that his indulgences are forgeries. The townspeople realize they won’t settle their differences, so they take the constable away from the inn where Lázaro and his master are staying. His master fumes with rage.
The next morning the seller returns to the church and tells the bell-ringer to summon the townspeople before mass. The people arrive grumbling. They say that the seller is a fraud and a liar. The seller heads to the pulpit and begins his sermon urging the people to buy indulgences for their benefits. Amid his talk, the constable shows up and publicly calls the seller out as a liar. When he is finished denigrating the seller, the seller gets on his knees, pardons the constable, and says that if he (the constable) is lying, he will be punished by god.
Just after the seller says this, the constable falls into a fit on the ground. The crowd shrieks and tries to help the constable, while Lázaro’s master sits in the pulpit, oblivious and praying. Finally, the people beg the seller to intervene, and when he does, the constable is healed. The crowd is so impressed and delighted that the seller sells all his indulgences.
Lázaro is impressed. However, he later spies his master and the constable laughing together and realizes it was an elaborate swindle. As the seller and Lázaro continue on to the next church, Lázaro watches the seller preform various other tricks on people, including one that frightens people into buying the indulgences. The charades always happen when the seller is unable to make any sales. Later, before he mass, the seller takes a small, inexpensive cross and heats it up, and passes it over the cheeks of the congregation. When their skin burns, he blames it on the mean-spirited townspeople who have not purchased any indulgences. The congregation then rush to buy the papal indulgences. Later, the seller says that the hot cross is a miracle and he will take it with him to have it gilded. But the town clergy begs him to let them keep the small, miraculous cross, and the seller finally relents. In exchange for the miraculous cross, the seller is given a three-pound silver cross. Once again, he leaves with riches and money.
The seller knows that Lázaro has seen all these acts of trickery. He begs Lázaro to be quiet and never tell a soul. Lázaro swears he has never told a soul. Still, he wonders how many other people like the seller are “out there swindling innocent people” (56). Lázaro is grateful for one thing: This master always made sure he had plenty to eat.
Chapter 6 Summary
In another short chapter, this one of four paragraphs, Lázaro’s next master paints tambourines for a living. Lázaro’s job is to mix the paints for the artist.
One day, while Lázaro is at the cathedral, one of the priests gives him a job. The priest rents out concessions for people selling water. He gives Lázaro a donkey and some buckets so that he can fetch water from the river and sell it in the streets.
This constitutes Lázaro’s first paid job. He gives the priest 30 maravedís (the lowest denomination of Spanish currency) and keeps the rest for himself. He also keeps all he makes on Saturdays. After four years of work, he is able to buy himself some very fine second-hand clothes and an old sword. But as soon as he sees himself dressed so well, Lázaro quits his job and returns the donkey.
Chapter 7 Summary
In the final chapter Lázaro first works for a constable. He sees it as beneficial for himself, believing it “a good idea to get in with the law” (58). But he soon quits because he does not like the danger of chasing of criminals who often retaliate.
Lázaro wants to find a way to live that keeps him happy and healthy. Until he finds a suitable work situation, he is aided by many favors from friends and gentlemen until he gets a job in the civil service. He realizes such a job is very beneficial, saying, “you can’t get on unless you are in a government job” (48). Lázaro becomes a town-crier, which involves making public announcements about wines to be sold in town and about forthcoming auctions. Lázaro also makes announcements about lost property and escorts criminals through town while shouting out their crimes. He considers himself lucky. Everything passes through his hands. No one will get very far in business “unless Lázaro de Tormes has a finger in the pie” (48).
Not long after Lázaro becomes the town-crier, the archbishop takes notice of him because Lázaro once announced that the archbishop’s wines were for sale. The archbishop arranges a marriage between Lázaro with one of his maids. Lázaro likes the arrangement. They live in a house next to the priest and receive many gifts from him. They dine with him on Sundays and holidays. This affords Lázaro great wealth and prosperity without having to work. He has plenty of food and good shelter over his head, as well as a pretty wife.
The townspeople soon begin to gossip about Lázaro’s wife being the archbishop’s lover. Lázaro worries, wondering whether they are speaking the truth. Sometimes he’s had to wait for his wife until early morning or later. The townspeople tell Lázaro that his wife is sleeping with the priest, which upsets him. The priest sits with Lázaro and his wife to discuss the situation. He explains that Lázaro won’t be able to get through life if he listens to what people say, saying, “I’m telling you this so you should not be surprised if someone says he sees your wife going into my house and leaving it” (59).
Lázaro reveals that he has been told that his wife had three children before marrying him. At that, Lázaro’s wife protests, swearing and crying and condemning the archbishop. But the two men calm her down and make promises (which are left unstated), and Lázaro assures the archbishop he will never bring it up again. Everyone is satisfied. Whenever a friend tells Lázaro what they know to be true, Lázaro cuts them off or threatens to kill them. After that, “nobody says anything and there is peace at home” (60).
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
In the next four chapters, the church is again criticized through the characters who embody its duplicity and hypocrisy. Lázaro describes the friar as someone who chooses worldly pleasures over the religion to which he has taken an oath. All the social visiting wears out the friar’s shoes and the only pair of shoes Lázaro has ever owned. It’s notable that the Lázaro leaves out the exact details of the one or two “other things” that made him move on from this master. In the end, it’s not important to know the details. Their very absence implies they are unspeakable.
Chapter 5 repeats the theme about the church’s hypocrisy as Lázaro takes up with an indulgence seller who dupes the common people into buying papal indulgences. This is not surprising, since in the chapter’s very first sentence, Lázaro reveals how shameless the man is in scamming people out of their money.
However, even Lázaro is tricked by the elaborate scheme the seller and the constable play out, at least until he sees the two men laughing together. This is the first time that Lázaro questions how often such swindles occur around him and how many people are actually victims of the church’s power. This signals that Lázaro has begun to see the world for what it is: a stage upon which the powerful con and abuse the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.
Even though Chapter 6 is short, it reveals yet another transformation within Lázaro. Here Lázaro has two masters: one is the painter, but the other is a paying employer. Lázaro stays for four years until he makes enough money to dress like a gentleman. Once he has the outward attire, he quits his job just like the squire whom he criticized for doing the same thing. In Chapter 3 Lázaro learned that nothing matters more than how one appears. Now he acts in the same way.
This implies that Lázaro rejects the opportunity to get by through virtuous means, with hard work. Instead, he succumbs to the pervasive and normative cultural idea that there is no honor in work. In Lázaro’s (and the author’s) society, there is no merit in advancing through honest work to a position of financial stability. Instead, social standing is always left unquestioned, a result of divine providence as expressed by high birth. So in this short but important chapter, Lázaro takes on the dishonor and immorality of the masters who taught him these qualities. By eschewing honorable work for the cloak of outward nobility, Lázaro becomes like those he has served.
Chapter 7 completes Lázaro’s transformation into someone willing to live in the kind of deniability that allows Christian clergy to act in un-Christian ways. But given the novel’s tone and genre, readers realize that the author’s position differs from the character’s. Put more precisely, the author uses Lázaro to prove his point. This is one of the literary traits typical of the picaresque novel. The author uses Lázaro to show (a) that a culture with corrupt and hypocritical religious and political leadership will negatively affect society at large, and (b) that people practice what they are taught.
So the final chapter repeats the first. The blind man who practices violence and ignorance becomes a metaphor for the abuse of power in a society that turns its back on the truth. As we saw with Lázaro’s first master, violence and ignorance in the master begets violence and ignorance in his servants. Where once Lázaro stood on the other side and noticed this quality in others, he now chooses blindness over reality. Lázaro’s manner of navigating such a society was learned from the way his masters functioned; it is only by living in denial of their hypocrisy and their arrogance that can they continue to live at all.
A person who is not steeped in denial will see the lack of virtue in their habits. So, when the archbishop advises Lázaro to ignore what others say, he is urging Lázaro to ignore the truth. Lázaro, who has spent most of his life in the servitude of like-minded masters, falls easily into the cycle. He chooses a life of superficial honor so he can survive in comfort. Ironically, many of his masters had no food or creature comforts. Now that Lázaro has them, he’s gained too much to lose. So he ignores reality and abstains from virtuousness. Like his own wife, Lázaro too is a “kept” man. He exchanges integrity for comfort, and he threatens anyone who dares speak the truth, all to protect his safety and security.
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