I am under the impression we are supposed to upload our paragraph that was reviewed in Wednesday’s class, so here goes:

While on his way to buy food, Lazarillo encounters a funeral procession, abandons his task of procuring food, and hurries back panicked at the thought of a dead man being brought to the house. Lazarillo’s fright was a result of overhearing the widowed wife lament “My husband and my lord, where are they taking you? To the sad and gloomy house, to the dark and dreary house, to the house where they neither eat nor drink!” (77) Lazarillo makes an amusing misassumption about their destination, but he truly cannot be blamed as his third master’s abode was in fact quite sad and gloomy. When Lazarillo is first brought home by the squire he notices the entryway to be “so dark and dismal…that it might have been made that way on purpose to frighten people as they came in…” (57) Inside Lazarillo gets nervous as he’s “seen nothing but walls, and not a single chair among them, nor stool, nor bench, nor table, nor even a chest…” (58), aside from the stone bench his master blew dust off of. Later when his master goes to show him how to make a bed, Lazarillo notices the “miserable mattress…spared from washing for so long that it wasn’t recognizable as a mattress at all…” (62) All of these things evidence the dire condition of Lazarillo’s new household. As his new master could not even afford to feed himself, Lazarillo took to a recurrent begging for alms and there was a point where they were surviving decently. Though when the crops failed and laws were enacted to rid the city of paupers, Lazarillo feared to continue the arrangement. Lazarillo describes:

…the resulting abstinence of my household, and the gloom and silence of the inhabitants…it was not unheard-of for two or three days to go by without our having a single bite to eat or a single word to say to each other. It was some women next door to us…who saved my life. (75)

This statement is profound as Lazarillo was once again so hungry he feared death, but this time not by anyone’s misdoings, just simply misgivings. Lazarillo’s master further perpetuates the feeling of despair in the household by stating “It’s sad to behold what this ill-fated dwelling is accomplishing. Just look at it: it’s so dismal and dark and gloomy.” (76) and even so immediately before sending him out for food, “Damn the place anyway…for my troubles date from the moment I set foot inside the door…in the whole time I’ve lived in it I haven’t swallowed one drop of wine nor eaten one bite of meat…” (76) It is of no surprise that Lazarillo was under the notion that the procession was en route to his home as he’s been conditioned to think of that house as a place where miseries are made. Thus Lazarillo, in his boyhood, literally interprets the assertion “to the house where they neither eat nor drink!”