The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Summary

The Bridge of San Luis Rey begins with a catastrophe: at noon on Friday, July 20, 1714, an old rope bridge woven by the Incas on the road between Lima and Cuzco in Spanish Peru breaks, and five travelers fall to their deaths. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar who sees the accident, resolves to prove by investigation that the deaths were part of God's design, and he spends six years gathering facts about the lives of the five victims. The middle sections tell their stories. The Marquesa de Montemayor, Doña María, an awkward and lonely noblewoman, writes brilliant letters to her cold daughter in Spain, letters later admired as classics of Spanish literature. Through her young companion Pepita, an orphan raised by the abbess Madre María del Pilar, she comes to see the selfishness of her love and resolves to live with courage, two days before she dies on the bridge with Pepita. Esteban and Manuel are twin foundlings raised by the abbess, so close that they share a private language. When Manuel falls in love with the actress Camila Perichole, the bond strains; Manuel dies of an infected wound, and Esteban, desolate, attempts suicide before agreeing to sail with the sea captain Alvarado. He dies on the bridge on his way. Uncle Pio, a gifted adventurer who discovered the Perichole as a girl singing in cafés and made her the greatest actress in Peru, devotes his life to her. After smallpox scars her and she withdraws from the world, he persuades her to let him take her sickly son, Don Jaime, to be educated in Lima. Both fall from the bridge. In the final part, Brother Juniper's book is judged heretical, and he and it are burned in the public square. The survivors, the abbess, the Perichole and the Marquesa's daughter, meet and find consolation in one another and in the abbess's work for the sick. The book ends with the abbess's reflection that love is the bridge between the living and the dead. Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1928. It was a best seller in a decade of disillusion, and its question, whether suffering has meaning, has kept it in print and in classrooms ever since.

Plot or Argument

• Part One: Perhaps an Accident

  The bridge collapses and Brother Juniper begins his inquiry into why these five people died.

• Part Two: The Marquesa de Montemayor

  Doña María writes to her estranged daughter, learns from Pepita's courage, and dies with her on the bridge.

• Part Three: Esteban

  The twins Esteban and Manuel are divided by Manuel's love for the Perichole; after Manuel's death, Esteban is saved from suicide by Captain Alvarado and dies on the bridge.

• Part Four: Uncle Pio

  Uncle Pio, the Perichole's mentor, takes her son Don Jaime to be educated, and both die.

• Part Five: Perhaps an Intention

  Brother Juniper is burned with his book; the survivors meet at the abbess's convent and find in love the meaning of the deaths.

Characters

• Brother Juniper, major

  Franciscan friar who investigates the victims' lives to prove divine purpose.

• The Marquesa de Montemayor (Doña María), major

  Lonely noblewoman famous for letters to her daughter.

• Pepita, minor

  Orphan raised by the abbess and sent to serve the Marquesa.

• Esteban, major

  Twin foundling whose life is bound up with his brother Manuel.

• Manuel, minor

  Esteban's twin, who falls in love with the Perichole and dies of an infected wound.

• Uncle Pio, major

  Adventurer and connoisseur devoted to the actress he trained.

• Camila Perichole, major

  Celebrated actress of Lima, mother of Don Jaime.

• Madre María del Pilar, major

  Abbess who raised Pepita and the twins and serves the sick and poor.

• Captain Alvarado, minor

  Sea captain who befriends Esteban.

• Doña Clara, minor

  The Marquesa's daughter, married in Spain.

Lessons

• Can suffering be explained?

  Brother Juniper tries to prove God's purpose with evidence and fails; the novel leaves the question open while suggesting that love, rather than explanation, answers it. Students can discuss the limits of reasoning about providence.

  • Why does Brother Juniper's method fail?
  • Does the novel suggest the deaths were an accident or an intention?

• Imperfect love

  Each victim loves someone imperfectly, possessively, jealously or without return. The novel treats these flawed loves with sympathy and shows some characters growing beyond them.

  • How does the Marquesa's love change before her death?
  • Which character's love seems most selfless?

• The living and the dead

  The survivors meet and are reconciled, and the abbess concludes that love links the living and the dead. Wilder offers consolation without certainty.

  • What do the survivors learn from one another?
  • What does the closing image of the bridge mean?

Context

The novel is set in early eighteenth-century Lima, the capital of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, a world of nobles, actresses, convents and the Inquisition. Wilder based the Perichole on the eighteenth-century Lima actress Micaela Villegas and drew on Prosper Mérimée's play about her; the Marquesa's letters recall those of Madame de Sévigné.

Composition

Wilder wrote the novel while teaching at the Lawrenceville School and studying at Princeton. Albert & Charles Boni published it in New York in November 1927.

Reception

The book was a large best seller and won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It has been filmed three times (1929, 1944, 2004). It entered the US public domain on January 1, 2023.

Comparisons

• Our Town

  Wilder's play also asks what ordinary lives mean in the face of death and answers through love and attention.

• Candide: Or Optimism

  Voltaire's satire, written after the Lisbon earthquake, mocks the claim that every catastrophe serves a good purpose, the question Brother Juniper tries to prove.

• The Brothers Karamazov

  Ivan's rebellion against a God who permits innocent suffering is a classic statement of the problem the novel explores.

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich

  Tolstoy's novella also examines how a life looks in the light of its end.

• Confessions

  Augustine's reflections on providence and love inform the theological question the novel raises.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The two framing parts titled 'Perhaps an Accident' and 'Perhaps an Intention'.
• Letters and stories as ways of loving at a distance.
• Each victim's state of mind just before the crossing.
• The abbess's work and how it connects the survivors.

Key terms and names

Providence

The belief that God guides events, including apparent accidents, for a purpose.

Theodicy

An attempt to justify God's goodness in the face of evil and suffering.

Viceroyalty of Peru

The Spanish colonial government of much of South America, centered in Lima.

Franciscan

A member of the religious order founded by St. Francis of Assisi.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Brother Juniper set out to prove, and how?
2. Comprehension What happens to Brother Juniper and his book?
3. Interpretation Why does Wilder show each victim on the verge of a new life?
4. Interpretation Why might Wilder have told the stories out of chronological order?
5. Big Question Can human beings know why suffering happens?
6. Big Question Is love really 'the only survival, the only meaning'?

Faith Connections

• Luke 13:1-5 (Scripture)

  Christ's words about those killed when the tower of Siloam fell reject the idea that victims of disaster were worse sinners, the question Brother Juniper tries to answer.

• 1 Corinthians 13 (Scripture)

  Paul's praise of love as greater than knowledge parallels the abbess's conclusion.

• Voltaire, Candide (Great Conversation)

  Voltaire's attack on easy optimism after the Lisbon earthquake provides the classic counterpoint to Juniper's project.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If a catastrophe cannot be explained by tallying the victims' merits, then its meaning must be sought not in a calculation of providence but in the love that the dead inspired and the living continue.

Rhetorical device: frame narrative. The stories of the five victims are framed by Brother Juniper's investigation, so that every portrait is read as evidence in his case.

Debate: Resolved: The collapse of the bridge was an accident, not an intention.

Memory Work

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Compare two of the victims' stories and explain how each prepares for the abbess's final reflection.

Comparison with Candide: Or Optimism: Compare Brother Juniper with Voltaire's Pangloss: how does each try to explain catastrophe, and how does each author judge him?

Medical Lens

Manuel's death from an infected wound, Esteban's suicidal grief, and the Perichole's smallpox show the medical realities of eighteenth-century Lima and the psychology of mourning.

• Part Three

  Esteban's grief after his twin's death and his suicide attempt.

  Grief Suicide

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write one page of Brother Juniper's book about a sixth traveler who almost crossed the bridge that day.

• Essay

  Does the novel answer Brother Juniper's question? Argue for 'accident', 'intention' or neither.

• Classroom

  In groups, each take one victim and present how that person's love was changing before the fall.

Further Reading

• Our Town, Thornton Wilder

• Thornton Wilder: A Life, Penelope Niven