Miguel de Unamuno’s ‘Love and Pedagogy’: A Deep Dive into Characters and Themes
Love and Pedagogy: Characters and Themes
The Role of Dialogue
In *Love and Pedagogy*, a novel by Miguel de Unamuno, dialogue constitutes half the text. Unamuno utilizes dialogue to present his characters acting and thinking aloud.
Main Characters
Avito Carrascal
Passionate about science, Avito Carrascal’s primary goal is to create a genius. He also battles his own feelings. According to him, he represents the *form*, and his wife is the *matter*. He believes that real love tries to enter without being constructed and wants his child to avoid it as well. Only through the harmony achieved at the end does love conquer, and the two can embrace. It is a kind of starting over, a result of clear teaching. “He embraced his weeping wife over the loss of her child, comparable to the death of his daughter Rose” [Chapter 15].
Don Fulgencio Entreambosmares
A self-caricature of Unamuno, Don Fulgencio’s name provides the key to his personality. He is someone who believes that science can condemn the world through logic, but on the other hand, he is a fearful person, full of questions, and hides a drama: he cannot have children. His theory is that God is the great author, and we are the characters; thus, the genius is the one who manages to be sparse and author their own lives.
Apollodorus
Apollodorus has a poorly defined, blurred personality because he lacks a personality and is influenced by everyone. The clearest evidence of this multiple personality is his double name (Apollodorus and Luis): a normal name and a genius name. He is influenced by Fulgencio with his “have kids” philosophy and by Menagutti, a romantic poet who gives bad advice about fighting a duel or killing him. Apollodorus fails as a genius, writer, painter, and lover. After a series of failures, he feels ridiculed and humiliated, saying, “I am a failed genius.” He thinks people criticize and laugh at him. He is just a mess.
Apollodorus’s Education
Apollodorus receives a dual education. Avitus lets his mother educate him with songs and other lessons, including religion. Marina del Valle represents feelings, instinct, and love. While she fills Apollodorus with kisses and caresses, his father soaks him with science. He lives in a kind of dream, an unreality, and is immersed in sleep. She is also another victim of the novel, realizing that she does not have anything in common with her husband.
Secondary Characters
- Leonie: Marina’s friend. She helps Marina baptize her son, Luis.
- Edelmira: Fulgencio’s wife, a portrait of the dominant female. She considers her husband a charlatan and despises his philosophies.
- Rosa: She develops before her brother, and the father is therefore preoccupied with setting her aside.
- Clarita: Don Epifanio’s daughter and Apollodorus’s betrothed. She is very superficial, frivolous, and capricious, ultimately deciding to be with Federico.
- Federico: Secure and very cool, he is also the strongest and most attractive man.
- Menagutti: An evil counselor and romantic poet.
Epilogue
Two characters have a bad conscience: Fulgencio and Menagutti. Petra is pregnant. The novel ends with Fulgencio talking to Avitus, who gives him two plays: *Squid* and *Treatise on Cocology*.
Central Theme
The central theme is the opposition between science and life. Despite the work’s title, it portrays the complete failure of scientific pedagogy taken to the extreme against natural instinct and the visceral power of love, which imposes its law. The narrative centers on the protagonist, torn between the intimate drama of missing the north that guides his decisions (the contradictory fanaticism of his father/teacher, the permissiveness and inconsistency of Don Fulgencio, and the tender love and affection of his mother). The solution lies in suicide as a way out of this perplexing inner maze, determining the novel’s tragic sense.
Additional Themes
- Conflict of personality (Apollodorus’s suicide)
- “Split personality” (Fulgencio Entreambosmares: the incoherence between social and personal life)