In Rulfo's fiction, there are few uncomplicated, linear narrative structures; the characters' lives are not dwelt upon, well-introduced or fully-drawn; sentences are kept to a syntactic minimum and dialogue, particularly, is given without much explanation. The result is an almost Borgesian disturbance of the reader's orientation which establishes, in turn, a certain aporia, or doubt, ensuring that we are alert to meanings beyond the literal. In many instances, these meanings are transparent, particularly where the ironic referent lies within the fiction itself (centripetally) but, as discussed in the previous chapter, Rulfo's irony also points to referents outside the scope of the fiction (centrifugally), chiefly the ‘rhetoric of revolution’ described later in the book. This referent is arguably more complex and inviting of critique but centripetal referents are just as important as they help to establish the ironic rapport of complicity between reader and writer which, in turn, facilitates the transfer of meaning in centrifugal irony. Therefore, in this chapter, I shall examine the operation of centripetal irony in two of Rulfo's short stories, particularly in their relationship with traditional modes of emplotment.

Hayden White argues that, on a ‘deep level of consciousness’, historians – as well as fiction writers – make use of four poetic modes of configuration (tropes) based on aesthetic or moral grounds with no epistemological basis: romance, comedy, tragedy and irony. Romance represents a victory of ‘good over evil, virtue over vice and light over darkness and of the ultimate transcendence of man over the world in which he was imprisoned by the Fall’.