Although written 80 years ago, The Bridge of San Luis Rey still has relevance today. ABC's hit show Lost has been compared to the novel, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair related it to 9/11.

From the foreword by Russell Banks:

"It is interesting, therefore, and possibly useful to consider this novel in the long and (at the time of this writing) still darkening shadow of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001.

Our relation to those terrible events is not unlike Brother Juniper's relation to the collapse of the bridge. On that day in September and over the months that followed, we all, thanks to the miracle of modern video technology, became witnesses to an event that defies our moral understanding and tempts us to try puzzling out the mind of God, hoping thereby to justify the ways of God to man.*   This was Brother Juniper's obsession and his heresy.   For many of us, it has become ours, too. And it was not merely appropriate, it was a necessary admonition, that, at the memorial service in New York for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, British Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to read the closing sentences of The Bridge of San Luis Rey: 'But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.'"

*See John Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I, line 26:

"O Spirit [heavenly Muse] . . . Instruct me . . . That to the highth of this great argument / I may assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men." Brother Juniper's goal echoes Milton's in his epic poem.

Thornton Wilder, best known for his play Our Town

• Thornton Wilder Society
• Wilder at PBS

General Study

• Class Study Questions
• Summary and Discussion Questions
• Novel Feature at the Thornton Wilder Society
• Book Discussion Guide by the Iowa Department for the Blind
• Time.com's Top 100 Novels  High praise for this Pulitzer prize winning novel: "unlike anything else in American fiction"

Character List Some characters are known by multiple names or titles

• La Marquesa de Montemayor = Doña María
• La Condesa d'Abuirre = Doña Clara, daughter of Doña María, married to Don Vicente
• El Conde d'Abuirre = Don Vicente, husband of Doña Clara
• The Abbess = La Madre María del Pilar, directress of the Convent of Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas
• The Viceroy = Don Andrés de Ribera, a royal official of Spain
• La Perichole = Camila Perichole = Micaela Villegas, mistress of the Viceroy, discovered by Uncle Pio
• Don Jaime, son of the Viceroy and the Perichole
• Uncle Pio, called "the aged Harlequin" by Dona Maria, originally from Spain
• The Archbishop, head of the Catholic Church in Lima
• Esteban and Manuel, twins and orphans
• Pepita, an orphan, assistant to the Marquesa
• Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk from Italy
• Captain Alvarado

The Bridge of San Luis Rey background information
 

Thornton Wilder did not visit Lima until 1941, 14 years after The Bridge of San Luis Rey was published, yet he chose this unfamiliar location to be the setting of his novel.  The following information will help you as you consider Lima’s location and history.  Why do you think Wilder chose 18^th century Lima as the setting of his novel?

 

The Incas     The Incan Empire ruled present day Peru from approximately 1438 to 1533.  The empire was the largest state-level society in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Spanish and was known for its military conquests and architectural accomplishments (see Machu Picchu).  In 1532 Francisco Pizarro defeated an Incan army of 80,000 men with just 180 Spaniards, 1 canon, and 27 horses.  Despite the Incan ruler Atahualpa’s compliance with their demands, the Spaniards put him to death in 1533.  The Spanish rulers then mistreated the Incas and repressed their traditions.

Machu Picchu    Machu Picchu is the lost city of the Incas built between 1460 and 1470 high in the Andes Mountains.  Approximately 1,200 people lived there, mainly women, children, and priests.  Buildings were made of granite blocks placed together so tightly that the thinnest of knife blades can’t be forced between them.  Machu Picchu was forgotten by the outside world for some time and was “rediscovered” in 1911 by a Yale archaeologist.              

                                                                                                           

Spanish Colonialism      Spain began colonizing the new world after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas in 1492 under the patronage of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.  Spain held the largest empire in the world from 1580 until 1811.  Most of the Americas were under Spanish or joint Spanish and Portuguese control at some point during this period.

 

Peru sits just below                            The above map shows locations under Spanish  or joint Spanish                             

the equator in western                        and Portuguese control at some point between 1580 and 1975.

South America.  Its coasts

are along the Pacific Ocean.                                                                                  

 

Lima, Peru     Lima is the capital of Peru and is located on the coast.  Between 1532 and 1739, Lima was the capital of the Spanish empire in South America, also called La Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of Kings ).  The Viceroy of Peru ruled over all of Spain's territory in South America until a separate Viceroy was established to rule over Columbia and Panama in 1717. 

 

Catholicism in Peru     Proselytization (the inducement of conversion from one faith to another) of the natives by monks began in 1532 with the arrival of Pizarro and his men.  Today Peru is over 80% Catholic, but evidence of Peruvian indigenous beliefs is seen in the close association of Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) and the Virgin Mary.

 

The Inquisition in Peru     The Inquisition began in Europe in 1184 and was aimed at securing Papal (of the Catholic Church) authority.  Those denounced as heretics, usually Jews, Muslims, people with unorthodox views, and later, Protestants, were burned at the stake.  Spanish Missionaries brought the Inquisition to the New World and killed natives who refused to convert to Catholicism.  The Inquisition was established in Peru in 1560 to halt the spread of forbidden books and to keep Protestantism from gaining a foothold.  Books that were considered ideologically dangerous were banned, and those that wrote and read them were punished.  Peru’s Inquisition ended in 1820.  The Inquisition officially ended in Spain in 1834.

 

Franciscan Monks     In the novel, Brother Juniper is a Franciscan monk from Northern Italy who “happened to be in Peru converting the Indians” at the time of the accident.  The Franciscan Order or the ordo fratrum minorum (the order of lesser brothers) is an organization of Catholic monks founded in 1209.  Franciscans takes vows of poverty, are devoted to charity, and are recognized by their simple brown robes.  Because of their humility, the natives of Peru accepted them more easily than another order of monks, the Dominicans. The natives explained that they preferred the Franciscans “ because they are poor and barefooted as we are, and they eat our food; they sit on the ground with us; they converse humbly with us; they love us as their own children. Therefore we love them as our fathers.”  Today there are approximately 16,000 Franciscan monks worldwide. 

 

La Santa    the Peruvian name for the Spanish Inquisition, or Holy Office

 

St. Rose     the first saint born in the New World and the first female saint in the Americas

                                                                                                                                

The Chicoma Valley     the “sugar bowl” of Peru

 

guano     fertilizer made from the droppings of seabirds and bats

 

 

La Perricholi     Micaela “Miquita” Villegas (1746-1819)    La Perichole (as it is spelled in the book) was a famous Peruvian actress, singer, and dancer known for her beauty.  Offenbach based the famous opera La Perricholi on her life.  According to The Center for Learning, “To Peruvians she became a symbol of all that was both good and evil about the Spanish colonial period, and today in this century, the term they still use to mean shallow and ostentatious is ‘perricholisimo.’”  Although the Perichole and the Viceroy are historical figures, Wilder has fictionalized some parts of their lives in the novel.

Paseo de Aguas     Today a tourist attraction, the Paseo de Aguas contains the fountains that were built for La Perichole by her lover, the Viceroy.

 

Humbolt Current     The Humbolt Current is a belt of cold Antarctic water that stretches from about halfway down the coast of Chile to the northern border of Peru.  When the cool ocean winds reach the land, they are suddenly warmed, causing them to “drink” up water from the soil, making the land at times a desert and then in turn causing the desert to “bloom.”  The current keeps the western coast of South America temperate and dry.

 

Andes Mountains     The Andes is the world’s longest mountain range and runs along the west coast of South America.  It is the highest mountain range outside of Asia with an average height of 13,000 feet.  In Peru the Andes are home to rain forests, although farmers are cutting them down to use for agriculture, leading to soil erosion and the loss of indigenous species.

 

Climate     Due to the cold waters of the Humbolt current, its proximity to the equator, and its mountains, Peru’s climate varies greatly from place to place.   In Lima, temperatures during the hottest months of the summer (February and March) reach the lower eighties Fahrenheit with lows in the high sixties.  During the coldest month of the winter (August), highs are in the mid sixties and lows are in the high fifties.  It almost never rains on the coast where Lima is located, although there is often a thick fog that makes it feel cooler than it is.  Lima averages less than one inch of a rain per year.

 

Peru Today     Peru declared independence from Spain in 1821 and drove the Spanish out in 1824, but political stability was not achieved until the early 1900’s.  During World War II, Peru was the first South American country to align with the United States and its allies against Japan and Germany.  In 1990 Alberto Fujimori brought some stability to Peru when he was elected president, but he fled the country in 2000 due to allegations of human rights violations.  Today he is being held in Chile awaiting extradition.  Some 69,000 Peruvians are thought to have died in fighting between rebel forces and the government during Fujimori's presidency.  Today Peru has problems with rebel groups and illegal drug manufacturing, but many hope that current president Alan García Pérez, who also served as president from 1985 to 1990 before the election of Fujimori, can improve conditions.

 

Thornton Wilder Biographical Information

 

            Thornton Wilder was born in Madison , Wisconsin on April 17, 1897, to Amos Parker Wilder and Isabella Niven Wilder.  Thornton’s twin brother died at birth, and his imagined relationship with the twin he never knew shaped the characters of Manuel and Esteban in The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  Amos was a journalist and Isabella was a poet.  In 1906 Amos was appointed American Consul general of Hong Kong , and the family moved there and later to Shanghai, China.

           

            Wilder attended Oberlin College and Yale University, graduating in 1920.  During World  War I, he served in the Coast Guard Artillery Corps.  He then studied archaeology at the American Academy in Rome; his time there became the basis for his first novel, The Cabala.  Wilder took a position as a French teacher and housemaster at the LawrencevilleSchool in New Jersey, taking a year off to get his master’s degree in French literature at Princeton University and to write his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), which was a huge success and was made into a hit movie in 1929.

           

            After receiving the Pulitzer Prize for The Bridge, Wilder moved to Chicago and was a lecturer on literature at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1936.  In 1939 the play Our Town won the Pulitzer prize for drama and was a smash hit on Broadway.  Our Town tells the story of the life of Emily Webb who grew up in the picturesque town of Grover ’s Corners, New Hampshire . Wilder is the only person to have won the Pulitzer for both fiction and drama.  In 1941, he made the first of many goodwill missions on behalf of the State Department to South America.  He saw Peru, the setting of The Bridge, for the first time during this year. 

 

            In 1943 Wilder worked with Alfred Hitchcock on the thriller Shadow of a Doubt and won a third Pulitzer for the play The Skin of Our Teeth, although it did not receive good reviews.  He then enrolled in the Air Force and earned the Merit of Legion and the Bronze Star in World War II.  In 1948 Wilder published The Ides of March, an experimental look at the life of Julius Caesar.  In 1950-1951 he served as a major in Italy.  Wilder’s 1954 play The Matchmaker was turned into the hit Hello Dolly ten years later which made Wilder financially secure.  In all Wilder wrote more than ten novels, more than twenty plays, and several screenplays.

 

            Wilder lived with his sister in New Haven, Connecticut, home to Yale University, for most of his life.  He considered himself a lifelong teacher, with stints at Harvard and universities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.  Wilder received many awards during his life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work as an activist for victims of the Holocaust, racial discrimination, and poverty (although his visit to the White House was cancelled after Kennedy’s assassination).  He is thought to have had one or two relationships with younger men, but this subject does not appear in his works.  Instead he focused on “the urge that strives toward justifying life, harmonizing, - the source of energy on which life must draw in order to better itself."*  Wilder’s friends included Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway.  A lifelong smoker, he died of emphysema in Connecticut in 1975 at the age of 78.

*Wilder, Thornton. Interview with Richard H. Goldstone. 14 Dec. 1956.