As in “The burning plain,” the father-son relationship is a crucial one in Rulfian narrative. Fathers are usually considered crucial role models for their children and, as the colonel in “Tell them not to kill me!” says to Juvencio: “It’s hard to grow up knowing that the thing we have to hang on or take roots from is dead.” This loss of the father figure drives the Colonel to affirm — if not exaggerate — his masculinity by hunting down the man who was “tough enough” to kill his father. Freudian theory could support the speculation that for the Colonel the killer of his father (Juvencio) has come to replaced Don Lupe as the target of an Oedipal death wish.
