In the beginning of the story, our little Lazaro was such an innocent poor child whom I didn’t expect to choose material security over moral integrity. In fact, I thought the scandal was unreal at first before Teacher Henk reminded me and now when I look back on the ending, I find what he said to his friends is really funny and ironic. The ironic ending indicates the ugly society and the changing of Lazaro.

  First let’s look back on the funny ending. The archpriest explained that the reason Lazarillo’s wife went in is very much to Lazaro’s honor and to hers and reminded Lazaro how it benefited him. It actually indicates that Lazaro intentionally traded his principle for a secure life with knowing of the fact as his friends had told him that his wife had three children before and had an affair with the priest. He replied his friends’ kindness with words full of meaning:

“…because of her, Gods gives me all sorts of favors…she’s as good a woman as any here in Toledo…”

Lazaro “loves” his wife for “all sorts of favors”, which shows his love was just for the wealth rather than real love between couples. And such immorality was common in the whole society as the sentence

“she’s as good a woman as any here in Toledo”

1. Maybe some readers without deep thinking will think it’s a normal ending of the story about a successful man who have a good job and marriage. But paying a little more attention to it we can find the writer ironically implied that Lazaro gave up his morality for prosperity even though he was able to make a good living with his former job.

  Lizarillo really changed, and so does my view of him. As I said before, I thought Lazaro was a poor child with a conscience and played tricks only for living on without other choice. He stole food and wine from his masters because they were so mean that Lazaro was starving while they kept lots of food; he tricked the blind man to jump toward a column because the blind man often hit and bullied him and Lazaro just wanted to get rid of him and took the revenge on him in passing. These bad behaviors are necessary and reasonable. Once Lazaro met his third master who treated him better and equally in some extend—once the squire got a silver piece he asked Lazaro to bought bread and wine and meat and had a feast with Lazaro—he was willing to service the squire without complaint though the squire didn’t own even one single coin. So after he earned some money by selling water and quit the job, I expected him to do some business and finally be rich. However, when he accumulated some money and status, he degenerated under the temptation of money, abandoning his conscience. He wasn’t the poor but strong child any more. He was gradually becoming those who had bullied him before.

  The society was full of evil and deceit which could even assimilate an innocent child. The blind man claiming he needed a guild was the one who exploited and tricked his guild badly; the holy priest was the one who starving and bullying a child almost to death; the so-called self-respecting gentleman was the one who defended his conceited honor but lived a poor life with nothing to eat, almost going to the tomb; the pardoner and constable was totally swindlers and the pardons were the shameless ruse of the pardoner, or of the whole church and the Archpriest of San Salvador had an affair with his maid and cover up it by a false marriage. Living in such a society, our little Lazaro was finally assimilated and being part of the evils.

  The famous Chinese writer Lu Xun once camp up with a phrase, “the society that eating people”. As for Lazarillo’s time, the society chased and tricked those people like Lazaro as a hound. The fierce hound not only ate Lazaro, but also digested him, making him part of the hound, the scary society.