In the play Blood Wedding, Lorca has presented human beings trapped in the webs of their own passion. John Gassner has mentioned that orca most impressive dramas deal with people who are seized by elemental passions which conflict with custom, reason, or some other restraining force?. In this play the passion which stems from the heart of man has been dramatized as a tragedy. From the beginning of the play, the element of passion is present in the dialogue as well as the imagery of the play. The Bride follows the dictates of her passion for Leonardo. This passion is an expression of her self, as it is obvious that no one else in the play is consumed by this passion for Leonardo. Self is actually a set of traits, which make the Bride a unique person in her own right. It is that which contains her desires, her wishes and her fears. When the Bride tries to attain satisfaction for her desires and wants, it means that she is asserting herself as an individual. The self of a person yearns for expression and to be displayed as an entity, which demands fulfillment for its own passions and desires. When the Bride tries to satisfy her passion, she ends up annihilating that very self she was supposed to have satisfied with that passion. This force of passion seems to make two sorts of contacts, inwards and outwards. Inward contact means the force of passion coming in contact with the self of the Bride, from where it originated. Outward contact means the force of passion coming in contact with the external circumstances in which the Bride exists, namely, society. To both of these, the self as well as the society, passion is a force of anarchy. Society is the government of order imposed upon a group where as passion is a chaotic force by virtue of its individuality. Society is a system devoted to the survival of the group. This survival is possible only if the individual can be ordered and checked, with a certain standard of behaviour imposed upon him. A person does not dare to go against the norm of the society because he fears self-extinction. Away from the group, his survival will be difficult. But on the other hand, his self rejects the standard behaviour imposed by the group in order to achieve ultimate expression. In this way, the force of passion in its effort to assert the monopoly of self instead leads the self to its extinction.
In Blood Wedding, the Bride is a victim of her own passion. But she does not succumb to it easily. She struggles against this passion but it is a loosing battle. When the Bridegroom mother comes to ask for her hand, she asks her if she knows what marriage means, to which the Bride answers that she does know. The mother says that it means:
MOTHER: A man, some children and a wall two yards thick for everything else.(act1 sciii)
The mother makes it clear that marriage is about the survival of the community and not about the gratification of individual desires. Everything else including passion has to be kept out of marriage by surrounding one self by a thick wall. For the survival of the community marriage is instrumental for imposing an order upon the process of reproduction and thus ensuring the continuity of the group. Marriage does not allow self-expression. The Bride has declared that she knows what marriage entails but it does not imply that she will follow it as well. In her innermost self, a conflict rages between her instinct for survival within the community and her innate need to fulfill her passion for Leonardo. In her talk with Leonardo in the first scene of the second act, she tells him that she will lock herself with her husband in a room and then she will have to love him. The Bride is trying her best to forget Leonardo and love her husband, even if it means forcing herself to do so. This conflict is quite clear form the following lines when the Bride asks the bridegroom to hurry up.
BRIDE: Yes, I want to be your wife right now so that I can be with you alone, not hearing any voice but yours.
BRIDEGROOM: that what I want!
BRIDE: And not seeing any eyes but yours. And for you to hug me so hard, that even though my dead mother should call me, I wouldn be able to draw away from you.(act 2 scii)
The Bride fears that the voice of her passion will carry her along and she will not be able to resist. This is why she asks the Bridegroom to hold her and not let her go. The Bride motive here is the fear of annihilation. She is afraid that the passion raging in her breast is going to control her and annihilate her. She tries to cling on to the Bridegroom who becomes a symbol of social security and survival within the group. She uses him as a shield against her passion for Leonardo, which she knows to be great and overpowering. Her instinct for survival compels her to go through this marriage even though she knows that there is a lot of difference between her feelings for the Bridegroom and for Leonardo. When her servant asks her she tells her that she loves the Bridegroom. But this love is entirely different from the violent and desperate emotion she feels for Leonardo.
BRIDE: [Trembling] I can listen to you. I can listen to your voice. It as though I drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along, and I know I drowningut I go on down.(act 2 sc i)
This speech shows the nature of the passion, which the Bride feels for Leonardo. It is a sort of dope, a drug to her senses. This implies that in her saner moments the Bride realizes that this passion is drugging her. It is making her forget her instinct for survival within the security of the community. That is why, in the grips of this emotion she feels that she is going down. She feels that she is drowning. She is helpless against it. It appears that by drowning in her passion, she will be dead because drowning is also a cause of death. The metaphors she implies in explaining this emotion are also suggestive of death as she talks about going to a heavily drugged sleep and not about becoming alive as a result of her passion. Her sleep can also mean death. The Bride realizes that her passion is destructive in its very essence and this is the reason why she struggles so desperately against it. The love she feels for the Bridegroom is a soft and serene emotion, which is no match against the raging tide of her passion for the other man. John Gassner declares that n Blood Wedding the passion of love is elemental and destructive?. It is not the passion of love but passion itself, which is elemental and destructive, because the Bride feels love for the bridegroom too. What she feels for Leonardo has to be different. Her feelings for Leonardo transcend love. They assume a dark and violent aspect, which signifies an unnamable, elusive human drive that seeks to break the very thing it cherishes, and at the same time, wants to possess it intact.
BRIDE: The same hands, these that are yours
but which when they see you would like
to break the blue branches
and sunder the purl of your veins
These lines explain the multifaceted feeling which the Bride possesses for Leonardo. Though she cherishes him still she wants to annihilate him. Her possession of him is tinged with the flavour of death because the passion, which drives her, is basically exterminating in nature. This is why that love cannot help her in saving her self from the onslaught of passion. Leonardo tells her that she may think that ime heals and walls hide things, but it isn true,?. (act 2 sc i). The Bride also fears that despite what the mother has told her about walling things out, she does not stand much chance of escaping from the force of her passion. For this reason she wants to get married as soon as possible so that she be able to safe guard her survival in the society.
Passion is destructive in its nature whether it turns inwards upon the self of a person or outwards upon the society. The Bride is afraid of its force because she knows that it will eventually sweep her to nothingness in its raging tide. Her instinct for survival within the community tells her to stop the tide of this passion from consuming her but it is too strong for her to tackle. The codes and checks of society try to offer human beings protection against their destructive yearnings. But sometimes the need for the satisfaction of such yearnings is so strong that it does not bear any restraint. Even then, the need is not assuaged because it is not possible for human passion to fulfill itself. Its effort for fulfillment always ends up in destruction because it is in its very essence a destructive phenomenon. When the Bride runs away with Leonardo, some woodcutters are talk about it.
FIRST WOODCUTTER: You have to follow the path of your blood.
SECOND WOODCUTTER: But blood that sees the light of day is drunk up by the earth.
FIRST WOODCUTTER: What of it? Better dead with the blood drained away then alive with it rotting. (Act 3 sc I)
Here blood becomes a metaphor for passion. One has to follow the path of fulfilling one passion but the risk of annihilation is always there. In following the path of passion, daylight is going to creep up upon the travelers. These dialogues imply that only hidden passions are safe from being ravaged. If passion is not hidden but displayed and led towards fulfillment then the earth will drink it up. The self, which tries to attain satisfaction for its passion is at risk of extinction through the very nature of that passion. In the same scene, Leonardo tells the Bride:
LEONARDO: [. . .]But I was riding a horse
and the horse went straight to your door.
And the silver pins of your wedding
turned my red blood black.
And in me our dream was choking
my flesh with its poisoned weeds.
Oh, it isn my fault?
the fault is the earth?
[. . .]
In these lines passion turns the man red blood black. Red is the colour of life and black colour is significant of death. Passion seems to be working hand in hand with the force of death. Fate is also playing its part here. In the shape of the moon faced woodcutter, it seems as if fate is conniving with passion to bring about the death of the Bridegroom and Leonardo. In the first scene of second act, death in the guise of a beggar woman is waiting for the moon-faced woodcutter to turn up so that he can help her in bringing about the deaths she wants. They are going to light up the place so that the runaway couple can be easily caught. Moon says to death:
MOON: Let them be a long time a-daying so the blood
will slide its delicate hissing between my fingers.
Look how my ashen valleys already are waking
in longing for this fountain of shuddering gushes.
Moon seems to be bloodthirsty fate. But the blood, which it wants, is not only the real human blood but also the passion that is there in the human breast. The moon is also indicative of passion. As a sign of the zodiac, it is related to emotional upheavals, which are born in human beings as yearnings and desires that are grand and unattainable. Fate seems to be at work behind the elemental passion which Leonardo and the Bride have for each other. Passion becomes an instrument through which fate traps them.
LEONARDO: [. . .] But wherever you go, I go
Youe the same. Take a step. Try.
Nails of moonlight have fused
my waist and your chains.
These lines show that moon has played its part in bringing the lovers to the edge of a ravine of passion. If they fall, they fall together to their extinction because they are unable to free themselves of their passion. The fate of the lovers is to be unhappy. But the reason for this is not fate. Their destiny has not brought them unhappiness; it is their passion, which has brought them unhappiness. Even when the Bride struggles to do so, she cannot break away from Leonardo. Their passion is the result of the emotions that reside in their breasts and not a machination of fate. In the very nature of this passion there is tragedy. It is a force like a torrential rain, which destroys the very land it was supposed to fertilize. Fate is a factor, which is merely organizing the sequence of the events leading to tragedy. The essence of tragedy lies in the passion that originates in the hearts of human beings.
The bride tires to heed her instinct for survival but she fails miserably to do so. She goes away with Leonardo when her wedding feast is being celebrated. Leonardo and the Bridegroom kill each other and are brought back to the house. The bride also comes with them. The Bridegroom mother tries to kill her. The Bride does not try to escape. Instead she declares that she would prefer to die now. According to her speech:
BRIDE: [ To the Neighbour] Let her. I came here so she kill me and they take me away with them.
She has no desire left to live. The passion in her breast has taken everything from her. Her only desire now is to be finished herself as well. Passion has succeeded in bringing her to self-extinction. When she is unable to fulfill her passion for Leonardo, the Bride gives up all pretense of living. Her instinct for survival has already suffered defeat. Her going away with Leonardo is a testimony to that. But she is helpless against the force of her passion. She can not fulfill it but neither can she break free from it. Once the passion makes its presence known in her breast, the only option the Bride has is to strive for its satisfaction. Even though she tries her best to stem its flow she cannot control it. The very essence of this passion is self-exterminatory. In her last speech, she says that:

BRIDE: Because I ran away with the other one; I ran away! [With Anguish] You would have gone, too. I was a woman burning with desire, full of sores inside and out, and your son was a little bit of water from which I hoped for children, land, health; but the other one was a dark river, choked with brush, that brought near me the undertones of its rushes and its sweet song [. . .] . I didn want to; remember that! I didn want to. Your son was my destiny and I have not betrayed him, but the other one arm dragged me along like the pull of the sea, like the head toss of a mule, and he would have dragged me always, always, always--even if I were an old woman and all your son sons held me by the hair!
Her passion for Leonardo has been like a brute force. It has the power of a river in flood which sweeps away everything that comes in its path. Even if she had tried she could not have broken free from the traps of this passion. She would always have been a victim of it even if all the world had tried to save her. There is a comparison between passion and the instinct of survival. Even though the Bride realizes that her son could have given her land and childrenecurity and continuity within the communityhe cannot help but choose Leonardo even if it leads to her annihilation because her self craves fulfillment. It is the conflict between the individual self and society. Both are trying to triumph over each other. But even if self triumphs, by the very nature of that triumph it is exterminated. Because the community is devoted to survival of the group and self is devoted to its expression, not survival. Self chooses to express itself even at the cost of extinction. In the Bride character, self-expression triumphs over the instinct for survival. Passion leads the Bride to self-extinction in Blood Wedding.