His obsession for Susana San Juan is clearly sexual, but his worshipful devotion elevates her beyond the reach of his predatory embrace. When she returns to Comala, he is faced with the dilemma of trying to "have" a woman who by the terms of his own obsession is unattainable. After having her father killed and moving her to the Media Luna ranch, he hovers at her bedside, but does not force sex upon her. Instead, Susana's image arouses him while he sleeps with the young girls in the town who serve as her proxies. He looks back on one such encounter and makes the connection clear: He thought of the young girl he had just slept with. Of the small, frightened, trembling body, and the thudding of a heart that seemed about to leap from her chest. "You sweet little handful," he had said to her. And embraced her, trying to transform her into Susana San Juan. "A woman who is not of this world" (108). .
Another powerful evocation of Susana San Juan as an erotic fetish occurs in the novel's last scene. As Pedro Paramo sits by the road leading to the cemetery where she is buried, he stares off into the distance, transfixed by a vision of Susana suffused by an otherworldly light: You've been gone a long time, Susana. The light is the same now as it was then; not as red, but that same pale light veiled in the white gauze of the mist. Like now. And it was just this hour. I was sitting here by the door, watching it dawn, watching as you went away following the path to Heaven; there, where the sky was beginning to glow with light, leaving me, growing fainter and fainter among the shadows of this earth.As you went by, you brushed the branches of the Paradise tree beside the path, sweeping away its last leaves with your passing. (117-118).
An enormous moon was shining over the world. I stared at you till I was nearly blind. At the moonlight pouring over your face. I never grew tired of looking at you, at the vision you were.