Karthik 161

CHAPTER - V

A Universal Story
(No One Writes to the Colonel)

No one writes to the Colonel is one of the finest short stories written

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It tells the story of the nameless colonel, an

aging war hero who has spent the last 60 years waiting for a pension check

from the government while he and his wife struggle against poverty and

political oppression in their small town. Though the text is less than 100

pages in length, it is a penetrating study of the human psyche in an absurd

and unjust world. It is a universal story of the good man beset by

undeserved misfortune. The novel is also a telling commentary on 20 th

century Latin American history revealed through a combination of realist

detail, narrative flashbacks, and rich symbolism.

No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories consists of one

novella, which is the title story, and eight other ones, which are dense with

the insignificant lives of people living in a South American village. The

unnamed villagers, each portrayed separately among the stories, are

portrayed as despondent people who could either be hanging on to hope or

resigned to utter hopelessness. After every story, the mood seems to get

bleaker, but the compassionate writing of Garcia Marquez makes the

reader go until the end.

 Karthik 162

No One Writes to the Colonel is a deeply moving adaptation of

Garcia Marquez‟s finest works. This tale is of an old couple‟s painful

memories and false hopes. In the title story, the colonel patiently waits for

his pension for a decade and a half. He keeps visiting the post office for

any letter from the government. They have nothing; they even pretend to

cook by boiling stones dupe the neighbors in finding out that they do not

have anything to eat. The story line was inspired from Garcia Marquez‟s

grandfather, a colonel who also never received any pension. It was also

boldly published shortly after the civil war in Colombia between the 1940s

and 1950s. The political turmoil going on in the country is reflected in this

collection. Fragments of a corrupt government are depicted on the pages.

In the last story, „Big Mama‟s Funeral‟, people clean up the garbage off

the streets right after Big Mama, an absolute burial power. This collection

will remind people to keep sweeping away any trash on the streets.

Through this short story, Marquez wants to explore the impact of

Historicism by elevating the conditions of the society at the time of 1956.

The story is set during the time of la violence in Colombia. Characters live

under various unreasonable situations like curfew, press censorship, and

underground newspapers.

The novel examines the effect of la violence in Colombia. Garcia

Marquez‟s novel, Evil Hour is notable for its portrayal of la violencia with
 Karthik 163

its "fragmented portrayal of social disintegration provoked by la violencia.

La violence has been focused on many works of fiction. Many critics have

pointed out Evil Hour and No One Writes to the Colonel is in some

respects represents as a single novel. But both of them had the same

anonymous pueblo, as their setting and characters. Although García

Marquez does portray the corrupt nature and the injustices of times like la

violence, he refuses to use his work as a platform for political propaganda.

For him, the duty of the revolutionary writer is to write well, and the ideal

novel is one that moves its reader by its political and social content, and, at

the same time, by its power to penetrate reality and expose its other side.

The brutal war between Conservatives and the Liberals in 1960‟s in

Colombia is the cause for the death of many Colombians.

The novel originated in Paris as an episode with Garcia Marquez‟s

flawed full- length novel, Evil hour. The materials took on life of their own

and became the author‟s first mature and realistic stories in big mama

funeral. At the same time the length allows for a larger and fuller town

portrait, and a more exhausted treatment of the narrative‟s three interlinked

subjects: fighting cook, military dictatorship, and the old couple‟s solitude

and hunger.

Often labeled „rather than a Novella‟ No One Writes to the Colonel

is remarkable for its formal and stylistic economy, which contrasts with the
 Karthik 164

structural contrivance of its predecessor. The book nevertheless owes a lot

to Leaf Storm, the basic narrative ingredients of which it reprises and takes

in new directions. The narrative situation described in the novel is rooted

in a small provincial town in northern Colombia at a precise moment in

contemporary history (the end of 1956). Retrospective reference is made to

events that had taken place in the national arena a full half- century ago,

the legacy of which weighs heavily on the community. Their moral and

existential dilemmas provide the main source of narrative interest from the

beginning to the end of humanistic concerns like justice, love, dignity,

hope and the refusal of despair.

They are the eponymous and anonymous colonel and his wife, a

septuagenarian couple of survivors, who have been waiting for over half a

century for the state to pay the colonel the pension that is his due after the

fighting, on the losing side, in a civil war (the War of Thousand Days).

The preposterous amount of time that the colonel has been waiting for a

letter from the authorities indicates the absurdity of his situation. It also

bears witness to a remarkable spirit of endurance and commendable lack of

cynicism, conveyed in the early description of the colonel‟s „attitude of

confidence and innocent expectation,‟ maintained over the period of ten

weeks, is covered in the novel.

 Karthik 165

Garcia Marquez discusses the political climate of one man, the

Colonel, who after fighting to create the government in power is being

controlled by the bureaucracy. A corrupt government can ruin a man, sap

his will, and drives him mindless with hunger; although times are hard the

Colonel keeps his dignity and pride.

The novel is about the endless frustration of the individual facing

authorities and hoping they would do something, but they remain the same

mysterious system that one cannot do anything about, but simply accept

that the terms are never clear or explicit. The colonel does the same. He

knows he fought in the war, he knows he submitted all the documents and

now it is only up to the state to find his file and grant his rights. Money is

important indeed, but the whole issue of getting that letter implies more

than that. It is about the colonel´s past, his sacrifices, putting his life into

danger for a cause that he believed in and fought for. It is a matter of pride.

He needs his country to recognize this officially and prove him that what

he did for his people was worthwhile. But the letter still does not come.

Every Friday is a new opportunity for him, so he goes to the post

office waiting to see whether there will finally be something dropped into

his mailbox. The colonel will again return home, to his asthmatic wife to

tell her that if it was not meant to be on that day, then it might be next

Friday. Next Friday will be very likely to be the lucky one, because after
 Karthik 166

having waited for so many years now the day when the letter comes is

definitely closer.

The novel incorporates and is sustained by a real and productive

ambiguity. On one hand, the colonel, his wife and countless other citizens

suffer hardship, loss and repression, and endure a political and nature

climate that exacts a heavy mental and physical toll. In Biblical terms that

are echoed in the texts itself, they live in a fallen world without prospect of

justice or redemption. On the other hand, the family and most of the

citizens (expecting the unscrupulous capitalist Don Sabas, the policeman

who shot Augustin (son of Colonel) and other members of the security

forces) feed off the will and example of Augustin, who caters to their

spiritual and political hunger. In the midst of hardship, people find an inner

strength that enables them to resist and survive. In Biblical terms, they

aspire to transcend and believe in the resurrection. This profound

ambiguity provides a possible explanation for the abiding appeal of the

novella, which speaks in equal measure about life and death, corruption

and transcendence, as forces that frame and define the very essence of the

human condition.

The story provides a masterful, bittersweet portrait of the hungry

and lonely couple, Colonel and his wife presumably in the same age. Their

son, murdered by the military nine months earlier, had been their sole
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support- hence her wistful remark, “we are the orphans of our son” (13).

With the colonel‟s copartisans, all either exiled or dead (some violently),

little conveyed on both his isolation- the original actually signifies “the

colonel has nobody to write him”- and his empty pockets. Of course the

item of the mail most awaited by the colonel is the fabled notice of a

government pension, five decades overdue and now quite urgent. On four

different Fridays one can see him heading down with high expectations to

the river port or the post office, only to have his hopes dashed by a terse

“Nothing for the colonel” (25). His only consolations are the friendly

camaraderie and loans of newspapers from the wise, kindhearted doctor,

who furnishes his medical treatments on credit.

As he has done in Leaf Strom, Garcia Marquez tried to recreate its

mystique in No One Writes to the Colonel, but felt that he had failed again.

The town he created in his novella had no name. He put the manuscript

away, considering it unworthy of the publication.

Despite his personal frustration with the manuscripts, one can trace

the development of Garcia Marquez‟s style from Leaf Storm to No One

Writes to the Colonel. Although Leaf Storm was deeply influenced by

William Faulkner, Faulkner‟s influence had disappeared, giving way to

that of another writer, Ernest Hemingway, a famous American writer and

adventurer, and author of The Sun Also and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
 Karthik 168

Hemingway was known for his simple, straightforward, but deeply

powerful writing style, which also defines Garcia Marquez‟s No One

Writes to the Colonel.

In 1961, when the novel was first published, the story was seen in

this light, that it was read on its most unmistakable level. More recently,

critics such as Peter Earle and Garciela Maturo have duly noted the

complex network of symbols which sustain the main theme of Garcia

Marquez‟s novella, recognizing, how this author always delivers more and

mere appearances. Earle notes that at least three features are instrumental

to the readers understanding of the novel: 1) the novella has a musical

structure programmed on the basis of two voices, “discouragement and

illusion” 2) there is a dialectic between desire and death housed within the

persona of the protagonist and 3) the rooster, prize possession of the

colonels slaughtered son, must be seen as „an allegory of vigilance and

resurrection. Maturo‟s concerns are of a more religious nature: she views

the chronological development in the light of the Christian liturgical

calendar. The action, starting around the time of October equinox,

concludes at Christmas.

Robin W. FIddian uncovers some important aspects of the novel of

caring for one‟s neighbor and the justice of poverty are given form. Two of

the three Christian elements he finds in the novel are of interest for the
 Karthik 169

discussion: the idea of a corrupt and fallen world and the messiah figure

(389). The idea that “the world is corrupted, “enunciated early on in NO

One Writes to the Colonel (13), is associated with the hopeless waiting for

the “Messaiah” (justice in the colonel‟s particular case and overall

collective and individual justice). Fiddian believes that the subsequent

reference to the civil war fought in Macondo by Colonel Aureliano

Buendia suggests that the death of the Liberals cause the War of a

Thousand Days reenacted the fall of the world.

It is perhaps wiser to view the Colonel in the light of other texts by

the author, which evince a strong and recurrent interest in people‟s

mindsets, including their belief system, myths and superstitions. Viewed in

this light, the motifs of the Messiah and martyrdom, death and

resurrection, come across as a credible vehicle for political message of

resistance, hope and renewal: exactly those impulses and aspiration that

stir in the minds of the citizens of the town (a town which is not

Mancondo) on the day that it welcomes the first circus to visit in ten years.

The author‟s refusal to cancel out opposing terms to resolve tension,

persists throughout the novel.

In suggestive interpretations of bodily motifs in No One Writes to

the Colonel, Rene Prieto has viewed the colonel‟s expletive as providing a

fitting climax to a discourse, referring throughout to problems with

 Karthik 170

digestion and execrating. Beginning with the colonels‟ sensation that he

has „fungus and poisons lilies taking root in his gut‟, the narrative pays

attention to his frequent bouts of intestinal discomfort and identifies the

body as the locus of suffering. In addition to this, the body is where the

animality of mankind resides, all which marks the colonel out as

organically susceptible and in the same plane as the cock and other animals

that are fore grounded in the novel. At the same time, his defiant, one-

word answer to his wife‟s desperate question, „And meanwhile what do we

eat?‟ (73) is loaded with moral significance.

On earlier occasions, he had taken exception to Alfonso‟s use of the

word shit on the grounds that it was unnecessary swearing. His own

recourse to the very same word at the close is a sign of frustration and of

the transgressions of a moral and linguistic barrier. Yet, the narrative

makes it clear that there is something undeniably heroic about the

colonel‟s attitude and sensibility at what is a make-or-break moment in his

life. Describing him as feeling pure, explicit, invincible at the moment

when he replied, it stresses the undefined state of his conscience,

determined to persevere and survive. The expletive that he utters at the end

of the story is therefore expressive of both physiological and moral

concerns, and had to be understood with reference to both categories.

 Karthik 171

In the novel, writing (the government letter) is also a displaced,

absent object that must be compensated by a substitute; the rooster. The

textual economy is based on sign-exchange and substitution, which differs

from the monetary creation of exchange-value. The textual economy can

therefore better be conceived in terms of barter, a process in which only

use-values are exchanged. The absent letter is replaced both symbolically

and relatively by the rooster, since all signs converge on it, transforming it

into a veritable narrative commonplace. As compensation, the economy of

the rooster is from the character‟s point of view. Such compensatory

exchange takes place between the absent subject of the writing indicated in

the novel‟s title. The revolutionary mail replaces the illusionary

government pension.

The rooster‟s presence in the novel is both obsessive and symbolic.

It becomes the focus of the colonel‟s life. Its symbolism depicts the

absurdity of a reality that combines hope and despair. It is not an ordinary

bird; it is an inheritance from the colonel‟s son; it is a fighting cock and it

is the talk of the town. The rooster is the sole hope of the colonel, the

doctor, the children, and everybody, except for the women. The colonel‟s

wife finds it ugly. To her it looks like a freak: “his head is too tiny for his

feet” (127). The rooster is given human attributes. It seems to be aware of

the colonel‟s poverty and also of the townsfolk‟s near-delirious

 Karthik 172

expectations. The rooster is Agustin‟s inheritance to his family and his

friends. It is the in heritance of rebellion. In the end, the rooster belongs to

everybody. At first the rooster embodies hope, leading the colonel to

comment, “He‟s worth his weight in gold. He‟ll feed us for three

years”(46).

Corruption is one of the main themes in the novel. The colonel‟s

hope leads him to fight one more humiliating battle of having to wait for a

veteran‟s pension that never comes. Through the theme of corruption, the

novel also explores themes such as hope and despair, violence, the

injustices suffered by the townsfolk, the disparities of wealth among the

country‟s people, and the theme of solitude. Garcia Marquez has portrayed

the corruption and violence that Columbia has undergone for two

generations from the civil wars of the nineteenth century right through to

the twentieth century. The old colonel and his wife, and those who are in

power represent the older generation. Augustine and his friends represent

the younger generation.

The two final areas of the novel that requires comment are the first

concerns of the occasional intrusion of dreams and hallucinations into the

predominantly realist discourse of the narrative. Examples include the

colonel‟s disturbed perceptions at the dead musician‟s wake, and his

„noncha lant‟ admission to his wife that he had been talking in his sleep
 Karthik 173

with the duke of Marlborough. The narrative voice mimics that manner

when it reports that the colonel‟s wife seemed as if she had the power of

walking through the walls. But before twelve she had regained her bulk,

her human weight such materials briefly qualifies the impressions of

overall realist objectivity conveyed by Garcia Marquez.

The second matter is the author‟s deep concern with the theme and

fortunes of America or the Americas, vis- vis Europe and other geo-

political regions. A conversation between the doctor and the colonel

highlights the issues of knowledge and stereotyping of the other, which

Garcia Marquez addressed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at Oslo in

1987. For Jacques Gilard, this reference to current affairs signals not

merely an interest in global politics but a real identification with peoples

and nations of the emerging Third World. Already present in some of the

journalism of the late 1940s, the post colonial sensibility will pervade in

One Hundred Years of Solitude and other texts thereafter.

These readings bring forth the importance of the theme of renewal,

secondly, the fact that the story is a rite of passage during which the

colonel frees himself from the oppression and sense of discouragement. No

One Writes to the Colonel has the simple complexity of a gothic cathedral.

The structure is disciplined, almost sever, and labyrinthine if one speaks in

terms of the complex layering which spells out the message. Fortunately,
 Karthik 174

all labyrinths have a centre and the novel is no exception. Not surprisingly,

a direct path to it is suggested by Mario Vargas Llosa in his monograph on

Garcia Marquez, Historia be un deicidio. It underscores the importance of

the demons which appear in all works of fiction. Critics have concerned

themselves with the net result of Vargas Llosa‟s equation – the themes –

instead of directly tapping the wellspring. It is unquestionable that the

fighting cock, and the rain, and certain numbers are fundamental to the

development of this novel. They are pieces of the narrative puzzle but not,

as far as one can see, a central obsession from which the entire thematic

development emerges. And yet, such an obsession is present. Redundancy

and obviousness do much to camouflage it, but it no way detracts the facts

from the concern with functioning of matrix in No One Writes to the

Colonel.

The action of No one writes to the Colonel begins on a morning in

October and ends on a Sunday in December, late at night. The

protagonists are a 75 Year old man and his wife. He is a dreamer, an

inveterate optimist, a woman of a naturally hard character, hardened even

more by forty years of bitterness (101). They are unable to make ends

meet, waiting for over fifteen years for a war pension which the man longs

for the recognition of his service. They have no money left, no provisions

and no guarantee for the future. Their son, Agustin, was shot nine months
 Karthik 175

previous to the beginning of the action for distributing clandestine political

literature at the cockfights. His legacy to his parents is his fighting cock, a

sure winner at the fights scheduled for January. The problem is that,

having no resources, the couple will have to choose between feeding it and

feeding themselves.

The action begins simultaneously when the colonel takes the lid off

the coffee can and realizes that there was only one teaspoonful left. He

throws half of the boiling water down the drain and scrapes the inside of

the can with a knife, to get at the last coffee grounds mixed together with

rust from the can. This initial occupation with food and drink is only the

first of many in the story. Consuming it and discharging it, buying it

preparing it or refusing it, is in fact Theseus‟s thread to unraveling the

protagonist‟s knotted evolution and grasping the otherwise problematical

outcome of Garcia Marquez‟s novel.

This novel comprises not one single ingredient but rather a kinship

of contraries – food and excrement – with a narrative scheme in which the

supporting elements function in pairs (husband / wife; winter /summer,

assertive /submissive). The scatological fixation should surprise the reader

even less. The anal weapon is brandished through Garcia Marquez‟s

fiction from in Evil Hour to One Hundred Years of Solitude. After all,

carnival (and the carnival literature which these works epitomize so

 Karthik 176

precisely) is also, according to Bakhtin, a celebration of the forces of the

lower body, a mighty trust downward.

This thrust penetrates the novel from the first page, where the

protagonist is assailed by the invading sensation already alluded to, the

poisonous mushrooms and lilies growing in his bowels. This same curse

reappears thirteen times throughout the tale. As had been noted by critics

such as Geroges McMurray in his excellent study on Garcia Marquez,

however, McMurray‟s sense of propriety gets the better of his analysis

when it comes to investigating the colonel‟s aliment, which he identifies as

gastritis.

A close study of the matter is enough to ascertain that the colonel‟s

curse is quite different from McMurray‟s diagnosis after agonizing many

hours in the privy, swatting ice, feeling that the flora of his viscera was

rotting and falling in pieces. The hero painfully learns that all was really a

false alarm. Squatting on the platform of rough hewn boards, he anxiously

experiences the uneasiness of an urge frustrated. His trouble in other

words, is not an inflammation of the lining of the stomach as McMurray

would have us believe but rather, to put it bluntly, constipation an inability

to relive him. It is the inability which is resolved at the very beginning of

section „Seven‟ after the colonel feels swallowed and rejected by his son‟s

murderer. The physiological resolution in turn drains a thematic bottleneck

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and warrants the utterance of previously censured scatological material. To

his wife‟s last injunction, “Tell me what do we eat” the colonel

rebelliously answers, “Shit” (106), bringing together in this manner the

two poles of the symbolic matrix in an echo of Freud‟s succinct formula,

Excrement becomes aliment. It is at this point that one can grasp the

complexity of Garcia Marquez‟s conception.

From this theory, for example, one can observe that the oral phase is

a period of dependence, a phase during which the human infant is

incapable of accepting separation from the mother. The hero‟s desperation

in Garcia Marquez s scheme is haunted by a fixation with food. Twenty

instances of eating and drinking take place during the time the colonel

submits to his wife and is treated like a child.

The figure of the colonel is among Garcia Marquez‟s most

memorable and touching examples of human innocence: “an ex-soldier yet

gentle, timid, wide-eyed, dreamy; unable to counter the wiles of the tricker

Don Sabas yet himself blessed with reservoirs of self- irony and belief that

are all but wondrous; peaceable, yet ultimately stubborn enough to say

“no” to the sale of the rooster, and then end up pronouncing the most

unforgettable final line in all prose fiction” ( ). That closing noun is

particularly ironic, given his earlier- expressed aversion to obscenity, as

well as his excretory incapacities. His wife, similarly, is another for Gabo‟s
 Karthik 178

gallery of shrewd, strong- willed, loyal women; She cuts his hair, suggests

ways of securing money, and indeed rather treats the colonel like a child.

Only in the bitter quarrel between them in the last pages will the colonel

takes a firm stand and rebel. Notwithstanding this tense and electrified

finale, the novel gives the reader one of the fullest and most loving

portraits of conjugal life in modern literature since Joyce and Beckett.

The novel as a fictional narrative is most commonly identified by its

length. It is generally between that of a short story and that of a full-length

novel. Unlike Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel is not an

experimental work focused on form and technique. The plot unfolds in

straight, chronological order. This type of narrative is referred to as linear

narration. The novel is structured in seven discrete, unnumbered chapters.

The first three chapters of the novella pay particular attention to the

colonel lawyers to better appeal for his veteran‟s pension. To carry the

narrative through to its dramatic end, the story of the rooster is added as a

parallel narration in the present and as a symbol of hope for both the

colonel and the townsfolk. The seemingly unassuming and compact

narration of No One Writes to the Colonel requires a careful reading. A

superficial or hurried reading may leave readers with the idea the whole

story is trivial and nonsensical, or even superfluous, absurd, or totally

 Karthik 179

irrational. Such a reaction, unfortunately, perpetuates a stereotype that No

One Writes to the Colonel actually mocks in a most Ironical way.

The fable begins as the Colonel lives with his wife, who suffers

from asthma, in a house in very poor conditions. Every day in the morning

Colonel used to pour the hot water in the house, to rescue his wife from the

cold weather. One morning when the people held a funeral, for which the

Colonel is preparing, his wife thought about the dead man. Dead man was

born in 1922, exactly a month after their son, who was born on April 7th.

Colonel and his wife are living as Orphan parents. She continuously thinks

of the dead man. October is the horrible month for Burial because of the

weather. In the month of October, extreme sadness and even physical

discomfort occurred for the couple. Funeral is the special event for the

people in the town because of natural death in the town after a long period.

The funeral procession hadn‟t come out of church yet. In that crowd, one

of them saw the colonel. He asked Colonel to sit under the umbrella.

Colonel said thanks! But he didn‟t accept the invitation. Colonel directly

went to the house to convey his condolences to the mother of the dead

man. The crowd had pushed him to the front, as Don Saba, the god father

of his dead son silently told in his ears „careful colonel‟. He is the only

leader, who had escaped from the political harassment, though he

continued to live in the country. The colonel and his friend Saba walked
 Karthik 180

silently under the umbrella. They continuously talked about the situation in

their daily living society.

Marquez illustrated the deprived conditions of the colonel, without

apparent source of income, the only hope is the profit expected from

rooster fight that Colonel has been keeping his home for several months.

Colonel used to congregate with the companions of Augustin at the tailor

shop, who distributes the clandestine literature. Augustin (son of the

Colonel) was shot at the cock fight, when he is distributing the Clandestine

Literature. His wife worried about the lives of the people in the town

representing themselves as they were living rotten life, as well as the

orphan parents. Suddenly he remembered the mail on every Friday. The

doctor, which was also in the Office, provided the newspaper, that has

been banned. He received the packet of news papers. He put the pamphlets

of medical advertising on one side. Colonel looked anxiously at the post

man who read the names in an alphabetical order. He asked him whether

he got the letter from the Government. Colonel is eligible for the pension

for his service in the civil war. Postman says that he didn‟t receive the

letter. He is in Stigma condition and looked at the Doctor in a childish

manner and says to the Postman, “No One Writes to Me” ( ). They

returned silently. The doctor was concentrating on the news papers.

Colonel asked the doctor about the news in the paper. Doctor gave him few
 Karthik 181

news papers to the colonel. The Colonel‟s wife counted twelve bells. She

subordinate‟s the mosquito net and whispered, “The world is corrupted”.

(13) She said this in the context of father Angel who ranged the twelve

bells instead of seven bells for the censor movie classification. Movies are

very bad for everybody, because there is no morality in the film except

vulgarity.

George R. Murray in his argument says that, 1950‟s or 1956 are the

years of reference to the Suez crisis between October and December,

whereas Garcia Marquez parent‟s lived approximately for a decade during

the 1930‟s and 1940‟s. In the following discussions of Colonel and his

wife, it is revealed that for many years, every week, Colonel expects to

receive a letter for pension of veteran by Colombian civil war of the wars

of the thousand days, in which he fought as a Colonel when he was only 20

years old to attend. Finally he decides to change the lawyer. Sometime

later, the Colonel and his wife discuss a little about what he should do with

the little money that is left, convincing her to buy corn to feed the rooster.

Colonel went to meet the friends of his son Augustin companions. Alvaro,

Alfonso, and Herman, three tailors were involved in undercover political

activities.

When Agustin was killed, he left behind his champion fighting cock,

which is worth a significant sum of money. The colonel endures

 Karthik 182

innumerable humiliations in order not to have to sell the bird, which for

him and his son‟s friends becomes a symbol of dignity and resistance, as

well as a reminder of Agustin himself. The colonel‟s wife in need of

medical treatment, disagrees with him and repeatedly urges him to sell the

rooster. The colonel still resists till the end. He bets with his wife that he

will sell the clock for forty pesos. Colonel‟s wife lost her patience for the

unbalanced thoughts of the Colonel.

The storyline of the novel is simple and non-experimental in

technique. Its narrative exposes a corrupt town and its institutions. The

novel emphasizes the theme of the individual against the government,

along with the themes of war and solitude.

The novel is “about” the symbolic investment of the rooster, a

process which conflates the private and the public substitutes the missing

organic link between domestic and political orders, the state and the

individual. Colonel‟s wealth is the rooster, which is the only inheritance

left by his murdered son, besides the sewing machine whose sale is the

“orphaned” couple‟s only source of income for nine months. The animal is

originally asymbolic from an analytical perspective and therefore it

acquires a symbolic value when the colonel‟s son is caught distributing

clandestine literature during a cockfight. The rooster becomes an emblem

of the colonel‟s determination to continue the revolutionary struggle and

 Karthik 183

finally obtain his overdue compensation. The cock finally returns into a

communal symbol of resistance to the government‟s repression. His

apotheosized victory in a training session is an anticipation of definite

victory in the regional fights.

The colonel‟s wife is puzzled by the importance assigned to such an

ugly animal whose head is disproportionately small for his legs. Vargas

Llosa points out that Sabas too is an asymbolic reader, because he can only

think of the animal in commercial terms:

Don Sabas is not identified with the town, he does not feel

between him and the rest of the (socioeconomic) pyramid a

fateful and visceral union… On the other hand, symbols lack

meaning for Don Sabas. He is fundamentally a pragmatic

man… He does not understand those symbolic ties between a

man and a place, or between a man and an animal. That is

why he is so surprised by the relation between the colonel and

the rooster. (23)

The rooster then becomes a heterogeneous symbol and irreducible to

gold – the quintessential homogeneous measure of value whose aesthetic

properties. It is difficult to think of the animal as the equivalent of a noble

metal. The animal‟s symbolic heterogeneity and its substitutive

relationship to gold emphasize the problematic existence of two rival

 Karthik 184

economies within the same body politic. The economy based on the

“rooster standard” threatens to sell out to the dominant monetary economy;

in the end, however, no satisfactory price can be set. Money cannot

adequately measure the colonel‟s rooster, which is not a commodity and

consequently has no exchange-value. On the other hand, the rooster does

not have use-value. Its symbolic value is the product of a specifically

human and political work.

In this novel, Garcia Marquez displays his mastery of irony and

humor, the protagonist of which emerges as an absurd hero struggling

against impossible odds. He portrays solitude at its best in this most lyrical

novel. The novel is universally acknowledged as a masterpiece of short

fiction. It is perfect in its self-contained intensity, and its carefully

punctuated plot and its apt conclusion. Gerald Martin in The Cambridge

Introduction to Gabriel García Márquez comments:

It is almost impossible to separate its central themes of

waiting and hoping, weather and bodily functions (not least

excreting), politics and poverty, life and death, solitude and

solidarity, fate and destiny. The last paragraph, one of the

most perfect in all literature, seems to concentrate, focus and

then release virtually all of the themes and images marshaled

by the work as a whole. (Martin 40)