43 pages • 1 hour read
Gabriel García Márquez, Transl. Gregory RabassaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The narrator opens again on the mysterious body. Remembering a memoir written by Ambassador Palmerston, now banned, the narrator describes the advanced age of the General: so old that he’d lost hearing and with a house in utter decay and disarray, covered in animal feces and paper. The narrator then compares this image of decrepitude to the many phases of the general during his regime; from bantering with the townspeople one on one to changing the time of day at will; moving from a believer in omens and dreams to a murderer who kills all fortune tellers and smashes incantations that might bring upon his death, believing that he’ll evade death and be “master” of power.
In one brutish display, the narrator (who becomes the woman whom the General pursues) recounts a time when the General enters the home of a newly wedded couple, rapes Francisca Linero, and murders her husband Poncio Daz to get rid of someone who would have been “a mortal enemy for the rest of his life” (91). These instances aren’t enough to remedy the General’s fear, however. He wasn’t powerful enough to see beyond Manuela’s trick and is still afraid to die—even when he’s already been told of the manner of his death.
By these authors
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Challenging Authority
View Collection
Hispanic & Latinx American Literature
View Collection
Historical Fiction
View Collection
Magical Realism
View Collection
Mortality & Death
View Collection
Nobel Laureates in Literature
View Collection
Power
View Collection
Spanish Literature
View Collection