At the
beginning of the book, Garcia Marquez
tells us how it’s going to end;
nevertheless, this fact is forgotten as you start reading the first paragraphs,
even more so, it’s not even important anymore because the plot is more
captivating than the aforementioned ending. After all,
death is just a
necessary part of life but, how do we get to it? Is death fair? Does it come
when destiny tells it to? Is there an invisible
hand that could bend this
fate?
Or, is that same hand the one that writes said fate?
Somehow as
you read on, you start feeling the
character’s death as something inevitable,
but you reach the ending with a
sense of impotence and hopelessness, to the
point of blaming the author for not saving the character with a stylish ruse.
What good is magical realism if you cannot straighten what’s crooked? The
reader keeps waiting until the end to see if there is an ounce of mercy in the
author to prevent the death predicted in the title of the book which is so
unfair and unjustified.
The book
gives you a sense of shame. Are we, are all
human beings so incapable of
reflecting upon things and so caught up in this society in which we live in
that it controls us? We desire a change in human mentality, one which focuses
on true human values based on genuine feelings instead of empty prejudices and
acceptable social constraints, such as the ones Garcia Marquez so masterfully
depicts in the hours prior to the foretold death.
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