57 pages • 1 hour read
Gabriel García MárquezA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.”
This passage appears early in the novel, revealing Urbino’s philosophy on death and his approach to caring for people at the end of their lives from the perspective of a medical doctor. Ironically, this thought occurs to Urbino on the day of his own death—death is a moment he fears, and fortunately for Urbino, he feels no pain when the times comes.
“Neither could have said if their mutual dependence was based on love or convenience, but they had never asked the question with their hands on their hearts because both had always preferred not to know the answer.”
This passage describes the love of Fermina Daza and Juvenal Urbino after decades of marriage. Neither Fermina nor Urbino are entirely sure if love can explain their continued marriage, particularly in old age; they are both afraid to acknowledge that they were never in love in the first place and that they just sought marriage as a form of stability. This fear reveals the significance of true passion and genuine love to both Fermina and Urbino and foreshadows Fermina’s eventual return to Florentino Ariza.
“The incident, of course, gave them the opportunity to evoke many other trivial quarrels from many other dim and turbulent dawns. Resentments stirred up other resentments, reopened old scars, turned them into fresh wounds, and both were dismayed at the desolating proof that in so many years of conjugal battling they had done little more than nurture their rancor.”
A minor argument early in their marriage gives Fermina Daza and Urbino the opportunity to realize that, in their marriage, they hold onto years of unspoken pain and resentment. After a minor disagreement over soap, the realization of so much latent pain surprises them both; they both thought they were in love, but the conflict forces to them to view their relationship honestly, with all of its flaws and dysfunction.
By Gabriel García Márquez
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
Gabriel García Márquez
Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Gabriel García Márquez
Death Constant Beyond Love
Gabriel García Márquez
Eyes of a Blue Dog
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In Evil Hour
Gabriel García Márquez
Innocent Erendira
Gabriel García Márquez
Leaf Storm
Gabriel García Márquez
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Gabriel García Márquez
News of a Kidnapping
Gabriel García Márquez
No One Writes To The Colonel
Gabriel García Márquez
Of Love And Other Demons
Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez
One Of These Days
Gabriel García Márquez
Strange Pilgrims
Gabriel García Márquez
The Autumn of the Patriarch
Gabriel García Márquez, Transl. Gregory Rabassa
The General in His Labyrinth
Gabriel García Márquez
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
Gabriel García Márquez
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
Gabriel García Márquez