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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.
“No one loves us here.”
The General is keenly aware of the fickle balance between love and power. As the President of the Republic, he believes that his political mandate and the justification for his power is built on the love of the people. After uniting Gran Colombia, he believes the people love him. With his power waning, however, he feels this mandate evaporate. Without the love of the people, the General loses his justification for ruling.
“He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.”
The General is, first and foremost, a military man. To him, death is an "unavoidable professional hazard" (8). To the younger General, however, death was always associated with battle, fighting, and glory. As he approaches old age, he faces the prospect of fading from the world in a quiet way. He believes that dying alone in exile is pathetic, especially compared to the glorious, near-mythical death he envisioned in his youth.
“The time he has left will hardly be enough for him to reach his grave.”
After being toppled from political power, the General is sent into exile. The further he goes from his presidential palace and the further removed he is from power, the more he feels his time slipping away. Without the prospect of ruling Gran Colombia and freeing millions of people from colonial control, he has lost his reason to exist.
By Gabriel García Márquez
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
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Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold
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Death Constant Beyond Love
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Eyes of a Blue Dog
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In Evil Hour
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Innocent Erendira
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Leaf Storm
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Love in the Time of Cholera
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores
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News of a Kidnapping
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No One Writes To The Colonel
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Of Love And Other Demons
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
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One Of These Days
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Strange Pilgrims
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The Autumn of the Patriarch
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The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
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The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
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Colonialism & Postcolonialism
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Fate
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Hispanic & Latinx American Literature
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Magical Realism
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Mortality & Death
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Nobel Laureates in Literature
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Politics & Government
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Spanish Literature
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Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
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