Kelsie Mathews
12/6//14
Book Report—No One Writes to the Colonel
The Book I chose to read for this report was “No One Writes to the Colonel” by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This book takes place in Latin America. It is never specified where
exactly, but you can at least tell the region of it because of the cultural clues. This book
contains the main story “No One Writes to the Colonel”, and then afterwards goes through a
series of short stories, labeled under the book title, and including “Big Mamas Funeral”.
Most of these stories don’t have anything in common with each other, except the place
being described.
The story ‘No One Writes to the Colonel” is the story of a colonel retired since a war
he was forced to fight in fifteen years ago. The whole story is basically a description of him
and his asthmatic wife, dealing with the immense poverty the have found themselves in.
Their son was killed a few months previous during a “cock fight”. This idea of “cock
fighting” is prevalent throughout the rest of the story, because the colonel owns a prize
fighting rooster, that he is sure will win the fight when it comes up in a few months and
then they will win “the pot” of money, and be rich. This rooster, and a letter he has been
waiting for, for 15 years are what he hinges his whole hopes on getting out of poverty. That
letter is his war pension the government promised him right after the war. It’s pretty easy
to tell reading this that it’s never coming.
The other stories are about a variety of different characters from mourning mothers,
to self-made dentists; from thieves to cage makers; from the poorest of the poor, to the
richest snobs in town. These stories do a great job of showing the variety of lives people
live even in the same region (maybe even the same town).
Some of the issues faced commonly by the characters involve climate. What I gather
from most of the stories is that it rains a lot in the winter, especially October. The rainy
season is not a fun time for many of the people, especially the colonel, who aggravates over
“the flora and fauna” in his stomach, during this season of time. From what I was able to
gather, this issue is parasites and different things that are affecting him poorly intestinally.
Other climate related issues, are the intense heat, which is most potent in the
winter. But this heat, I believe, is the reason that most of the population sleeps in
hammocks. Of course another reason could also be that hammocks are all they can afford,
but even the rich man in one of the stories it says died in his hammock instead of his bed.
The intense heat and humidity, as well as the tropical/sub-tropical climate are what make
the area of key place for bugs and insects including mosquitos to flourish. The book
describes quite often people sleeping inside of mosquito netting.
Going along with climate a little bit, it occurred to me as I was reading that there is a
reason for the cultural practice of having a siesta in the middle of the day. I realized that the
reason they started doing that is because it was so hot! They sleep during the hottest part
of the day to conserve their energy, and rest from the sapping heat of the sun. Then they go
back to work and about their business when it get’s a little cooler. I also found it interesting
that a siesta is so ingrained in the culture that everyone practices it, and the whole town
shuts down during that time because of it. I would say that the siesta definitely developed
because of the tyranny of geography.
One thing that really impressed me as I was reading this was the overall diversity of
the region. One of the main hints that the region in the story was Latin America was the
great ethnic diversity that was described. Some people were more indigenous others more
Spanish. Some were described with very light skin others with very dark skin. There was
also the mention several times of Syrians, Negros, and Turks all living in town. The Syrians
were mostly described as shop owners and sellers of things, and the Turks described as
people wealthy enough to buy stuff. The Negro population came up several times
throughout the book, sometimes they were just people going about their business, and
sometimes they were getting shafted and punished for crimes they didn’t commit. You
could tell though that they were a very significant integrated part of the population. This
factor of the book, does well to help you see the immense colonization and diversity that
came to the region.
It was obvious in the story that there were only a few people of the population who
were wealthy, the rest were very poor. The book hinted several times that the reason most
of the wealthy were wealthy was because they had some kind of “in” with the government.
The idea of corrupt government, was never stated outright, but hinted to throughout the
book. At one part in the book it describes a self-made dentist being made to pull out one of
the mayors wisdom teeth (he made it as painful as possible). With some of the things the
dentist says you can tell he knows that the mayor is a corrupt government official. Before
the mayor leaves he asks, “Should I charge the mayor or the town?” The mayor responds
with “isn’t it the same thing?” This made it clear to me the reason why the people in
government seemed to have all the wealth that the other people didn’t have.
Throughout the book it also tells about military men running the town, and curfews
and crime. People being shot down, sons and husbands being killed for seemingly no huge
reason at all also seemed to be a big thing. I don’t know if you would say that this is due to
an accident of history, a pattern established by past wars or colonizers or what, but I
reckon it’s possible. Many things described in this book really revealed the harsh
conditions most of the population was living in.
I think that this region was affected by both accidents of history, and the tyranny of
geography. I would say that two of the main culprits in that are, colonizers and climate.
This book really described well the details of living in that region, and it was definitely a
contrast from what we are used to here. Some of the biggest conflicts seemed to come from
politics and poverty. What an interesting region to explore!