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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Triumph of Hope, Oct 28 2003
Marquez has done it again, to weave a story of pathos and vividness which, even a gifted painter would find it difficult to portray. Set in a small Mexican town, the world of the Colonel and his wife along with the memories of his lost son and his parting rooster, become a symbol of defiance, a triumph of human spirit amidst the ruin and the debris that has come to haunt the Colonel in all possible forms.A pension that never comes, an asthma of his wife that never cures and a life that does not have enough food, confront the world of the exploiter.The memories of the Colonel's dead son and his rooster become the living example of bravery which may have deserted many hardened Colonels. This bravery unfolds itself as the Colonel defies everything in life, even the approaching depriviation and death, as the Col. zealously protects his honours and values. The sale of his rooster, possibly his only option for continuance of his life, is heroically opposed, despite a clear possibility of stark and naked death knocking at his door. In thus defying death the Col.has sought to immortalize his life and possibly all that life stands for - hope.A million such examples abound. What is brilliant is that the pathos of a lonely life, devastated by a crumbling world, and the undaunting spirit of a man fighting against everything from insensitivity to disease has been so movingly portrayed in the novella. Beneath this brilliant portrayal of human pathos lies a subtext that is deeply political and social. Politics of the country and its victims are most tellingly described through the Col. and his travails. Marquez is a writer who is a dreamer and an activist too. In his Col.who is both the hero and the anti-hero, Marquez has punched politics and sufferings in a brilliantly conceived character and has invested him with a realism that transcends nations and nationalities and speaks a language which is moving and absorbing.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A low-key study of old age., Sep 13 2001
Although there are a few minor events in Marquez's muted novella - a funeral, a trip to the casino, the arrival of a circus, a cockfight trial - the story is more concerned with the mundane fact of the colonel's repetitive everyday existence, his domestic rituals, walks, conversations, his waiting for the official letter confirming his pension that never comes. Details about the region's political situation and history filter through gradually, and despite a shortage of exterior detail, there is some local colour - the postmaster drinking pink froth as he makes his way through harbour stalls to meet the launch; the priest who gives movie censorship details by bell-ringing, spying on the cinema to note the disobedient. 'No-one writes to the colonel' is a portrait of old age, that period when physical decay conflicts with still-alert mental pride; the dependence on others with the unreliability of family, friends or the State; increasing poverty with forlorn attempts at gentility; the dreadful trauma of outliving your children; the perhaps worse fate of seeing your ideals and efforts fail, the world constituted in someone else's image. Your pleasure in this story will probably depend on how you take the colonel, from whose point of view it is almost entirely narrated - he has no interior life, there are no accounts of his feelings or opinions beyond what he says to others, so revelation of his character must be gleaned through movement and the things he notices. The focus on mundane objects, conversations and rituals takes on a spiritual force, but can come close to sentimentality as Marquez over-eggs the colonel's dignity; although it is just as easy to see the hero as a kind of moral monster in the way he treats his wife so that he can uphold his dubious honour. 'Colonel' is written in that Hemingway-esque style which is always called 'deceptively simple': there are few of the heart-quickening flourishes that made Marquez's masterpiece '100 Years of solitude' so magical - a brilliant funeral scene where the wilting Colonel is addressed by the corpse; a crisp December morning in which the privy livitates, if only for a milimetre.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Despair Continues With Phantasmic Hope !, Mar 17 2000
Gabo's fatalism,meloncholy and agony continues in this Chef d'oeuvre making the reader believe that life is Despair as Kafka or Samuel Beckett experienced it.It's about a Colonel who had fought against the government for liberty, rights and freedom ..But after the Truce , the colonel still awaits his mail(pension).The mail and the Rooster are the only hope which are Keeping him alive with his wife..Full of Compassion , sympathy and sufferings .. A must read. If El Dorado ever existed in South America ,then Macondo- the oppsite- also exists there.
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