In life, love and its many facets continue to change.
The diversity, power, and confusion brought about by love are forever subjected to modification. In contrast, death, with all its mystery and strength, is one of the things that are unvarying in this world next to change. Simply put, as love is always changing, death is entirely constant. To better understand the many manifestations of love and death, it is worthwhile to analyze the story Death Constant Beyond Love by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.The role and important implications of the said story are depicted in human's powerlessness when dealing with two of the most significant phases of life. The story stresses that in the face of love and death, a person either becomes alone and powerless or dependent.
Death Constant Beyond Love: An Overview The 1970 story written by Marquez aggressively discusses how corruption, politics, and poverty played a part in the life of the protagonist, Senator Onesimo Sanchez. He found the woman of his life six months and eleven days left before his death.The Senator, typical of a corrupted official who receives bribes, fills up the emptiness in his life by loving a village girl named Laura Farina. However, the story ends with Onesimo passing away without being loved back by the love of his life. When faced by his imminent death, the Senator accepts it unmoved. However, when he meets and gets intrigued by the beauty of Laura, the compelling money-hungry Senator lightens up his boring life with the illusion of being loved by the woman.
However, Sanchez's sensual and affectionate love for Laura is evidently just a fantasy because he remains to be alone and isolated until his death.The pretentious love story between the Senator and Laura starts when he was surprisingly captured by the woman's beauty. This is unusual for a man such as Sanchez. Thus, he takes the instant attraction as a signal of a change in his boring life. Even when obviously told by Laura of her real intention when she said: “I'm not asking for much, Senator, just a donkey to haul water from Hanged Man's Well,” (467) Sanchez nonetheless continues to pursue the woman and becomes oblivious of his apparent erotic arousal.Death Constant Beyond Love” is not only a vivid narrative of a man's greed and pretensions, but also an efficient representation of how a dying man made use of his artificial qualities to easily and unmindfully accept his death.
To his advantage, he utilized his love and feeling of lust towards Laura which also made it easier for his weakened physical condition and state of mind to create a reality out of illusion. Sanchez lived with the idea that Laura did not actually love him or want to stay with him, causing his death to become less dreadful.Unfortunately, by satisfying his only weakness, which is his love for Laura, it causes him to be more isolated as death starts to reclaim his life. Therefore, in the story, Sanchez was definitely no hero for the reason that he was unable to fill up the void both in his career and personal life. Rather, with too much anger bottled in his heart, he cried as he was losing his remaining life. Sanchez's character screams of an intense power or influence, yet is silently fighting for loneliness or boredom (Marquez 471).
Summing up, the story is not all about power and money but of a man, who when told of his death, created an illusion of love—a man who pretended hating someone by his side but sought for the love of his love when the time came that he closed his eyes. This made the action of Sanchez understandable and acceptable because his erotic obsession for Laura that eventually turned into true love. Thus, this might be the only reason that comforts him until death came to him. All of these were clearly shown in the story.
Marquez's writing style A closer style and textual analysis of the said Marquez's story disclosed his apparent utilization of the method of magical realism. This is noticeable in how Marquez hinted potential narratives beyond what he is actually narrating. This is aside from his evident ability to set a mood and make his readers understand deeply the characters of the Senator and Laura. This can be demonstrated in the following: ..
. jeeps of the retinue, the ministerial automobile, the color of strawberry soda, arrived.Senator Onesimo Sanchez was placid and weatherless inside the air- conditioned car but as soon as he opened the door he was shaken by a gust of fire and his shirt of pure silk was soaked in a kind of light-colored soup and he felt many years older and more alone than ever. (464) Marquez's use of the word “weatherless” can simply suggests calmness but it is actually a feeling of serenity that is nearly artificial. In fact, the said term can actually be only attributed to the air-conditioning system inside the Senator's car.
However, because of Marquez's magical realism style, the feeling of “weatherlessness,” also implies that the Senator, due to his illusions, as just unmoved by the displeasing and humid weather outside his vehicle. Moreover, the use of the phrases “gust of fire” can also be evaluated simply as warm air while the utilization of the word “fire” was to intentionally and assertively affect his readers' awareness. These terminologies are inevitable depictions of Sanchez's illusions that were expressed through the supernatural writing style of Marquez.These words and the further use of other phrases such as “shirt of pure silk” and “light-colored soup” unconsciously revealed the apparent existence of the state of illusion which is apparent to both the writer and his character (464).
Senator Sanchez and his boring routine Death Constant Beyond Love is a story with a lot of potential focal points. The story's main premise is that the constant quality and existence of death overcomes even the greatest degree of love.This is simply because the latter is subjected to change and that it is death that made even one man's most illusionary affection to the girl of his life, being altered. It is also because of Sanchez's illusionary love that made him include the coming of death as part of his boring routine life.
In fact, even in the face of death, the Senator pulled through with a reelection and carried on with his usual life. Sanchez was too controlled by his boring routine that even the last point in his life such as his death actually did not alter his daily living and his intention to win the heart of Laura.This is a manifestation of someone who is too bored that even death became a part of a routine. This is basically because the Senator has long been dead inside that made him feel that there is no need to change his life despite facing death.
However, with Sanchez finally accepting the idea of death and just going for a last fling with Laura, the ending of the story, ultimately showed awakening on the part of the Senator with him realizing that concealed beneath his routine is his desire to have lived a meaningful life.Recognizing the constant quality of his death and at the same time realizing that his love for Laura will be changed, Sanchez just decided to live his life to the fullest. Conclusion The said story served as a clear and moving explanation, not only to the fictional life of Senator Sanchez but to the whole humankind as well, that death will definitely and inevitably come its way. It also showed that beyond love, death is a human condition that needs to be expected as it is the one that will remain even love has ceased to exist.
