Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"No one writes to the Colonel"

The Colonel opened the tin and found that there was no more than a teaspoon of coffee left. He took the pot off the fire, poured half of the water onto the dirt floor, and began scraping the jar, shaking the last grains of coffee mixed with rust flakes into the pot.

While the coffee was being brewed, the colonel sat near the stove, listening intently to himself. It seemed to him that his insides were growing with poisonous mushrooms and algae. It was an October morning. One of those that is difficult to survive even for such a person as a colonel, accustomed to the tedious passage of time. But how many Octobers he survived! For fifty-six years now - so much has passed since the Civil War - the colonel did nothing but wait. And this October was among the few things he had to wait for.

The colonel's wife, seeing him enter the bedroom with coffee, lifted the mosquito net. She had suffered an asthma attack that night and was now in a sleepy stupor. Still, she got up to take a cup.

“I already drank,” the Colonel lied. “There was still a whole tablespoon left.

At that moment, bells rang out. The Colonel remembered the funeral. While his wife was drinking coffee, he unhooked the hammock in which he slept, rolled it up and hid it behind the door.

“He was born in the year twenty-two,” the woman said, thinking of the dead man. Exactly one month after our son. April sixth.

She breathed heavily, raggedly, sipping her coffee in small sips between deep breaths. Her thin, brittle-boned body had long since lost its flexibility. Labored breathing did not allow her to raise her voice, and therefore all questions sounded like a statement. She finished her coffee. Thoughts about the dead man did not leave her.

"It's awful when you're buried in October, isn't it?" - she said.

But her husband did not pay attention to her words. He opened the window. October was already in charge in the yard. Looking at the juicy dense greenery, the traces of earthworms on the wet earth, the colonel again felt his wet malignancy with all his insides.

“Even my bones are damp,” he said.

“Winter,” the wife replied. “Since it started raining, I've been telling you to sleep with your socks on.

It was raining light, hard. The colonel would not mind wrapping himself in a woolen blanket and lying back in the hammock. But the cracked bronze of the bells persistently reminded of the funeral.

“Yes, October,” he whispered, moving away from the window. And only then he remembered the rooster tied to the leg of the bed. It was a fighting cock.

The Colonel carried the cup into the kitchen and wound up the wall clock in the carved wooden case in the hall. Unlike the bedroom, which was too cramped for an asthmatic, the hall was wide, with four wicker rocking chairs around a tableclothed table topped with a plaster cat. On the wall, opposite the clock, hung a picture of a woman in white tulle sitting in a boat, surrounded by roses and cupids.

When he finished winding the clock, it was twenty past seven. He carried the rooster into the kitchen, tied him up by the fire, changed the water in the bowl, poured in a handful of maize. Several children crawled through the hole in the hedge, sat around the rooster and stared silently at it.

“Stop looking,” said the Colonel. Roosters deteriorate if you stare at them for a long time.

The children didn't move. One of them played a fashionable song on the harmonica.

"We can't play today," said the Colonel. There is a dead person in the city.

The boy put the harmonica in his pocket, and the colonel went into the room to change for the funeral.

Due to an asthma attack, his wife did not iron his white suit, and the colonel had no choice but to put on a black cloth, which, after his marriage, he wore only in exceptional cases. He found with difficulty the suit wrapped in newspapers and sprinkled with mothballs at the bottom of the chest. The wife, stretched out on the bed, continued to think about the dead man.

“He must have already met Agustin by now,” she said. “If only I didn’t tell Agustin how hard it was for us after his death.

“They must be arguing about roosters there too,” suggested the colonel.

He found a huge old umbrella in the chest. His wife won him in a lottery held in favor of the party to which the colonel belonged. That evening they were at a play; the performance was in the open air, and it was not interrupted even because of the rain. The Colonel, his wife, and Agustin - he was then eight years old - took cover under an umbrella and sat out until the very end. Now Agustín is dead, and the moth has eaten the white satin lining of the umbrella.

Good day, Tatyana!

Now we will talk about the famous work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez "No one writes to the Colonel", which was published in 1961.

The main character of the story is a seventy-five-year-old colonel who, after the war, lost his son, who died for spreading revolutionary ideas, became completely impoverished, and completely lost his health. The only thing he has left is a rooster, which throughout the story he feeds and prepares for battles, hoping to get enough money for him to live on.

In order to live, the colonel and his wife do not hope for a pension, although every Friday the hero goes out to meet a ship with mail in the port in the hope of seeing a letter promising him a military pension.

An elderly couple sells their things over and over again: a sewing machine, a watch. They do not try to show a luxurious life and just be content with little, they make ends meet: "Now it was his turn to take care of the household - to make ends meet. Often had to clench his teeth and beg for credit in neighboring shops." Housekeeping is transformed from "economy" in its direct meaning into "economy", and at the country level. From time to time, the wife insists on selling the rooster, although she herself does not want it, because the rooster is the only thing left of their son and the only breadwinner in the family. The wife constantly accuses the colonel of his clumsiness and inability to prove and get his own: her constant asthma attacks do not prevent her from keeping an eye on the household and trying to provide the family with a minimum dinner, which often consists of maize (which they feed the rooster).

The image of poverty is not only the image of a single family suffering hardships, it is also the image of the whole of Colombia, tortured by upheavals, instability in politics and the economy. Absolute composure on the part of the ruling elite in relation to the social issue is plunging the entire country into hunger and persecution, and the "heroes" are left to live in hope. By analogy with other Latin American countries, Colombia was not bypassed by the dictatorial regime, and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953 - 1957) became dictator: in the context of La Violencia - an armed conflict in Colombia - he carried out a military coup and became president. He pursued a policy under the impression of the actions taking place at the same time in Brazil and Argentina. He began to persecute the liberal and conservative parties, banned the communist party, carried out punitive operations against pro-communist peasant areas, introduced severe media censorship.

The story not only reflects the hungry and impoverished life of Colombia, there is another side: powerful, powerful and rich. For example, such as the godfather of the colonel, who, during a time of distress, wanted to buy that same rooster from the colonel and his wife for nine hundred pesos, but the memory of the son is so strong that even for such a large amount they refuse to say goodbye to the rooster. Kum, although trying to help the colonel, does it reluctantly, constantly avoiding him, although he takes care of him, for example, when they both come to the funeral of a friend Augustine. This cohesion is also characteristic of the people of Latin America: by nature, people tend to defend themselves against external influences, whether it be a threat from another country or dictatorial power.

The way of life of the ruling elite, separated from the poor people, is reduced to one scene: when the funeral of a friend of Augustine is taking place, his body is carried over the police station, which was absolutely forbidden by the laws: “the mayor stood. He was in shorts and a flannel shirt, unshaven, with a swollen face. The musicians interrupted the funeral march - They say you can't carry the dead past the police barracks - But this is not a riot. - We're just burying a poor musician. The people who mattered in this system assigned such as the colonel the role of the dregs of society, who were not even allowed to carry the corpse of a "poor musician" past the police barracks. And the alcalde, unshaven, in shorts and a flannel shirt, which in itself already expresses his contempt for the poor, did not come out to look at the procession, but to show his indignation because of the "entertainment for the poor." The "sort" of people was determined by their position in the power structure, which is exactly what a dictatorship provides. And this statement cannot be attributed to a particular city or street - it is common both for the country and for the world as a whole.

The inability to change the situation and fatigue from all unsuccessful attempts to change something leads to the fact that in the finale the colonel no longer tries to be as optimistic as throughout the story: he comprehended the whole truth about the reality that surrounds him: his son died, his wife is serious sick, his country doesn't need him. This is not a story about a person. This is a story about a country that boils and roars in a cauldron that it has brewed in itself.

Best regards, Julia.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "Nobody Writes to the Colonel" was copied by him many times. The author tried to briefly and concisely reflect the most important thing, and as a result he succeeded. This is one of the early works of the writer, in which one can already see the theme of loneliness that excites him. This is a book about injustice, about honor and perseverance, about endless hope and the courage to accept suffering. It is largely about politics, about how some have everything, forgetting about others, even if they owe this to their other position.

The language of the book seems dry and somewhat detached, but it is he who makes you experience a range of different emotions. It is this detachment that causes a feeling of loneliness and hopelessness, which hurts to the core. Every dry and harsh word brings pain.

The place of events is a small town in Colombia. Here lives a retired colonel, a veteran of the war, already in retirement age. His son was killed for distributing political leaflets. Together with his wife, they live on the outskirts of the city in an old house. They are practically begging, barely making ends meet, not knowing what they will eat tomorrow. And for many years now, the colonel has been going to the same place every week and hopefully asking the postman if he had received a letter about the appointment of a pension. But no one writes to him ...

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- Colombian writer, journalist, publisher, politician. winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His books are written in the style of "magical realism". The plots of the works reflect the not simple life of Latin America. Avant-garde images mixed with reality and mythology.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez "No one writes to the Colonel" summary

The novel reflects a period in the history of Colombia called "the time of violence". The dictatorship is trying to keep power by terror. The writer shows the consequences of this time for those who survived. The novel takes place in an unnamed town during curfew.

The atmosphere is saturated with fear, disunity. The revolutionary underground is again active. Discontent grows, leaflets appear. The main characters are an unnamed retired colonel and his fighting cock.

The colonel was a participant in the thousand-day war, after which, according to the concluded agreement, he was guaranteed a lifetime pension. He lives on the outskirts of the city with his wife. The only son was killed for distributing leaflets. Living out his years, in need, the colonel waits in vain for a pension, while maintaining his dignity. But... Nobody writes to the Colonel.

He keeps in touch with his son's friends who continue to engage in underground activities. On winter evenings, he reminisces about his fighting youth. The house is mortgaged, there is no money for living. The last hope is the fighting cock. He feeds the rooster in anticipation of the start of the fighting. With them, he hopes to win some money. After all, training fights have already begun and his rooster has no equal.

Nobody Writes to the Colonel

When you read a book, you live life with its characters. Written brightly and deeply. At first, the author's style is hard to perceive. After reading a few pages, the book pulls you in and doesn't let go.

In the book, different, at first glance, sides of human relations coexist:

1. Despair and fear.
2. Resilience and hope.

The sparkling humor of the characters, colorful descriptions of scenes and dialogues entwine you with tenacious nets, and you become another silent hero of this work, who sits on the sidelines and just watches. Experience it all, go through an incredible journey with the heroes, Marquez's book "No one writes to the Colonel"

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL

The Colonel opened the tin and found that there was no more than a teaspoon of coffee left. He took the pot off the fire, poured half of the water onto the dirt floor, and began scraping the jar, shaking the last grains of coffee mixed with rust flakes into the pot.

While the coffee was being brewed, the colonel sat near the stove, listening intently to himself. It seemed to him that his insides were growing with poisonous mushrooms and algae. It was an October morning. One of those that is difficult to survive even for such a person as a colonel, accustomed to the tedious passage of time. But how many Octobers he survived! For fifty-six years now - so much has passed since the Civil War - the colonel did nothing but wait. And this October was among the few things he had to wait for.

The colonel's wife, seeing him enter the bedroom with coffee, lifted the mosquito net. She had suffered an asthma attack that night and was now in a sleepy stupor. Still, she got up to take a cup.

“I already drank,” the Colonel lied. “There was still a whole tablespoon left.

At that moment, bells rang out. The Colonel remembered the funeral. While his wife was drinking coffee, he unhooked the hammock in which he slept, rolled it up and hid it behind the door.

“He was born in the year twenty-two,” the woman said, thinking of the dead man. Exactly one month after our son. April sixth.

She breathed heavily, raggedly, sipping her coffee in small sips between deep breaths. Her thin, brittle-boned body had long since lost its flexibility. Labored breathing did not allow her to raise her voice, and therefore all questions sounded like a statement. She finished her coffee. Thoughts about the dead man did not leave her.

"It's awful when you're buried in October, isn't it?" - she said.

But her husband did not pay attention to her words. He opened the window. October was already in charge in the yard. Looking at the juicy dense greenery, the traces of earthworms on the wet earth, the colonel again felt his wet malignancy with all his insides.

“Even my bones are damp,” he said.

“Winter,” the wife replied. “Since it started raining, I've been telling you to sleep with your socks on.

It was raining light, hard. The colonel would not mind wrapping himself in a woolen blanket and lying back in the hammock. But the cracked bronze of the bells persistently reminded of the funeral.

“Yes, October,” he whispered, moving away from the window. And only then he remembered the rooster tied to the leg of the bed. It was a fighting cock.

The Colonel carried the cup into the kitchen and wound up the wall clock in the carved wooden case in the hall. Unlike the bedroom, which was too cramped for an asthmatic, the hall was wide, with four wicker rocking chairs around a tableclothed table topped with a plaster cat. On the wall, opposite the clock, hung a picture of a woman in white tulle sitting in a boat, surrounded by roses and cupids.

When he finished winding the clock, it was twenty past seven. He carried the rooster into the kitchen, tied him up by the fire, changed the water in the bowl, poured in a handful of maize. Several children crawled through the hole in the hedge, sat around the rooster and stared silently at it.

“Stop looking,” said the Colonel. Roosters deteriorate if you stare at them for a long time.

The children didn't move. One of them played a fashionable song on the harmonica.

"We can't play today," said the Colonel. There is a dead person in the city.

The boy put the harmonica in his pocket, and the colonel went into the room to change for the funeral.

Due to an asthma attack, his wife did not iron his white suit, and the colonel had no choice but to put on a black cloth, which, after his marriage, he wore only in exceptional cases. He found with difficulty the suit wrapped in newspapers and sprinkled with mothballs at the bottom of the chest. The wife, stretched out on the bed, continued to think about the dead man.

“He must have already met Agustin by now,” she said. “If only I didn’t tell Agustin how hard it was for us after his death.

“They must be arguing about roosters there too,” suggested the colonel.

He found a huge old umbrella in the chest. His wife won him in a lottery held in favor of the party to which the colonel belonged. That evening they were at a play; the performance was in the open air, and it was not interrupted even because of the rain. The Colonel, his wife, and Agustin - he was then eight years old - took cover under an umbrella and sat out until the very end. Now Agustín is dead, and the moth has eaten the white satin lining of the umbrella.

“Look at this clown umbrella,” the colonel joked as usual and opened a complex structure of metal spokes above his head. “Now it’s only good for counting stars.

He smiled. But the woman didn't even look at the umbrella.

“So that’s it,” she whispered. We are rotting alive. She closed her eyes so that nothing would stop her from thinking about the dead man.

Having somehow shaved - there was no mirror for a long time - the colonel silently dressed. Trousers, tightly fitting like underpants, fastened at the ankles and pulled together at the waist with two straps that were threaded through gilded buckles. The Colonel did not wear a belt. The shirt, the color of old cardboard and hard as cardboard, was fastened with a brass cufflink, which also held the collar. But the collar was torn, so the colonel decided not to wear it, but at the same time to do without a tie. He dressed as if he were performing some kind of solemn ritual. His bony arms were tightly wrapped in translucent skin dotted with red spots, the same spots were on the neck. Before putting on his patent-leather boots, he scraped off the dirt that had stuck to the welts. Looking at him, his wife saw that the colonel was dressed as on his wedding day. And then she noticed how much her husband had aged.

“Why are you dressed up like that?” she said. “Something unusual has happened.

“Of course, unusual,” said the Colonel. In so many years, the first person died a natural death.

By nine o'clock the rain had stopped. The colonel was about to leave, but his wife held him by the sleeve.

- Comb your hair.

He tried a horn-comb to smooth his stiff, steel-coloured hair. But nothing came of it.

“I must look like a parrot,” he said.

The woman examined her husband carefully. I thought, no, he doesn't look like a parrot. He was a hard-wired, dry man. But he did not look like those old people who seem to be drunk - his eyes were full of life.

“It's all right,” she said. And when her husband left the room, she added: - Ask the doctor, was he scalded with boiling water in our house?

They lived on the edge of a small town in a house with peeling walls, covered with palm leaves. It was still damp, although it had stopped raining. The colonel went down to the square along the alley, where the houses were clinging one to the other. As he stepped out onto the main street, he suddenly felt chills. The whole town, as far as the eye could see, was covered with flowers, like a carpet. Women dressed in black, sitting at the door, waited for the procession.

As the colonel crossed the square, it began to drizzle again. The owner of the billiard room looked out at the open doors of his establishment and shouted, waving his hands:

- Colonel, wait, I'll lend you an umbrella.

The Colonel answered without turning his head:

- Don't worry, it will do.

The dead man has not yet been taken out. Men in white suits and black ties stood under umbrellas at the entrance. One of them noticed the colonel jumping over puddles in the square.

“Come here, godfather,” he shouted, offering the colonel a place under an umbrella.

“Thank you, godfather,” the colonel replied.

But he did not take advantage of the invitation. He immediately entered the house to express condolences to the mother of the deceased. And immediately he smelled a multitude of flowers. He became stuffy. He began to squeeze through the crowd that filled the bedroom. Someone put a hand on his back and pushed him into the depths of the room, past a string of bewildered faces, to where the dead man's deep and widely carved nostrils were black.