No One Writes to the Colonel

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Summary: An incomplete definition of fight
Review: The book and its popularity among a certain kind of readers in the erstwhile colonized third world countries explain a lot about those societies and their priorities and preferences. The colonel has been waiting for decades for a meagre pension while his friend Sabhas manages to accumulate some wealth by questionable means (how else,making profits!). If you have to like the book you have to read it as one identifying the difference between the good and the evil and no way between a lazy fatalistic person and the industrious in reality. If only one Gen. Aurlieno Buendia did not give up a certain kind of righteous fight, things would not have been so bad for the poor couple i.e. the colonel and his wife. The colonel was honest when it mattered (handed over a sum to Gen. Buendia faithfully), although a long time ago in his youth, and thus he very legitimately awaits a pension without looking for any alternative means of sustenance since then. He keeps pet, a rooster, which will fight when appropriate time arrives and that will be the second occasion when a fight may help the colonel in his life. In between only poverty is the meaning and to a certain kind of political grooming, glory of his life. The novel is competently written to dispense with the opiate of the daydreaming masses to whom revolutionary struggle (whatever that may mean) is the only magic to improve living. Those who will appreciate the novel will have to ask themselves why do they sympathize with the colonel - is it because he is poor,is it because he was once a fighter or is it because he does not show much interest in any form of income except pension at an early age. I think of all those of his ilk, Marquez found the most effective style to move the fatalist romantics emotionally. And to them, emotion is only what matters.

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Summary: short stories from marquez
Review: a series of short stories from marquez that intrique the reader in the same sense his other novels have accomplished

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Summary: A low-key study of old age.
Review: 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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Summary: Despair Continues With Phantasmic Hope !
Review: 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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Summary: boooooooring
Review: I had to read Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for my AP English class, and to my surprise, it didn't suck. In fact, if you are gonna read any Marquez book, start with "One Hundred", because I definitely do NOT recommend "No One Writes to the Colonel". Unlike "One Hundred", the narrative goes nowhere and the entire thing is rather predictable and dull. Most of the characters very closely resemble certain counterparts in "One Hundred"; for example the colonel in the title story is like a second-rate Colonel Aureliano Buendia and his wife is like Ursula Buendia, although much more spineless. There are some other stories in this collection concerning a woman on a train and a dentist pulling out teeth, which are about as exciting as they sound (read: dull). I couldn't even be bothered to finish the book. Save your money and go check it out at the library if you are still so curious.

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Summary: A Triumph of Hope
Review: 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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Summary: bad book, do not waste your time
Review: This is probably the worst book I hav ever read. It is true, it's very short but nothing changes in the story, you end the story the same way you beggin it-- the colonel is a dumb-stubborn old man, he does not have anything to eat and he just waits each week friday after friday for his pension, he doesn't sell the rooster, and practically nothing happens in the whole story.
A waste of time, if you want to read a sad story that really gets you down read "Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe or any good holocaust narrative.
The last line of the story sums up everything.

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Summary: No One Writes to the Colonel
Review: This novella opens with the first natural death in many years, the death of a young musician. It is October, and the rain is gentle but ceaseless. An old colonel, whose son was shot dead nine months ago at cockfights, has waited patiently for about fifteen years for his veteran's pension. 'We are the orphans of our own son,' his wife says. Indeed, they have lived a frugal existence; his wife has to boil stones so that the neighbors would not know that they are starving. Their only hope, besides the pension which would probably never come, lies in a rooster which might be worth nine hundred pesos...

Like most of Marquez's works, this very readable novella is about South American life. 'To the Europeans, South America is a man with a moustache, a guitar, and a gun...They don't understand the problem.' The decaying town and the despair of the colonel and his wife effectively characterize South American life.

This novella can be completed in a single sitting, and serves as a good introduction to Marquez before one embarks on his greater works like 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and 'Love in the Time of Cholera'. It has an open-ended ending (which I find curious), and contains much insight, wit, and compassion. I strongly recommend it alongside his collected stories.


Rating:
Summary: No One Writes to the Colonel
Review: This story, about an old, sad Colonel who spends his time waiting for a pension that, deep down, he knows he will never receive, is simply heart-breaking. Every paragraph is laced with sadness - sadness that his circumstances are how they are and sadness that it won't ever really change, not even in the promised January when the rooster will finally pay off for him and his wife and they can finally put the memory of their dead son behind them.

It was a short story, only ~60 pages long, so I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read something quickly. It is rather depressing, probably made more so by the fact that the Colonel is a dignified man and that he knows that the misfortunes of his life are not his fault at all. Unfortunately, even at the end, there isn't any real hope. It does end with a great last line, but there is no retribution, no deliverance, no satisfaction to be had for the Colonel and his wife. I think that if Marquez had solved all of the Colonel's problems, it would have been a weaker story, so I'm not too upset about that.