Death Constant Beyond Love

“Senator Onésimo Sanchez had six months and eleven days to go before his death when he found the woman of his life.” 

This premonition, echoed at the end of the story, is delivered as fact, not suggestion, to set the tone for the story. In pairing “death” and “life” here, García Márquez suggests irony in Sanchez and Laura’s relationship. A sad tone, dominated by the imminent shadow of death, dominates the text from this first line forward.

“Before he lay down he put in a glass of drinking water the rose he had kept alive all across the desert, lunched on the diet cereals that he took with him so as to avoid the repeated portions of fried goat that were waiting for him during the rest of the day, and he took several analgesic pills before the time prescribed so that he would have the remedy ahead of the pain. Then he put the electric fan close to the hammock and stretched out naked for fifteen minutes in the shadow of the rose, making a great effort at mental distraction so as not to think about death while he dozed.”

Sanchez’s repose involves mechanisms for taking care of himself and the rose. Both are vulnerable to and damaged by the outside elements. The fan serves a practical use here, though it is also part of visual illusions at other parts of the text: García Márquez sets up multiple roles and functions for the same objects throughout the text. The rose, which starts the passage as a thing to be cared for, becomes a shadow that reaches over Sanchez.

“Nevertheless, the erosion of death was much more pernicious than he had supposed, for as he went up onto the platform he felt a strange disdain for those who were fighting for the good luck to shake his hand.”

Death changes Sanchez’s consciousness throughout the text. It contributes to his sense of distance from those around him and, in this moment, suggests that he resents the idea (or the illusion) of closeness to which others aspire and toward which his life has, previously, been geared.