Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a renowned Colombian novelist known for his use of magical realism. In his short story "Death Constant Beyond Love", the protagonist Senator Onesimo Sanchez learns he has a terminal illness. This disrupts his usual happy routines and cycles of life. He meets and falls in love with a young woman, Laura Farina. However, Sanchez is aware that death is constantly pulling him out of life's repetitions. The story uses metaphors like paper birds and butterflies to represent the ephemeral nature of life and how people are forgotten after death, like Sanchez will be.

1. Gabriel
Garcia
Marquez
Rebecca Lindfors
May 1, 2022
ENG 242

2. Gabriel
Garcia
Marquez
Born 1928
Died in 2014
Best known novelist of the Latin American
"Boom" of the 1960's and 1970's
Mixture of fantasy and actuality known as
"magic realism"

3. Fiction
*focused on certain themes
~contrast between dreamlike
experiences and everyday reality
~enchanted or inexplicable
aspect of fictional creation
~ solitude of individuals in
society that can never quite
incorporate them
*His fiction focused on mythic
dimensions
Rooted from local folklore

4. Death Constant beyond Love
– 1970-short story
– In the short story “Death Constant Beyond Love” by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez there is a constant and strong conflict between
nature versus artificial life in general.
– Overarching mood of loneliness and repetition
– Senator Onesimo Sanchez is the protagonist
– "travels six months and eleven days to go before his death"
when he found a woman of his life. (P.911)

5. Key Characters
– Senator Onesimo Sanchez-42-year-old man is the main
character-a politician, recently diagnosed with an
unspecified terminal illness
-Laura Farina-woman he meets, she recently lived in Rosal
del Virrey and is nineteen years old
- Nelson Farina-Laura's Father, who is a criminal who fled
from Devil's Island to Rosal del Virrey after he murder his
first wife.

6. Summary
– Death shapes Sanchez’s consciousness by disrupting the
happy repetitions of his life. Before the news, he was “happy”
with his wife and family. (p.911) But now, on the campaign trail,
the effort “not to think about death while he dozed” interrupts
his sleep (p.911). He eats diet cereals and takes pills to
preemptively strike against the pain of rich meals; “his soul
sustained” by the pills, he can attempt to move on from the
distraction that strains his routine (pp.911-912). But death pulls
him out of these cycles and repetitions in his life so that he can
see the ways in which life traps him. This position makes him
feel lonely.

7. Metaphor
– The metaphor of a rose is constant with
Marquez's short story, but Marquez
uses a lot of metaphors in this short
story. Including paper birds and paper
butterflies, they mimic real life objects,
but the story traces them back to their
creator and where they came from.
– The senator talks about roses while he
removes his shirt, revealing “a corsair’s
tattoo of a heart pierced by an arrow"
(p,915) At his request, Laura kneels to
remove Sanchez’s boots. He remarks
that she is “just a child” (p.915). When
Sanchez discovers that he and Laura
share Aries as their astrological sign, he
tells her that “it’s the sign of solitude”
(p.915).

8. Metaphor
"The butterfly is different just
like Sanchez it blends into the
wallpaper and has a different
kind of an end. No
one knows where it comes from
or where it went. Like Sanchez,
the butterfly seems to die and its
life and name "won't even be
left" for the next generation
to understand"

9. References
– https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/
– The Norton Anthology World Literature. Vol. F. 4th edition