In only three short years of bloody battle between Colombia’s Liberal and Conservative parties, the Thousand Days’ War tallied over 100,000 losses to fellow countrymen. This civil war heavily influenced a short story written over half a century later. The author’s grandfather, a colonel in the war, shaped the writer’s liberal political ideologies at an early age, as evidenced in the story.
In the first few paragraphs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One of These Days,” the author uses rich imagery, foreshadowing, and symbolism to illustrate the way an average citizen can take a stand against his government, just as the Liberals revolted against the Conservative Party of Colombia. The opening paragraphs of the story are laden with imagery, which effectively sets the atmosphere. Marquez describes the main character, Aurelio Escovar, as “a dentist without a degree” (para 1) and his office.
In this dental office, Escovar “took some false teeth, still mounted in their plaster mold, out of the glass case and put on the table a fistful of instruments which he arranged in size order, as if they were on display,” (para 1). The first paragraph alone reveals so much about the story. Aurelio’s “fistful” of dental tools were set out as if on display, which creates a threatening atmosphere in his office. Usually, a dentist does not try to advertise the painful side of his job, in order to keep the patient as happy as possible. In this situation, however, the opposite seems to be true.
Also, the reader can infer the office is not of top quality, due to the fact that this dentist is without a degree, and this is substantiated when the narrator describes it as containing a “crumbling ceiling and a dusty spider web with spider’s eggs and dead insects,” (para 33). Following the opening paragraph, the narrator describes Aurelio’s reaction to the mayor threatening to shoot him if he didn’t fix his tooth. In retaliation, “Without hurrying, with an extremely tranquil movement, he… pulled the lower drawer of the table all the way out. There was a revolver,” (para 17).
Introducing a deadly weapon to the scene effectively makes the story much more suspenseful because of what it could entail – threats, injury, or even murder, in this case for revenge. In addition, he gets the gun calmly, indicating he is ready for something big to happen, thus creating more suspense. Toward the end of the exposition, the author uses the main character’s lie as a way to foreshadow what is to come. Escovar tells his son to “Tell [tell him] I’m not here,” (para 7). The first thought that comes to the audience’s mind is to wonder why the dentist would lie to the most powerful man in town.
Also, when Escovar pulls out the drawer, he does so “extremely [tranquilly)” which forebodes he is ready for a confrontation with the mayor in the near future. Not only does he seem prepared mentally, but the gun is ready in the drawer to be used, and there are few other uses for a gun at a dental office. Deductive reasoning leads the reader to infer that Escovar has a past problem with the mayor, and plans to exact revenge on him. Lastly, the most concrete omen in the story is when Aurelio is “pumping the drill with his feet, even when he didn’t need it” (para 2).
This foreshadows the unnecessary pain he later inflicts on the mayor, while removing the mayor’s infected tooth. The unlicensed dentist blatantly lies to his patient, saying anesthesia cannot be used due to the abscess. Symbolism is present throughout the story, and is most prevalent in the items in which the dentist possesses. For example, Marquez starts the story off by immediately telling the reader “Monday dawned warm and rainless,” (para 1). The rainless weather symbolizes Aurelio’s stubborn longing for revenge on mayor for “our twenty dead men” (para 29) at first.
A lack of rain suggests a lack of change, and no water means no new rebirth, no change of heart. However, the reader can see a reversal through the same symbol of rain later on, when Escovar “went on working with the idea that before lunch it would rain again,” (para 3), indicating he was beginning to have second thoughts about harming the mayor, fearing he’d become the same type of person as the mayor. The “fistful of instruments” (para 1) is a symbol of Aurelio’s pent-up rage over the mayor’s past wrongdoings.
His instruments could have been described in many other ways aside from “fistful,” but this aggressive word is symbolic of Escovar’s feelings toward the government. Finally, the gold tooth represents the revenge of Aurelio Escovar. He spends time “polishing” it (para 8), representative of the time he has spent thinking about and planning his revenge for the twenty dead men. He takes a meticulous amount of time making sure everything works out according to plan, and in the end he succeeds. “One of These Days” contains within it many different themes, but the most prevalent is one of revenge.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses a variety of techniques in the opening paragraphs that serve a multitude of purposes, but above all it introduces the theme of revenge to the story. By channelling political ideologies from his grandfather, Marquez looks more in depth at the power a citizen holds in his home country. Through his uses devices such as imagery, foreshadowing, and imagery he reveals the main theme, revenge, very early on; and similarly to his grandfather’s Colombian Liberal party, the oppressed ends up getting the last say.
