Dan Mayer

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Death Constant Beyond Love

Bored of Life

The story seems to have many possible focal points. How a person reacts to knowledge of their own death, political corruption, lust, and a boring routine. The most interesting part to me was the routine. After the Senator discovers that he will be dieing soon, he still runs for reelection and carries on with business as usual. I find it interesting that he was so controlled by his routine that a big change such as his own death didn't really lead to a change in his day to day life.

The senator knows that he will die, but carries on as if winning an election will do anything else for him. He doesn't settle down to enjoy life or do anything that he would really love to do before he dies. He doesn't even tell friends and family to try to spend more time with him. He takes naps and goes campaigning making promises he knows will never be kept. This could only happen if someone was so bored of life that everything was only a routine. That they already felt dead inside. So the senator feels as if there is no reason to change his life when he hears that he will be dieing.

The senator doesn't seem overly angry, upset, or worried. Not concerned about family, friends, or children. The concern seems only to exist in telling people or being bothered with it. Death is just ignored. What point could Marquez be trying to make having something so un ignorable ignored. The only point i could come up with was how politics are so filled with shells of people. They aren't really anymore they only become a public face that knows the game and how to win, but seems to cease to exist as a person. The senator in the story would seemingly fit into the category of being a shell of a man. With out a true care or concern in life, not even caring for his own life.

The story does break from this emptiness only at the end, when a risk the senator never would have taken before, is suddenly accepted. This is done without worries to his routine or losing the election. Trading a favor for the young beautiful girl seems unlikely for the character. Perhaps showing that hidden beneath the routine the senator did care and realized he might as well try to live awhile none of it will matter soon. I really didn't know how important this was that at the end the story Marquez had the senator go for a final fling. It seems he had given up on living either way. Run a campaign that winning wont matter or loose that campaign to a scandal and throw everything away.

The ability to live as nothing has changed and live a routine with out thought. Seems to be Marquez's focus, which I think still relates to politicians. Marquez is probably showing his distaste for career politicians and with the young girl showing how most of them loose so much touch with their own morals that in the end they are worse than the average person. Power corrupts the mind that has even the best intentions. The senator in the end is barely alive or human anymore and whatever turn him to that is at fault, which Marquez's seems to believe is a life in politics.