Critical Response: Marquez's One of These Days

Response to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One of These Days

This is a story where the reader is meant to be kept in the dark with regards to certain events and inter-personal relationships between the characters. It starts out droll and standard, like any number of stories we’ve become used to reading. We are given little indication that something is wrong (save for the symbolism of the buzzards if it can be interpreted as such) until the dentist refuses to see the mayor, telling his son to inform him “I’m not here.” So now we see that something is amiss based upon a previous pattern of events which is barely alluded to throughout the course of the story.

The mayor’s implicit threat (“He says if you don’t take out his tooth, he’ll shoot you”) gives us insight into the nature of the time and place; the setting becomes apparent only at this point. The dentist’s possession of a revolver speaks of an unknown animosity between himself and the mayor and perhaps sets the tale in the realm of the Old West, where cavalier justice was no different than vengeance and corruption and graft held free reign. This is brought to light with the dentist’s comments that “now you’ll pay for our twenty dead men” implying a specific instance of conflict and misery in the past which strains the relationship between them both.

The mayor is revealed through the dentist’s comments as a man of questionable morality and excessive power. The mayor’s comment that “It’s the same damn thing” with regards to the dentist’s bill shows that he considers himself and the town in singular terms: he is the town and the town cannot function without him.

I personally admire this style of writing and enjoy building a plot somewhat esoterically (in the vein of true intellectual science fiction). The difficulty is striking a balance between curious ignorance and knowing credulity, so as to keep the reader on edge, wanting more but not frustrated from lack of prior understanding. One of These Days is an apt title for this piece because it plays against what is otherwise a largely esoteric backdrop where more is unknown than is known. It is a delicate line to walk and I strive to improve every day on this one thing specifically, because it is the key to tapping into the sublime. In this respect this style of writing is useful to my creative approach.