20 pages • 40 minutes read
Gabriel García MárquezDeath Constant Beyond Love
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Metaphor
The metaphor of the rose is prominent in García Márquez’s short story. But other tangible objects seem to operate metaphorically. Specifically, items like the fan seem to represent supernatural forces. Even though they seem grounded in tangibility, the illusions that they produce, of air motion and shadows, are larger than the object itself might suggest. These reverberations literally give air a heightened sense of importance within the text.
Paper birds and paper butterflies also operate as metaphors, particularly in their trajectories. They mimic a real, living object, but the story traces them back to their creators and shows them to be harmless objects. At the same time, they seem to represent efforts at freedom. Freedom, especially freedom from death, becomes impossible: the birds sink to the ground when they lose the currents or illusions of air.
The butterfly is a little bit different, just like Sanchez: it blends into the wallpaper and has a different kind of end. But ultimately, no one knows where it come 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 (Paragraph 31).
Magical Realism
Magical realism is one of García Márquez’s hallmarks as a writer. The technique, which combines a realistic narrative with elements of unreality, permeates “Death Constant Beyond Love” specifically in the figure of the paper butterfly. Even though man-made illusions seem to be a kind of joke and their artifice frustrating for one aware of the mysteries and fears of death, the rose and the paper butterfly seem to blend the power of what people do to create and what is beyond their power.
The rose is not man-made; it stands out and attracts attention because it is an imported element of nature. It must be taken care of. But its shadow is not only physical—the shadow appears after the light is turned off. Instead, the shadow that it casts seems spiritual, as it is invested with magic knowledge or ideas that neither the characters nor the narrator seems to explain.
The paper butterfly captivates Laura’s attention, but again, the narrator only follows its flying and blending into the wall. Readers receive no explanations. Without an explanation of what Laura has seen, the paper butterfly becomes part of the plot. Its settling into the wall (like a real butterfly) and its investment with qualities beyond what the object would suggest become possible.
Parallelism
García Márquez creates parallel sentences and scenes on opposite ends of the story to form a structure connecting moments. The most noticeable parallelism in “Death Constant Beyond Love” is the parallel between the first and the last paragraph. Both mark the space of the story into one specific day by speaking of the “six months and eleven days” death prediction. In addition to limiting the time of the story, this parallelism creates a pervasive mood of death. It also suggests that the future can be known, showing uncanny (or perhaps magical) knowledge beyond reason, which shapes human experience.
Another parallel comes in the two scenes that occur “in the shadow of the rose.” (Paragraph 29). First, when Sanchez tries to take a rest before delivering his speech, and then again when he turns off the light in his room with Laura, he lies in the shadow of that pervasive symbol in the text. This parallelism demonstrates its power and relevance both to Sanchez’s loneliness and to his loneliness with Laura. Symbolic power then retains a level of control or surveillance over the petty or repeated actions of humans, which Sanchez disdains.
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By Gabriel García Márquez
