Death Constant Beyond Love Analysis

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Death constant beyond love” is not my favorite read because I think it is quite strange to combine politics with the spiritual matters such as love and death. However, from my interpretation, I think Marquez did well in provoking readers’ thinking about death, as well as critizing the dark side of political.
Death puts pressure on living persons, sends a negative impulse to people’s mind. Ignoring the political background, I think Senator Onesimo Sanchez is not a bad person. He is a good husband, father of a happy family. “He was married to a radiant German women who had given him five children and they were all happy in their home, he the happiest of all” (Puchner, 988). He is also a good politician. Nelson Farina had tried to bribed him for a false identity multiple times, but Senator Onesimo Sanchez did not grant him. In the story, the

“The erosion of death was much more pernicious than he had supposed, for as he went up onto the platform he felt a strange disdain” (Puchner, 988); “he didn’t feel sorry as he had other times for the groups of barefoot Indians” (Puchner, 989). Being sentenced to a fixed term, he feared of losing power, losing the normal happy life he was having. He became gloomy, indifferent about others, and being reckless. He had an affair with Laura Farina. Reading the story, I don’t believe that his emotion toward Laura is love. I think the limited time pressures him, so he mistakened the fling with Laura as love. He was fully aware of Laura and her dad’s intention “he knew the one at hands had its origins in indignity” (Puchner, 992), and the consequence of having an affair with her, “while he was untying the laces he wondered which one of them would end up with the bad luck of the encounter”