The General In His Labyrinth Sparknotes

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book “The General in His Labyrinth”, readers are given a fictionalized account of President Simon Bolivar, the General, and his fall from power. Marquez weaves historical fact and his imagined, detailed scenarios of Bolivar’s time as president that align with the facts, but are not verifiable. The book begins with a fatally ill, fleeing Bolivar, who had just learned of the public’s negative opinion and assassination attempts (Marquez, 7 and 12). Throughout the book, Bolivar reflects on his term as president and the failures he suffered while trying to gain independence for and unify Latin America, many times while suffering through a fever. Marquez’s book proves to readers that in Latin American history, culture, tradition, and legend are, almost, as important to the people as fact. Although, he was once hated by the people

Marquez writes in his acknowledgements that, Bolivar’s last days are the least documented of his life, and he was, therefore, not as concerned with the accuracy of Bolivar’s last voyage (Marquez, 271-272). However, he does use historical accuracy throughout the rest of the book. Both historical fact and Marquez show the reader that, Bolivar pushed his army to fight a war for independence and, then, unity. Marquez writes that after independence had been won, the soldiers claimed they had “made nothing but sacrifices”. To this statement Bolivar replied, “Unity has no price” (Marquez, 98-99). The war for unity was, perhaps, more important to Bolivar than that of independence. He struggled with what would be the best way to govern a unified Latin America (Fuentes, 256). However, the war for independence evolved into more than a war for independence from Spain, alone. The countries within Latin America began to seek independence from one another (Marquez,