27 pages • 54 minutes read
Gabriel García MárquezOne Of These Days
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Time
The motif of time is announced in the title, “One of These Days,” which evokes both the sameness of Aurelio’s days (one day among many) and the threat of delayed but inevitable retribution for the Mayor’s political crimes (as in, one of these days, you’ll get what’s coming to you). The story depicts a single day in Aurelio’s life, and the opening scene establishes the repetitive tasks that occupy Aurelio’s days. As the scene opens, he is meticulously polishing a gold tooth in his quiet and disheveled office, doing much the same thing he does every day. When the Mayor appears, the monotonous flow of time is refined to a single highly focused point, and this ordinary day, indistinguishable from all the others, becomes specific and charged with significance.
Pensive Buzzards
Buzzards are typically associated with death and calamity since they are carrion birds (they eat carcasses). Them being pensive in the story suggests that they are waiting for the next victim who might be their next meal. Although no one will die in the encounter between the dentist and the Mayor, they each threaten the other with physical violence, highlighting the theme of Power and Vulnerability that establishes the conflict between the principal characters.
The buzzards Aurelio observes outside his window symbolize death and decay and foreshadow a conflict, which is confirmed when Aurelio’s son first yells to him that the Mayor has come wanting him to pull a tooth. The growing desperation on the part of the Mayor and, in contrast, Aurelio’s lack of concern, moves beyond a verbal conflict when Aurelio pulls out the drawer revealing his revolver as Aurelio sits ready for the Mayor to appear.
Aurelio’s Office
The imagery used to describe the “poor office” (74) is symbolic of poverty and decay, adding to the characterization of Aurelio and foregrounding the social inequities between Aurelio and the Mayor related to the theme of Political Corruption.
The narrator first describes the office space, highlighting the elements that make the office antiquated and inefficient. The drill Aurelio uses is a “pedal drill” (74) rather than an electric drill, the curtain is only “shoulder-high”, and the chair is old and wooden rather than a more modern comfortable chair. This imagery shows that Aurelio’s office is not a modern dentist’s office just as Aurelio himself is not a licensed dentist.
As he is recovering from his tooth extraction, the Mayor sees the deteriorating and dirty condition of the office, its “crumbling ceiling” and “a dusty spider web with spider’s eggs and dead insects” (75). The narrator rarely gives us a glimpse through one of the character’s eyes, and here the Mayor is noting these things perhaps because they are markers of poverty that he is unaccustomed to in his position as the ruling elite.
Related Titles
By Gabriel García Márquez
