The book The General in His Labyrinth, describes, I think, the last days of the most important general in the Latin American history. The death as the final passage of an amazing live full of battles, dreams, adventures and all the characteristics that has a hero´s live. I am referring as a hero, not as the perfect general and politician that fight for the freedom of the South American countries, I am referring as a hero in terms of the human inside Simon Bolivar... the man who loved his continent and fought all his live for a dream.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his style, created an interesting, descriptive, illustrative and easy lecture book that represent the general as human, with his defects, his weakness and his strength. A general without all the luxuries that involved the Bolivar´s live in his most important years... now the general was facing his final battle, the last year of his live in which he remembered all the passages of his human life... nor the general’s nor the politician, Simon Bolivar as a human.
I don’t know a lot about the Canadian educational system, but in Mexico, we are used to learn the history as a good and the evil... the Spanish were very bad and Simon Bolivar was a hero without defects. That’s why this book is important for me; it converts Bolivar as a real hero and not only as mythic super hero... It shows us one part of the history that was hidden, but at the end, instead of think that Bolivar was not the hero that I as believing, the book support my idea that Bolivar not only was a good general or a good leader... he was a good man, with a lot of weakness but with a lot of strength, with a lot of defects but with a lot of qualities as me or as all the people in the world.
Other part of the book that is attracting me is the image of the death, but I think that I will clarify better this aspect when I finish the book, so I will prefer to write about that in the next post.
2 comments:
In what way, indeed, does the book portray him as a hero? Could we not equally say that the theme is how a man tries to deal with his own mythology? (Some overlaps with our other books here, of course.)
I agree that the author creates an interesting novel to read. I particularly like the use of nostalgia to learn of the General’s past, including his accomplishments and failures. I’m not sure what you mean by saying that the image of death is attracting you to this book, but hopefully it will become clearer in your next blog.
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