The Autumn of the Patriarch (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Gabriel García Márquez
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Parable
- Time of Work: The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
- Setting: An unnamed Caribbean country
- Genres: Long fiction, Epic, Fantasy, Parable
- Subjects: Dictators, Caribbean, Power, personal or social, Politics, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Cruelty, Latin America or Latin Americans
- Locales: Caribbean
Characters Discussed
The patriarch, also called the general, the “All Pure,” the “Magnificent,” and so on, an unnamed Latin American dictator who is somewhere between the ages of 107 and 232. At one point, he writes a note to himself reading “my name is Zacarias” (sah-kah-REE-ahs), but because this event occurs after his senility has progressed, the writing of the note, like many other events in the novel, is suspect. Superstitious, paranoid, and ruthless, illiterate but peasant-shrewd, he rules from a palace that has been converted into a marketplace. It is overrun...
[The entire page is 1614 words long]
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