No One Writes To The Colonel

"They look like the shoes of an orphan." 

The colonel says this about his patent-leather shoes, which, though in better condition than the ones he usually wears, don't fit him as well. Though he and his wife live in poverty, the colonel tries to maintain the public appearance that they do not. 

"For nine months, they had spent that money penny by penny, parceling it out between their needs and the rooster's." 

Just as the colonel continues to wait for his pension despite all evidence that it will never arrive, the colonel chooses to wait for the rooster to pay off instead of selling it for cash in hand. The little money the colonel and his wife do have comes from selling their dead son's sewing machine. 

"Humanity doesn't progress without paying a price." 

Living in such chaotic, violent times, the colonel clings to the belief that all the violence and disorder will be worth the cost, even sacrificing his only son. 

"No one writes to the colonel." 

The postmaster says this titular line to the colonel on one of the colonel's weekly visits to the post office. The postmaster says this without looking at the colonel, and with an air of sarcasm. Even if the colonel hasn't accepted the fate of his pension, those around him, including his wife and the postmaster, have. 

"All my comrades died waiting for the mail." 

The colonel and his comrades fought for the government that ended up in power after the civil war and yet they never saw their pensions. This futility and reliance on a chaotic bureaucracy for subsistence plagues the stories in this collection. 

"I was thinking that at the Macondo meeting we were right when we told Colonel Aureliano Buendía not to surrender." 

The colonel's troubles start and end with Colonel Aureliano Buendía. The colonel thinks that if Buendía had taken his men's advice, the country would never have been plunged into this chaos. 

"The only thing that comes for sure is death, Colonel."

The postmaster's sardonic quip represents a counterpoint to the ever-optimistic colonel. In times of such political, economic, and social uncertainty, many, including the postmaster, the colonel's wife, and others feel that death is the only certainty. 

"I'm fed up with resignation and dignity." 

The colonel's wife says this when she can no longer bear waiting for the colonel's pension nor obey his wishes for her not to sell anything so they can eat. After decades of waiting and starving, the colonel's wife is ready to throw out even her dignity to survive. 

"The sky is falling in and my friend is worrying about that rooster

When the colonel approaches Sabas to sell him the rooster, Sabas has too many obligations to complete before meeting with the colonel. Though the rooster is a matter of life or death for the colonel and his wife, Sabas, sheltered in his home and with enough food, has no perspective. He, in turn, feels the colonel has no perspective. 

"We put up with hunger so others can eat." 

The colonel's wife says this in reference to the rooster but the statement could be spoken by the collective poor of Macondo during this time when their suffering seems to put food on tables of opportunists like Sabas and the Mayor. 

"But he said it without much conviction, partly because experience had made him a little skeptical and partly because of the heat." 

The violence and instability in Macondo have made even the village priest, a man most likely to trust in God's will, doubtful of the life and doctrine to which he's been committed. Additionally, Macondo's oppressive heat muddles the priest's thoughts, as it does for other characters through the story collection. 

"Now you'll pay for our twenty dead men." 

Each of the stories in the collection feature characters suffering because of Colombia's fraught political and socioeconomic situations, though only this story features a character carrying out any kind of vengeance. The dentist in this short story blames the mayor for the deaths of twenty anonymous    men, whom the dentist claims as compatriots. This statement shows that the dentist is desperate or angry enough not to fear repercussions for his actions. 

"No place has as many things as the pool hall." 

Not only does the pool hall contain the valuable ivory billiard balls Damaso decides to steal, it holds immaterial value, too. Besides the dance hall, the pool hall serves as the only common recreational space in Macondo. This becomes apparent after Damaso steals the billiard balls and the baseball season, Macondo's only other livelihood, ends. 

"Nobody made him into a thief." 

To deny his culpability for his crime, Damaso readily accepts the black man as the culprit in the pool hall burglary. Unlike Ana, Damaso has no sympathy for the innocent black man. Damaso seems to consider himself a victim of circumstance and his crime one of necessity, while the black man's alleged crime was one of choice. 

"He used to think about them, about their ugly and argumentative wives, about their tremendous surgical operations, and he always experienced a feeling of pity.” 

Upon entering the Montiel's home, Balthazar has experience enough with the wealthy to feel neither awe nor envy; instead, he feels pity. He understands that though the wealthy don't want for material possessions, they seem to lack in quality of life. 

"Five years spent praying to God to end the shooting, and now I have to thank them for shooting in my house." 

While José was alive, his wife prayed to end the violence from which her husband profited. Even after his death, she can't escape the violence when the mayor uses rifles, then an explosive device, to open José's locked      safe. 

"When the first Mayor of the dictatorship arrived in town, José Montiel was a discreet partisan of all regimes who had spent half his life in his underwear seated in front of his rice mill." 

José Montiel represents the kind of opportunistic bureaucrat who became wealthy not through inheritance nor work of his own but by profiting from the mass killing of the poor and eviction of the rich. Though José seems an important man in Macondo, he is, in truth, lazy and greedy. José, like others during Colombia's civil wars and La Violencia, supports whichever political party or faction will benefit him the most.

"It's impossible to live in a country so savage that people are killed for political reasons." 

One of the Montiels' daughters, who lives in Paris, has a perspective of Colombia afforded by living outside the country. Her mother, Montiel's wife, comes to share her daughter's view, having herself witnessed the violence and prayed for its end, despite having her lifestyle afforded by the same violence.

"I detest them now that they've taken to dying inside our houses." 

Rebecca, a wealthy widow in Macondo, only notices the birds' deaths once they begin to affect her. This serves as an apt metaphor for the way the wealthy lived in relative, or possibly willful, ignorance to the violent reality around them until it begins to affect their lives directly. 

"He noticed that it was a dead town, with interminable, dusty streets and dark wooden houses with zinc roofs, which seemed uninhabited." 

This perspective on Macondo comes from an outsider, the young boy en route to secure his mother's pension. The boy sees Macondo as it is, in a way none of the other characters do not, or cannot, admit to themselves: a desperate, desolate town.

"These days you can't count on the sun."

Mina says this about her grandmother's meddling with her clothes but the line could reference the unstable political atmosphere in Colombia, too. Extreme violence and poverty, along with constant political turmoil, make even the most certain things, like the sun, seem questionable. 

"No one knew the origin, or the limits or the real value of her estate, but everyone was used to believing that Big Mama was the owner of the waters, running and still, or rain and drought, and of the district's roads, telegraph poles, leap years, and heat waves, and that she had furthermore a hereditary right over life and property." 

Big Mama represents a monolith of unquestioned authority in Macondo and, as it's revealed, the world. It's from her that everything comes and to whom everything goes. Her death has enough gravity not only to summon the Pope but to disrupt Colombia's political structure at a national level. 

"At the National Capitol, where the beggars wrapped in newspapers slept in the shelter of the Doric columns and the silent statues of dead Presidents, the lights of Congress were lit." 

Márquez repeats the theme of economic disparity throughout each of these stories and this line provides an appropriate image for it. While the nation mourns Big Mama, beggars use the very media by which her death was broadcast as blankets. The beggars take shelter under a grand portico, designed to hold Colombia's governmental body—a fact which neither disturbs the beggars nor is lost on readers.