The Autumn of the Patriarch

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses murder, suicide, and sexual assault.

The General, unnamed throughout the narrative, is the “solitary despot” ruling over the unnamed territory in the Caribbean. Though in legend and lore he is often described as huge and lumbering, he is of average size and in fact shrinks with age. The General’s physical description, aside from his herniated testicle and giant, flat feet, is intentionally elusive—no one knows what he actually looks like except for his sad eyes, pale lips, and hands devoid of any lines. Since the General stands in for a long line of historical dictators in the novel, his physical description is purposefully ambiguous.

His hand is gloved in velvet often, and he is found again and again in an unmarked denim uniform, wearing a gold spur on one of his boots at an unimaginably old age. He’s described at times as not fitting his clothes by various narrators who encounter him, and his description in death details his aged body in putrefaction and infested by parasites. This reflects The Impact of Corruption on the Human Body.

Solitary and obsessed with power, the General is both insatiable and easily swayed.