“The Other Side of Death” by Marquez: A Postmodern Study

By Ayesha Mirza

Postmodernism is both a rejection and a continuation of Modernism. This philosophy is a conglomeration of various theses posited by philosophers, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault, to name a few. Hence, presenting a thorough list of postmodern ideas is nearly impossible. The aim of this essay is hence to offer a comprehensive, yet by no means exhaustive, the study of the short story “The Other Side of Death” by the celebrated Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

One factor that marks postmodern literary theory is the questioning and rejection of an over-arching meta-narrative. This short story by Marquez dexterously rejects the biblical meta-narrative of heaven and hell, worldly life, and after-life. He obliterates the boundaries between the mundane and heavenly by juxtaposing the experiences of life and death. Furthermore, he makes the stark reality of death no more than a subtle transition from this earthly abode to the otherworld:

“Resigned, he listened to the drop, thick, heavy, exact, as it dripped in the other world, in the mistakes and absurd world of rational creatures.”

Thus for Marquez’s audience, death seems to be no more than an act of the decomposition of the body and the liquid within seeping into the other world. There is no talk of heaven or hell, of reward and punishment. In addition to this, the distinction between body and soul virtually diminishes. The intangible becomes tangible, and the real becomes liquid. The mass gives way to the matter inside. Yet the reader cannot determine whether he’s talking about the soul or his mundane existence.

This narrative, in essence, is a picture of a self-reflexive and self-conscious moment, a moment of “an awareness of splitting in two.” Paradoxically, at this moment, the protagonist also realizes “that the separation of the two bodies in space was just appearance, while in reality, the two of them had a single, total nature.” This fragmentation of the self and disappearance of the subject are central themes of the postmodern narrative. The protagonist feels his entire body liquidate and turn into nothing. All the senses are obliterated; he can no longer smell formaldehyde nor hear the cricket’s sound. However, just as postmodernism doesn’t lament the idea of fragmentation and dehumanizing of a subject, Marquez celebrates the ‘absurd world of rational creatures’. His hypothesis that it was possible “that the buried brother would remain incorruptible while rottenness would invade the living one” gives the protagonist a new satisfaction and eagerness to seep into the otherworld.

The narrative is made even more complex through the usage of multiple voices. This fragmentation of voices gives the readers an acute consciousness of the absence of a single point of view. The sudden and ever-shifting pattern of voices, from third person narrative to the first person and then back to the third person again, leaves room for various interpretations. Thus when we are told, “They were traveling in a train- I remember it now- I’ve had this dream frequently…” the reader has to stop and think about who the ‘they’ and ‘I’ of this story are. In this way, the much-touted idea of a single conscious self and existence through the meta-narratives is out rightly rejected.

Furthermore, the bricolage of various disconnected and bizarre elements within the dream, and its deep connection to realism, leads to another aspect of postmodern fiction. Marquez’s fiction is inextricably connected with Magic Realism. He represents the realism of ordinary events by dexterously interweaving them with crisp fantastic, dream-like elements. Hence “The Other Side of Death” takes place in the territory between sleep and wakefulness. The thoughts and dreams of the protagonist and the actual situation get intermingled. So, the reader cannot distinguish which one is a dream and which depicts reality. Thus the smell of formaldehyde, the corpse that had been dying in the other room, and the death of his brother; all commingle with his dream. And by the end of the story, his thought regarding the drop of water filling up the whole room in an hour or in thousands of years ends up in the drop dripping into the other world. Here the reader cannot comprehend whether the drop is the tangible liquid falling from his ceiling or the fluid in his body that has seeped through his skin for him to enter the otherworld.

Thus, the interpretation of the text remains enigmatic. It is open to many interpretations, and its meanings can never be exhausted. The bricolage of multiple images, the questionable narrator, the various voices, and the fragmentation of being; all contribute towards making this postmodern narrative virtually untranslatable.

Citation:

APA:    Mirza, Ayesha. '“The Other Side of Death" by Marquez: A Postmodern Study'. Literary Theory in Practice, October 7, 2011.Web. Date of Access. <http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/other-side-of-death-by-marquez.html>.

MLA: Mirza, Ayesha. "'The Other Side of Death' by Marquez: A Postmodern Study. http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/. 7 Oct. 2011. Date of Access. http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/other-side-of-death-by-marquez.html