One of These Days Reflection

Story: One of These Days
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Reflection: The author begins the story by describing the main character, Aurelio Escovar. He is a dentist, and supposedly a professional, yet the author depicts him as poor and unprofessional, wearing ‘a collarless striped shirt, closed at the neck with a golden stud, and pants held up by suspenders’. The author describes Aurelio as ‘erect and skinny, with a look that rarely corresponded to the situation, the way deaf people have of looking’, which totally does not fit with his profession of a dentist. From the above description, we can clearly infer that Aurelio is not a powerful man in this town; also, later in the story, we see that his office is poorly supplied and dirty, which is a sign of poverty. The author then goes into the main story with the introduction of the other main character, the mayor. Apparently he requires the services of Aurelio, who is probably the only dentist in town, because of a tooth infection, yet Aurelio refuses to tend to him. When the mayor threatens to shoot him, Aurelio prepares to retaliate with a revolver, but lets him in. In this situation, we can infer a few important points. Firstly, the dentist holds some kind of a grudge with the mayor, hence refusing to treat him. We can tell that it is probably due to the mayor holding corrupt, even murderous, political power, by the threat. However, we can also see that the infection reverses the positions that they used to be in, placing the mayor at the dentist’s mercy because he desperately needs Aurelio’s help, even to the extent of threatening to shoot him. The power is temporary, for as soon as Aurelio has extracted the tooth, the mayor is released from his mercy. Looking at the extracted tooth, the mayor "failed to understand his torture of the five previous nights", which could be resolved so fast. When he leaves, the mayor asks Aurelio to ‘send the bill’. However when he questioned whether to send it to him or to