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Gabriel García MárquezA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The cage symbolizes the system of economic disparity that the townspeople and Balthazar exist within. At the time he wrote “Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon” in 1962, García Márquez worked for a Cuban newspaper called Prensa. The short story’s concerns with unfair wages, the struggle for art to survive in an economic system, and the value of time, suggest that García Márquez used the image of the cage to encapsulate anti-capitalist critique. At no point does the cage contain birds or serve any utilitarian purpose. Instead, the cage takes on a series of abstract meanings for each character who comments on it.
Among its many meanings, the cage represents Balthazar’s artistic passion, creativity, and dreams, and serves as a vehicle for Marquez’s trademark magical realism. The cage has a fanciful power over those who see it. Balthazar has always made cages and this one may be his best, a marvel that captures the imagination of the townspeople. The imagery that describes the cage gives it a dream-like significance, as the narrator likens it to both an exact architectural design and to a scale model. The cage means so much to Balthazar that at the end of the
By Gabriel García Márquez
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
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Death Constant Beyond Love
Death Constant Beyond Love
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Eyes of a Blue Dog
Eyes of a Blue Dog
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In Evil Hour
In Evil Hour
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Innocent Erendira
Innocent Erendira
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Leaf Storm
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Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores
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News of a Kidnapping
News of a Kidnapping
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No One Writes To The Colonel
No One Writes To The Colonel
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Of Love And Other Demons
Of Love And Other Demons
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude
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One Of These Days
One Of These Days
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Strange Pilgrims
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The Autumn of the Patriarch
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The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
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The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
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