Plot Summary
The Father, an aging, half blind man who carries the title of colonel within the village, has made a promise to bury the recently deceased former doctor in spite of the consensus within Macondo that he should be left to rot within the corner house where he had lived in complete social isolation for the past decade. The daughter, Isabel, is obliged to accompany her father out of respect for traditional values while knowing she and her son will be doomed to face the wrath of her neighbors in Macondo. The narrative of the grandson, on the other hand, is more preoccupied with the mystery and wonder of death.
As with many of his stories, such as Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, García Márquez introduces a dramatic scene to begin his narrative and then moves backward, rehashing the past that will lead up to the ultimate conclusion. It is discovered within the narrative that the center of all the conflict (the deceased) is a doctor who came to Macondo with a mysterious past and no clear name. The man's only saving grace is a letter of recommendation from the Colonel Aureliano Buendía, one of the main characters of the later One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is this letter that leads the stranger to the family that serves collectively as narrator to the drama that unfolds.
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