As for the corpse of the tragically dead Polynix, it is said that a notice had been issued that no citizen should be allowed to retreat or shed any tears for him, and that he should be left to die in the open, without any comfort or honor, and to be devoured by the swooping vultures. It is said that against you and me, or against me, Lord Creon has ordered this proclamation to be posted everywhere. He will also come here to announce this order to those who do not know it. This is no small matter. Anyone who disobeys the order will die under the stones of the people. Sophocles, one of the three great tragedic writers of Ancient Greece, Antigone

Read Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred years of Solitude”, only to open the same writing background of the book “Withered branches and withered leaves”. It is also known that it is the prelude to One Hundred Years of Solitude. The story is neither long nor short. It takes place in the quaint town of Macondo.

Yes, Macondo again. Published in 1955, “La hojarasca” was Marquez’s first novel and the basis for “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” making the town of Macondo one of Marquez’s best-known landmarks.

In this book, Marquez announced the birth of the town of Macondo and made the first appearance of Colonel Aureliano Buendia. The story began when Marquez was 23 and accompanied his mother on a trip to her hometown. Marquez considered the journey to be one of the most important experiences of his life, ultimately defining his literary ambitions and leading to what he considers his first serious work, “La hojarasca.”

The trip to Aracataca was a real revelation to me that everything in childhood has literary value, Marquez said. The only thing I wanted to do from the moment I started writing “La hojarasca” was to become the best writer in the world, and no one could stop me.

He did, and in 1982 Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Going back to this book, I can’t help but connect with the stories and characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Although the authors of these two stories have too many similarities in creation, I personally believe that there are not many factors that are really involved. It’s just the introduction to One Hundred Years of Solitude.

So, what are dead branches and withered leaves? The author tells us at the beginning of the story.

Suddenly, like a whirlwind, the banana company arrived and took root in the center of town. In its wake came “dead leaves,” a messy, noisy heap of human dregs and material trash from elsewhere. A relic of a civil war that grew more distant and more incredible by the day… After the war, when we came to Macondo to admire its fertile soil, we expected that sooner or later the “dead leaves” would arrive, but we did not expect it to come with such ferocity.

Yes, the “withered leaves” come from the outside, the “withered leaves” the ruthless, the “stinking leaves” the influx of labor force, destroy the quiet life of the town. However, the “withered branches and withered leaves” in the author’s pen seem to refer not only to these, but also to the pedantic apathy, conservative backwardness of the original residents of the town.

Mrs. Ravenka lived a dull, vexing widowhood, brooding over moral immorality behind a fan that never turned; Agda was paralysed and exhausted by the disease; The spoken words of Isabel; The old colonel’s fatalistic muttering and so on were Marquez’s sighs of sorrow and anger at the reality of man.

The hateful “withered leaves” can be swept away by storms (revolution, war, economic collapse, etc.), but the “mysterious force” — human nature — is rigid as a rock. I wonder which side is the real callous, stinking “dead leaves”.

There are four main characters in the book, the three Macondo town and the doctor. The story begins with the story of three people burying a doctor who hanged himself. They describe reality from the different perspectives of the colonel, his daughter and his grandson, and connect many memories of their past.

But the doctor, in the whole story is a negative image, he is criticized and ostracized by everyone. Even the colonel disliked him for refusing to save the wounded in Macondo on the night of the storm. However, the novel also shows that it was Macondo who turned his back on the doctor.

Now, against the general will, the colonel buried the doctor. He took her daughter with him, and she took her son with her. They both tried to soothe their loneliness and insecurity through each other. Thus the plot of the novel unfolds.

The organization of the psychological activities of the colonel and his daughter is the great reality of the town of Macondo, past and present, as well as the doctor’s lonely life. The “dead leaves” that can be seen here and there are disturbing. Traditional morality and compassion have been closely clouded by “dead leaves”. And the mental activity of the few little grandchildren is a kind of good hope for the future, he is not “withered branches”, “withered branches” will disappear in the future.

The colonel buried the doctor “under a supreme will.” What was this “supreme will”? On the one hand, it is a promise. The doctor had saved the Colonel’s life, and the Colonel had promised to bury him when he died. However, the novel also shows that the Colonel saved the doctor first, so that the living dead doctor saved the colonel when he was in danger. So, on the other hand, the colonel burying the doctor is a spiritual and emotional pursuit.

Through the portrayal of the colonel, the novel shows that only a man like him can keep the ruthless Macondo away with the “dead branches and leaves” of the entanglement and intrusion. In Macondo, however, the colonel was alone. He has no company here to go on with him, except his daughters. Therefore, through the image of Colonel, the author expresses his anger and helplessness over the irreparable disaster brought to Macondo by “withered branches and withered leaves”.

However, the main protagonist of the book is the doctor, a man from other places. The author does not even give him a proper name, but always addresses him as “Doctor”. He had been eating and drinking at the Colonel’s house for eight years, and no one had ever asked him his name or his background. This unsurprising tone adds an eerie quality to the story, as if you don’t need a clear motive for anything you do.

So we had to wonder if it was true that Macondo cursed this alien doctor because of his rudeness, his lewdness, his unkindness and his refusal to help the wounded.

In this story, the author shows the reader two kinds of evil through “withered branches and withered leaves”, “individual evil” and “collective evil”. What is right and what is wrong?

It is shameful to have an individual who is as guilty as the doctor, but is it acceptable to dilute the evil when it is broken down into the individual inhabitants of Macondo?

This evil, projected from the thin crack in the curtain of every room in the town, hung the death notice of “justice” at the door of the doctor’s house in the middle of the night.

In their last conversation, the colonel asks the doctor:

“Tell me, Doctor, do you believe in God?”

“I am not an atheist, I assure you, Colonel. I just don’t want to think about God. I feel uneasy at the thought of God; It disturbs me to think that God does not exist.”

The life of the main character in “La hojarasca” is spent in extreme loneliness. The colonel felt that the mysterious force was the force of compassion. By protecting the doctor and burying him, the colonel seemed to protect and appease himself. Because the colonel himself is lonely, he has no one around him to understand his soul, reality is full of “dead leaves,” the existence of God is doubtful.

The doctor’s loneliness and restlessness were also the Colonel’s loneliness and restlessness. This makes them resonate and communicate with each other spiritually.