BALTHAZAR’S MARVELOUS AFTERNOON

- GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

Jean Alric B. Almira

BSED III – English
 INFORMATION ON THE WRITER
- GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

• Born: March 6, 1927 – Arataca Columbia

• Died: April 17, 2014 – Mexico City, Mexico

• Colombian novelist and one of the greatest writers of

the 20th century, who was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1982, mostly for his
masterpiece Cien años de soledad (1967; One
Hundred Years of Solitude).
• Fourth Latin American to receive the Nobel (Others: Gabriela Mistral -1945; Pablo Neruda – 1971, Miguel Angel
Asturias – 1967.
• Novelist, short story writer, and journalist.
• Other Notable Works: El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985; Love in the Time of Cholera); Memoria de mis putas
tristes (2004; Memories of My Melancholy Whores); El general en su laberinto (1989; The General in His Labyrinth)
 CHARACTER MAP

Ursula Balthazar Jose “Chepe” Montiel Adelaide

Montiel

Pepe

• Blue Box - Male

• Pink Box - Female
Dr. Octavio Giraldo Invalid Wife
• Circle – Prospective Customer
• Heart - Lover
• Thunderbolt – Had beef
• Half Circle - Son
 CHARACTERS
(CHARACTER MAP)

• Balthazar – an 30 year-old carpenter who created “the most beautiful cage in the world.
• Ursula – lover of Balthazar for 4 years. They have no children and aren’t married.
• Dr. Octavio Giraldo - an old physician, happy with life but tired of his profession, has an
invalid wife who likes birds.
• Jose “Chepe” Montiel – a well-off but not so rich man who has a lot of capability to
become one. Obese and hairy, he was so cautious that he slept without an electric fan. A
brutal disciplinarian
• Pepe Montiel – 12 year-old son of Chepe, ordered a cage for troupials, scolded by his
parents but was given the cage for free.
• Adelaide Montiel – wife of Chepe, tortured by an obsession with death.
 SYNOPSIS OF THE LIT/STORY

• Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon was a short story about the

afternoon of a 30-year old carpenter whose hobby is making
bird cages. He has a four-year partner named Ursula, they
aren’t married and they have no children. One day, after two
weeks, he finished the “most beautiful cage in the world”
ordered by the son of a wealthy man. People admired it,
especially an old physician, who wanted to buy it. Still,
Balthazar did not sell it and went to Jose Montiel to sell the
cage for 60 pesos. When he came it was revealed that the
child’s parents were unaware and so refused to pay.
 SYNOPSIS OF THE LIT/STORY

• With this the kid threw tantrums and so Balthazar just gave it
for free. He did it in good spirits. He then left with Montiel
shouting and the crowd outside rejoiced. He felt excited.
They went to the and people bought him a pint, he then
bought everyone a round of drink. He lied about getting sixty
from Montiel. He was not a drinker and so he became really
drunk. He spent money he never got and pawned his watch.
In the end, the following morning, he was lying down on the
street like a dead man.
 BACKGROUND
(SOCIO-POLITICAL MILIEU)

• Published in 1983, and supposedly set in a small

fictional town probably in Colombia. Where
everyone knew each other.
• Marxism – Marquez shows the conflict between
classes, that of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
masses.
 TAKEAWAYS / MORAL OF THE STORY

• Do not let pride get the best of you.

• Do not spend what you do not have.
• Pretending and maintaining grand facades
will cost you, a lot.
• The struggle between the classes will always
and forever be present.
• Even saints could fall.
 FAMOUS LINES

• The cage was finished. Balthazar hung it under the eave, from force of
habit, and when he finished lunch everyone was already saying that it
was the most beautiful cage in the world.
• The cage was on display on the table: with its enormous dome of wire,
three stories inside, with passageways and compartments especially for
eating and sleeping and swings in the space set aside for the birds’
recreation, it seemed like a small-scale model of a gigantic ice factory.
• He never felt at ease among the rich. He used to think about them,
about their ugly and argumentative wives, about their tremendous
surgical operations, and he always experienced a feeling of pity.
 FAMOUS LINES

• He had spent so much that he had had to leave his watch in

pawn, with the promise to pay the next day. A moment
later, spread-eagled in the street, he realized that his shoes
were being taken off, but he didn’t want to abandon the
happiest day of his life.
 REFERENCES

• Echevarría, R. G. (N.A.) Gabriel García Márquez.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez
• McManus, Dermot. "Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon by Gabriel García
Márquez." The Sitting Bee. The Sitting Bee, 2 May. 2018. Web.