20 pages • 40-minute read
Death Constant Beyond Love
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Character Analysis
Senator Onésimo Sanchez
The senator is a 42-year-old man who, the narrator tells immediately, is “six months and eleven days” away from dying (Paragraph 1). Although “married to a radiant German woman who had given him five children,” the happiness Sanchez felt in that life fades as he heads to yet another electoral campaign. He feels “older and more alone than ever” (Paragraph 2).
The rose that Sanchez wears on his lapel is the symbol that carry the story. He works to keep the rose alive as he travels through the desert to towns that threaten it. As he rests, he places the rose in water to give it life. This sense of fragility, of protection against impending death, creates the overall mood for the story.
Although Sanchez is no longer mystified by the seemingly magical flight of inanimate objects, meant to manipulate the crowds, he does believe in the intervening hand of death that guides him. Newly made aware that death is coming, he sees it as a complicit force in the decisions he makes. At the same time, he uses his power to create spaces of intimacy with Laura as he awaits death. He also makes himself “[die] without” Laura, though it remains unclear whether he ever unlocks the padlock that protects her. The ultimate absence and loneliness that he feels permeates his death, which seems to exist across the story, not at its end (Paragraph 35).
Laura Farina
Like Sanchez, Laura has little choice in any of her decisions. Instead of death, her father, Nelson, controls her actions. The 19-year-old has little voice in her decision making but is a means for her father of gaining freedom in his life, as well as for Sanchez in understanding his death. The fact that she is “the most beautiful woman in the world” makes this healing capacity possible (Paragraph 8).
Laura is mystified by the rose in Sanchez’s home. Although the narrator gives no access to Laura’s thoughts, he does point out her curiosities by showing where she looks. Laura is fascinated by a paper butterfly that becomes part of the wall. In witnessing this transfiguration, she becomes the border between magic and reality. In this way, Laura operates as a medium in the text. She can see that some visions in the world are created by people and power, and some are not: in this way, she reflects Sanchez’s concerns. The story suggests that when she becomes transfixed by the rose, Laura is aware of its function as a symbol of the will to fight for life and the fact of impending death.
Nelson Farina
Sanchez describes Laura’s father as a “son of a bitch” (Paragraph 35). After drawing and quartering his first wife, he departs to find Laura’s mother, a “blasphemous black woman” (Paragraph 8). The French-speaking man repeatedly asked Sanchez, his senator, for help gaining “a false identity card which would place him beyond the reach of the law” (Paragraph 9). He had given up, but as he realizes that he is “rearing the most beautiful woman in the world,” he recognizes that he can use Laura to gain the security he needs (Paragraph 8). Farina sends Laura to Sanchez with a padlock around her under her clothing so that Sanchez can only use her body after granting Nelson his wish.
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