Brief Comment On ‘Story Of A Shipwreck’

Brief comment on ‘Story of a shipwreck’

Story of a shipwrecked was; In its beginning (1955), a journalistic chronicle published in nine episodes for fourteen consecutive days in the viewer; Colombian newspaper, by Gabriel García Márquez. However, in 1970 it was novel and published in the form of a novel. Therefore, it belongs to the novel report genre; who plays to alternate fiction and history, a new and ambiguous genre with which the author risks.

Gabriel García Márquez is inherently related to magical realism, so this work highlights that he moves away from his own postulates. Story of a shipwreck tells the story of Luis Alejandro Velasco, crew of the Colombian Navy, who “was drifting for ten days without eating or drinking, which was proclaimed hero of the homeland, kissed by the queens of beauty and made rich by advertising, and then abhorred by the government and forgotten forever ”. He had a strong national impact in Colombia, since it was clear that the sailors had fallen to the sea because of smuggling cargoes that were released on the deck, and not by a storm as reported by the Colombian Navy.

Story of a shipwrecked is an exceptional case in which it is appreciated how the human being reacts when it is away from any social bond and when their survival possibilities are almost null. This makes it to some extent a mystical story. On the other hand, it is a complaint against the Colombian government, at that time under the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, for the smuggling they made.

There are certain aspects that capture reader’s attention. First, despite being a long time; Ten days, in which nothing happens, the few singular facts such as capturing a seagull, eating a branch or sharks that come daily to five o’clock, are giving amenity to the story. Second, the author affirms that the text are practically textual words of the shipwrecked, which together with the existence of a previous text (the journalistic chronicle) and the fact of confronting a dictatorship exposing his lies; Which forced the author to exile to Paris, contribute an overwhelming likelihood to the novel, which introduces the reader into a territory and a feeling of reading something historical and totally true.

Finally, its dry, direct, concise and oblivious language to the exuberance of other novels of the author, used to tell events that are desperate, including the slow death of a person, fear, uncertainty, loneliness and thirst, generates admiration in the reader for not dramatizing and narrating it with the fortitude that a great work deserves.