{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01756819232547388, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.86449864498645, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Potency vs Incontinence in The Autumn of the Patriarch of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Power is the focus of Gabriel García Márquez's novel, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and the discussion is illustrated with the most common, natural objective correlative that exists: man himself and his body's functions. The decaying dictator who refuses to let go of his suffocating control even minutes before his long-overdue death is power's single embodiment for the country he dominates as well as for the novel. His potency, whether shown in a violent rape or in a scene of nearly gentle lovemaking, represents his ultimate physical power. Impotence is not the other extreme, however; it is just a halfway point between jpotency and total loss of the body's power, which is complete incontinence. These physical extremes are carefully developed as parallels to the political extremes by which the patriarch operates, and the result is a penetrating view of one man's ability to totally subjugate many others. I am aware of no other criticism that deals specifically with the scatology of Gabriel García Márquez, let alone one which deals with its symbolic use in The Autumn of the Patriarch. In any case, it is my belief that the use of potency and incontinence as representatives of power and its lack is unique not merely to the cannon of García Márquez's work, but rather to precisely this novel. There is a temptation on a first reading of The Autumn of the Patriarch to allow disgust at the innundation of excremental images to obscure the fact that the images are essential. Repugnant as the continual sexual and scatological references become, they are thematically necessary, and are in no way the kind of thing a lesser writer than Márquez might embellish as marketable shock value. Everyone in the Patriarch's mythical seaside kingdom turns inward to him as the sole, frightening source of power. The Patriarch is left to turn inward on his own body to explain the conditions of his reign. Just as male potency comes to represent the Patriarch's political power, the inability to control eliminatory functions becomes an ingenious symbol for political incontinence.