Why does Bayardo return and what do the letters mean? Apply any of the aspects of magic realism that we have addressed so far, or do an analysis of language. Upon reading about Angela's letters to Bayardo, my thoughts veered towards the move The Notebook. In this popular love story, based off the book written by Nicholas Sparks, after being separated from his sweetheart Allie Hamilton, Ryan Calhoun writes to her everyday for a year, with the hopes that she still remembers him.
After a year of receiving no reply, he gives up, thinking that Allie decided to forget or put aside their summer love. Allie never replied to Ryan's letter for her mother collected them from the mail and hid them from her. Eventually, Allie returns to Ryan with all of the letters tied in a neat bundle, unopened. Coincidentally, Marquez's story encompasses the same idea with the letters, and I find similar motives within both situations.
Bayardo San Roman feared what the letter's had to say and the past of shame and dishonor that would arise by opening up his memories in form of Angela's letters. Similarly, Allie's mother disapproved of Allie's romance with Ryan, a man of lower social ranking than the Hamilton's, and by allowing her daughter to read and view his letters, she would be promoting a break in social code, the exact opposite of what she had always preached.
The disgrace of a high-class woman marrying a low-class worker relates to the disgrace of a high-class man marrying a low-class woman who was not a virgin at time of marriage. By not opening the letters, he puts aside the past and Angela. However, after seventeen years, he reaches a type of consensus and returns. (At this time I assume it's so Bayardo has 'forgiven' Angela and is coming to be with her? but when the narrator goes to talk with Angela twenty-three years after the death, six years after Bayardo first appeared, Angela was once again alone. )
Author: Loretta Bowman