The Autumn of the Patriarch

At the viewing of the body, the people promote the General to General of the Universe. The narrator sees that while the body, with make-up and dress, looks more like the General now, he still looks very little like he might have looked while alive. The narrator reflects on the palace in ruin and on the fact that the nation is finally without its ruler. The people fear what might become of them after living so long under his control with his command dictating everything they’ve known.

A young girl narrates her rape by the General and her confusion because he became the greatest love that she’s ever known. The General, too, seeks sex from every schoolgirl that he meets as his debts pile up and foreign ambassadors come seeking the sea in repayment. The General refuses, saying that he’d “rather be dead than without a sea” (211). He spends his days locked in his palace chasing young schoolgirls, one of whom reveals to him that the girls passing by the palace every day are there only for him—trained not in scholastic education but rather in how to please him. Behind his back, the minister of education and archbishop primate construct this ruse to protect real schoolgirls from the General.