Villalba 1

Ana Villalba
Dr. Stratman
English II
15 May 2013
A Present Life Living In the Past
One of the major themes that can be found in The Incredible and Sad Story of Innocent
Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is how people
sometimes decide to live in the past, with their memories and stuff, and are unable to
accept the changes that they may face throughout their lives; so this becomes that
accumulating stuff is not always a sign of materialism, but a way an individual defines
themself. Just like Erendiras grandmother, who is an old woman, a widow, who cannot accept
the fact that her son and her husband, men of power and glory, are long time dead. She lives in
the house that her husband built for, her forcing her granddaughter to get her ready every day,
surrounded by all the stuff that she has been keeping throughout her life; all of these symbolizes
opulence and wealth, the kind of life she has with her husband when he was still alive (284, 285).
All these things are objects that define her as the beautiful woman, the wife of the Big Amadis,
the woman that she was in the past and is not anymore (307). Thus, when the fire destroys almost
all her possessions, she is eager to do everything, even prostituting Erendira, to regain all those
objects that represented the life she had and she was willing to keep living (289). As the story
goes on, the earned money by selling Erendira is spent by the grandmother in buying cheap
replicas of things she lost in the fire, so she can feel like she has not lost her life and her identity
(325). The grandmother is not interested in earning money to save it, but for recovering her
memories and beloved possessions (296).