Imagine going on a voyage on the
sea and your ship capsizes, your fellow sailors drown and all you have is a
raft and a few oars right in the middle of the sea. This was the reality of the
Colombian sailor, Luis Alejandro Velasco, in the year 1955 and he stayed on
that way for ten days. Years after his ordeal, he was interviewed by the then
Colombian journalist who later on went to win the Nobel Prize for Literature,
Gabriel García Márquez who weaves an interesting novella from the perspective
of the sailor Velasco.
On February 28, 1955, eight crew
members left Mobile, Alabama, United States towards the Colombian port of
Cartagena aboard the destroyer Caldas.
En route, the chip capsizes and one of the sailors survive and make it to
Colombia, surely, everyone would want to know his story but that is where the
complications arise. Colombia was under military dictatorship back then wherein
the regime declared all the sailors dead because of a storm. However, there was
no storm and in fact, the ship was overloaded with contraband leading to a
major factor for the accident and the government didn’t want the shortcomings
exposed.
The story has a lot of parallels with
that of the Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe, however, there were some significant differences. Crusoe had Friday
as his companion, Velasco had none; Crusoe had arable lands, Velasco’s sources
of food was minimal. But then, both deal with the survival instinct and that
aspect was brought in well wherein Velasco, desperate for food, commits the cardinal sin for a sailor, which is
killing a seagull.
In this quest for survival, there
were a lot of other things that were happening to Velasco, wherein, though he didn’t
have Friday like Crusoe, he hallucinated a friend and indulges in conversations
with him. It also gets him thinking about Caribbean islands with cannibals and
starting to feel safer at the sea than land. Despite the fear, he was overjoyed
when he did arrive at land and saw a fellow human being and shout for help.
That was an aspect that this novella lacked a little, wherein, his arrival and
first interactions back in land could have been described better.
The author also brings out how
Velasco being celebrated as a hero and his sudden increase in marketability (considering his
endorsement deals) started to lack meaning to him, as, if he had supplies in
the raft, his story wouldn’t have been half as popular. The story did have a
price, for Velasco, though, with the truth exposed, he was forced to retire
into oblivion by the military regime and was soon, forgotten.
For once, I had a relatively
light read from Gabriel García Márquez and I think this book does a very fair
job in bringing out the story for a novella. I would award the book a rating of
seven on ten.
Rating – 7/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
Andy
No comments:
Post a Comment