ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

A Psychological Study of No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez: A Psychoanalytic Approach Based on Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung

The silent perseverance of a poor war veteran who waits every Friday for a pension letter that never comes is explored in Gabriel García Márquez's 1961 novella No One Writes to the Colonel. This study uses Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung's psychoanalytic frameworks to investigate the Colonel's inner world. The essay illustrates the Colonel's internal conflict between hopelessness and the enduring delusion of hope by utilizing Freud's theories of repression, sublimation, and the death drive. The Colonel's symbolic role as the "Wise Old Man," representing perseverance and spiritual dignity in the face of material hardship, is further clarified by Jung's theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes. This study contends that Márquez's novella is both a profound psychological tale and a socio-political critique, based on main textual evidence and secondary critical analysis. The Colonel's never-ending wait turns becomes a symbolic act of resistance, a declaration of purpose in a ridiculous and forgotten world. In the end, Márquez dramatizes the unconscious human yearning for wholeness and meaning through the language of waiting and stillness.