One Of These Days

“One Of These Days” is a short story about two adversaries who grudgingly accept coexistence in the same town. The story explores the role of power relationships and how those relationships can shift and even reverse depending on life’s circumstances. A central theme of the short story is Power and Vulnerability as Aurelio and the Mayor vie for dominance in the dentist’s office despite the fact that they are not social equals in their town.

In accordance with the principles of Neorealism in film and literature, the story strives for both verisimilitude and political engagement, as García Márquez juxtaposes the two principal characters and highlights the everyday struggles of a common, impoverished person like Aurelio Escovar in an unjust and inequitable society.

The title introduces the motif of time in the story, set in either a specific day in the life of the protagonist—a warm, rainless Monday—or a typical day like any other, depicting the hours-long, solitary tasks of the dentist, who lacks formal education and has no prospects of social upward mobility, in his antiquated and decrepit office.

In highlighting a specific day, ordinary in all respects except for the extraordinary reversal of power that occurs when the Mayor appears in the dentist’s office, the title relates to the neorealist practice of describing everyday life experiences for common people and how they manage the social complexities of an unjust society.