SOURCE: Matos, Nicole C. “García Márquez's Of Love and Other Demons.” Explicator 59, no. 1 (fall 2000): 46-8.

In the following essay, Matos considers the recurring motif of animals and animalistic behavior in Of Love and Other Demons.

In Gabriel García Márquez's Of Love and Other Demons, the chain of events that leaves the promising Father Delaura exiled to a leper community and the young Sierva Maria dead is set off by a rabid dog that appears in the very first pages:

An ash gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst through the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path. Three of them were black slaves. The fourth, Sierva Maria [… was] the only child of the Marquis de...