Has a work of fiction ever been as spuriously transparent as No One Writes to the Colonel? Crisp and direct to the point of being laconic, this tale of a retired colonel who waits away his life, dying of hunger for a pension which never comes, could well be just what it seems and nothing more: a brilliantly terse indictment of social injustice in Latin America. Certainly in 1961, when it was first published, the story was seen in this light, which is to say, that it was read on its most unmistakable level. More recently, critics such as Peter Earle and Graciela Maturo have duly noted the complex network of symbols which sustain the main theme of García Márquez's novella, recognizing, once and for all, how this author always delivers more than mere appearances. Earle, for one, notes at least three features instrumental to our understanding of No One Writes to the Colonel: 1) the novella has a musical structure programmed on the basis of two voices, ‘discouragement’ and ‘illusion’; 2) there is a dialectic between desire and death housed within the persona of the protagonist; and 3) the rooster, prize possession of the colonel's slaughtered son, must be seen as ‘an allegory of vigilance and resurrection’. Maturo's concerns are of a more religious nature: she views the chronological development in the light of the Christian liturgical calendar.