Via Justine De Fant

The Vain Pursuit of an Unrealized Truths
An Exegesis of “Eyes of a Blue Dog” by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

“Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.”
Jean Paul Sartre

“Necessity has the face of a dog.”[1]
Gabriel García Márquez

[Please Note: I wrote this when I was an undergrad. I am now a graduate student and my current sentiments are as follows: FUCK FREUD]

When the sun dips and the world outside cools down, it is time to sleep. For many, this is a simple ritual. They rest their heads on their pillows. They close their eyes and suddenly they are flying, reliving distorted childhood memories, or traveling the various avenues that their dreams take them. Then when they wake in the morning, they think nothing more of it. Hidden beneath the depths of the mundane façade of these landscapes and events lies a deeper, more profound truth of who these sleepers are– what they crave, what they fear. What are dreams if not windows to the subconscious? In The Uncanny[2], Sigmund Freud writes that “the meaning of our dreams usually remains obscure, the reason is that at night we are visited by desires that we are ashamed of and must conceal from ourselves, that have for this very reason been repressed, pushed into the unconscious.” This idea sets the stage for longing and desolation to manifest in “Eyes of a Blue Dog”[3] a short story by Gabriel García Márquez in which the narrator meets the perfect woman in his dreams each night. They gather in the shadows of a cold world of solitude that provides solace because they share it together. Yet, there lies danger in the man’s suppression and idealization of the object of his desire.

Dreams forgo logic in favor of depicting one’s most raw self. So what is the narrator longing for without end? It is clear that he recognizes his meetings with the woman as something that has been ongoing on for years. Some nights he can feel the sheets fall from him, magnifying the cold, and in others he wakes to the sound of a spoon falling. This may emphasize the intensity and ceaselessness of his yearning but does not reveal it. Consider Freud’s interpretation of dreams: “A jocular saying has it that ‘love is a longing for home‘, and if someone dreams of a certain place or a certain landscape and, while dreaming, thinks to himself, ‘I know this place, I’ve been here before’, this place can be interpreted as representing his mother’s genitals or her womb.”[4] We can view the woman as a being of comfort, of home, of care and love that is often associated with a mother. The narrator longs for the feelings associated with whom he first desired in this world. It is a comforting sentiment knowing you are not alone, but the solitude of these two beings–whether fictitious of not– is only heightened in this illusory world. It serves as a stark contrast to the yearning and passion that lay between a lonely man and woman. Everything they wish for is within proximity, but they still cannot have it. Perhaps this is why the woman is characterized as being “oily, slipper,” an object that could easily slip through his grasp the moment he tries to latch on to her (Márquez 433). She is present in his dream because she is absent in his reality.

In Being and Nothingness[5], Jean-Paul Sartre touches upon the relationship between lovers. He writes: “While I attempt to free myself from the hold of the Other, the Other is trying to free himself from mine; while I seek to enslave the Other, the Other seeks to enslave me” (Sartre 475). He goes on further to note that to know someone is to own them. In his dream, the man and woman own one another. He wishes to dominate her and to be the center of this woman’s world. In his dreams, he is. Márquez writes: “Her life had been dedicated to finding me in reality, though that identifying phrase: “Eyes of a blue dog.” And she went along the street saying it aloud, as a way of telling the only person who could have understood her” (434). The woman even reveals her nakedness to him.[6] In this dream world, his cravings are realized, and to a small extent, met. Sartre also expands on this possession as being something that travels beyond the physical. He claims that “if Love were in fact a pure desire for the physical possession, it could in many cases be easily satisfied” (Sartre 478). The characters’ encounters are far from “easy.” They are in the midst of their deepest wants, but cannot attain them. The narrator is seeking something deeper than touch. He craves connection. Moreover, not only does he desire a partner in his solitude he also desires possession. The narrator claims, “I’ve always wanted to see you like that, with the skin of your belly full of deep pits, as if you’ve been beaten” (Márquez 434). The bruises serve as a sign of her submission to a stronger power, himself.

These observations all lead to yet another question: Is the woman imagined? Is she a tangible and active participant of the “real” world? Several instances indicate that this woman is merely a figment of his imagination. Why can she remember the contents of the dream and he cannot? She is a reoccurring participant of his fragmented dreamscape is fully cognizant of who is sleeping outside of the room they share and what is down the hallway from their tiny space. For her, he is the Other. Despite the dream being an object of his own construction, he is the intruder in the world that she is a part of. While the narrator remains cold due to the sheets falling off in his sleep, the woman can warm herself over the flames of the lamp in the room. That is, he is subject to the happenings of the outside, while she only exists and experiences what is in the room– in the dream. In addition, the lamp shared between them is almost a border stopping him from crossing into the world she lives in. While he wishes to touch her, he cannot. Rather, “[He] kept on walking with the cigarette and matches in [his] hand, which would not go beyond the lamp” (Márquez 435).

It can further be argued that the woman is even his own subconscious come to him in the form of what he both fears and desires the most. For him, she represents both companionship[7] and loneliness. They are both desolate creatures and when he looks in the mirror he sees himself. Take the following lines from Márquez:

“I thought she was looking at me for the first time. But then, she turned around behind the lamp and I kept feeling her slippery and oily look in back of me, over my shoulder, I understood that it was I who was looking at her for the first time” […] and “I said to her again: ‘I see you.’ And she raised her eyes from the brassiere again. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said. I asked her why. And she, with her eyes quiet and on her brassiere again: ‘Because your face is turned toward the wall.’” (Márquez 433-434)

Even when his gaze is not directly on her, he knows what she is doing: “She had raised her eyes;” and what part of the room she lays: “Sitting in front of the mirror again” (Márquez 433-434). It is as if every movement of hers is his own. Her longing for him is the most extreme version of his own yearning. While she wakes up from each sleep remembering the phrase they use to find one another: “Eyes of a blue dog,” he never fails to forget despite him being the one inventing the phrase for them to use. It becomes apparent that he is the one who truly wishes to find her, but, ironically, is the one who cannot remember the happenings of the dreams when he wakes. Thus, this only affirms the suppression of his longings in the real world. More than that, the woman tells him not to come closer or he’ll ruin the illusion. If he breaks this fantasy of her and of their shared space, he will come face to face with his own unfulfilled desires and his own solitude. If we take the woman to be an extension of his subconscious, the narrator is warning himself against that which would shed light into his deepest fears.

The woman is both a symbol of his loneliness and a balm for it. Yet, his idealization of her is only damaging the ability of his subconscious to reach a resolution. He traps her in his gaze. Sartre writes, “The Other [the narrator] looks at me and as such he holds the secret of my being, he knows what I [the woman] am. Thus, the profound meaning of my being is outside of me” (Sartre 473). Her being is only given value from his view of her. By “her” I am referring to any companion the narrator wishes to find in reality as the woman of his dreams is a representation of the unrealistic expectations he may project onto women in the real world. In this dream, he designs her to be perfect, but in doing so, she is confined to such perfection. By idealizing her, he offers no room for improvement. It stunts her growth and in a deeper sense, their potential growth as a couple. Were he to actualize this desire in the outside of his subconscious, the manifestations of his unrealistic expectations would only disappoint him once he comes face to face with the inevitable flaws of reality. Thus, suppressing his desires, failing to bring them into the light–– into the real world where they can be resolved–– the narrator only fuels his solitude, only heightens his cold. His fears and desolation must first be recognized before his desires can be actualized. Only when the narrator meets his repressed feelings of solitude and desire for companionship can he go beyond the lamp, warm himself from the cold, and truly wake up.

Notes

[1] This quote is the English equivalent of the Spanish proverb “la necesidad tiene cara de hereje,” which translates to “the need has the face of a heretic.”

[2] Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny (Penguin Modern Classics) (Kindle Locations 1534-1536) Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

[3] Márquez, Gabriel. “Eyes of a Blue Dog.” The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Daniel Halpern, Penguin, 1986, pp. 433-437

[5]Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Washington Square, 1993.

[6] In The Uncanny, Freud explains this nakedness as the desire for truth. When a dreamer is naked, he/she is in their most raw and honest form. Thus, the narrator desires to know someone when they are their complete, honest self—a form of intimacy deeper than touch.

[7] In the following passages, the idea of “her” can be understood as “companionship” and its derivatives–the longing of it– or the extension of the narrator’s own being rather than the actual woman herself.