Response to "One of These Days" (Yinan )

One of These Days

One of These Days was a very short story which was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was talking about a dentist pulled out an infected wisdom tooth of the Mayor without the anesthesia. It is an interesting story but it reflected the truth that might happen in our recent society vividly.

In the beginning, the author sets up the background and tells us how the dentist looks like and his working situations. The dentist, Aurelio Escovar, is not rich and professional. The dentist can open an office without any degrees, which is not allowed. But in the story, maybe that was the mayor who gave the permissions for him to open the office. But obviously, he was not wealthy dentist like others. Then the dentist “went on working with the idea that before lunch it would rain again”. That foreshadowed the bad mayor would come just like the bad weather would come. His eight-year-old son told the mayor’s arrival as a patient and the dentist refused to see him. That reflected us the mayor was not welcomed by the dentist either as a mayor or a patient. Therefore, that must be a bad mayor who didn’t care about his residents and made his own profits for himself from the town. The dentist tried to lie out but the mayor heard his voice already. The mayor warned him if he didn’t take care of him, he would shoot him. A mayor or a patient should threaten a dentist like this as well. Therefore, from the dialogue between the dentist and the son and the reactions of the dentist, they both made the readers feel that the mayor was unwelcomed by the dentist and the mayor must do something bad for him or his town. After inspecting the infected tooth, the dentist told the mayor that tooth had to be taken without anesthesia. The mayor tried to smile to the dentist but the dentist didn’t response to him at all. The dentist prepared the instruments and washed his hand without looking at the mayor. However, the mayor was staring at his every action carefully all the time. The carefuless attitudes could make the patient more worried because the dentist didn’t even care about him at all. During the procedure the dentist was taking out the tooth, the dentist said with a bitter tenderness” Now you’ll pay for out twenty dead men.” That was full emotions of abominations and made readers understand why the dentist hated the mayor so much and didn’t even treat him politely like a patient. The mayor was tearing and trembling. When the mayor left, he told the dentist to send the bill. The dentist asked to him or the town. The mayor said it was the same thing. We could tell the mayor didn’t pay the bill right after treatments and used the town money as his own. The poor situation of the dental office reflected the poor situation of the town. All the money for the town residents was wasted by the mayor. Even there were twenty people died because of the mayor.

This story reminds me our today’s society. I believe there are such mayors exits in this world and waste people’s money for their own profits. They don’t care about their people and don’t want to take the responsibilities as a mayor or other leaders. The story never mentioned the mayor was bad. But from the attitudes, communications and actions that the dentist treated him, the readers could clearly identify how bad this mayor was and how much people hated him. That is really a good and meaningful story!