Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon

The story promptly introduces Balthazar’s main conflict: He has just completed his work on the cage, a labor of love that he is clearly enthusiastic about, but he is not sure how to demand payment for his work. When Ursula asks him how much money he will ask for, Balthazar seems unsure. He suggests that he will ask for a modestly inflated amount and hope that José Montiel will haggle him down to an acceptable one. This slippery quality of money—the way its value changes from person to person—is García Márquez’s first suggestion that his story explores an essential controversy in human values: the relative importance of time, skill, money, and possessions.

The first scene also establishes a dynamic of contrast between Balthazar and Ursula. Ursula is annoyed by the two weeks Balthazar gave to his work on the cage (shutting down his normal carpentry business to complete it), but now her main concern is defending the value of his work. “Ask for fifty,” she tells Balthazar, nearly doubling the price he is thinking of naming. Ursula serves as a foil, bringing Balthazar’s lack of business acumen into focus. Later in the story she also represents the fulfilling life of humble pleasure that Balthazar stands to lose if the Montiels do not pay him for the time he has sacrificed. 

Dr. Giraldo is the first character to articulate how beautiful the cage is, suggesting that even without a bird inside, it could “sing by itself” (150). When Balthazar refuses to sell the cage to him, the doctor presses, briefly insisting that Balthazar could simply make another cage to fill Montiel’s order. Ultimately, the doctor leaves in good spirits, but the interaction highlights the tension between Balthazar’s integrity as an artist and the economy around him, in which money commands production. For Balthazar, the cage is more than a trade good with no intrinsic value; it was created with a singular essence that may not be replicable. He maintains that he built the cage expressly for José’s son, Pepe, which highlights the loyal quality of Balthazar’s character and his conviction that the cage is unique. When Balthazar refuses the doctor’s offer because he trusts the Montiels to pay him, it plants the seed for the later ironic revelation that the doctor’s money would have been better than no payment at all.

When Balthazar brings the cage to the home of the Montiels, the story arrives at its climax. The Montiel house is closed off from the townspeople, like a fortress or cloister which only Balthazar is allowed to enter. It is a hot afternoon. While Balthazar previously opened the doors to his own house, to cool it, Montiel’s wife closes her door quickly behind Balthazar to keep out the crowd of townspeople who have followed Balthazar and the cage. The image of a procession of townspeople recalls religious pilgrimages and ceremonies, suggesting that Balthazar’s cage has captured the town’s imagination and reverence, as though it were a holy object as well as a beautiful one.

The Montiels’ home provides dramatic contrasts to Balthazar’s home, underscoring the conflict of interests between the upper and lower classes. In Balthazar’s simple house, Ursula irons clothing near Balthazar’s hammock, suggesting a healthy balance of work and rest. José Montiel’s house, by comparison, is crowded with objects designed to be bought and sold, not used or rested on. The omniscient narrator suggests that Montiel is not as rich as he seems, but also suggests that he is ruthless enough to attain the wealth he is rumored to possess. As the scene unfolds, Montiel proves this to be so. The two men oppose each other both in both temperament and status. While Balthazar is humble and kind, José is verbally and physically abusive to his family and so volatile his doctor has warned him that his temper could kill him. Balthazar gives away his work when confronted with violence, while José takes no pity on his screaming child, instead suggesting that his wife rub lemon and salt into any cuts that result from the boy’s tantrum. When the two men meet, the force of José and Pepe’s outbursts overwhelms the plans Balthazar made with Ursula.

When Balthazar leaves without payment and Montiel exits the narrative, Balthazar’s most immediate conflict is over. However, the talkative momentum of the crowd outside Montiel’s house carries Balthazar past one conflict and into another, subverting any reader expectation for a singular resolution. As the narrative continues, it complicates one-dimensional ideas of poor versus rich—scenarios that might have characterized a shorter, more straightforward parable. In the second part of García Márquez’s story, he explores the idea that the poor and the rich hold each other prisoner, equally complicit in their antagonism.

Balthazar’s tragic fall also subverts common constructions of good versus evil. Balthazar feels pity and loyalty, but he is also susceptible to a desire to be liked and applauded, and this desire dilutes his heroism. Overly malleable when faced with others’ forceful expectations, Balthazar cannot extract himself from his own lies—first, that the cage was a gift, and second, that he was paid for it. After Balthazar’s tragedy crests, the story’s falling action takes place at the pool hall where he celebrates with the townspeople. When Balthazar claims to have been paid, moreover, it sets in motion the narrative arc that leads to the story’s last scene, in which he lies drunk and penniless in the street. Though he commands sympathy as a protagonist, he is not uniformly good, and he ends up disappointing Ursula and left behind by the crowd that urged him to celebrate.

By continuing beyond Pepe’s acquisition of the cage, a natural resting point for the conflict presented in the story’s first scene, García Márquez develops the simple story of a carpenter into a five-act structure that is common in Shakespeare’s plays, especially his tragedies. This story structure is called Freytag’s pyramid, after the German dramatist Gustav Freytag. Unlike a standard three-act play structure, in which a conflict is presented in the first act, rallied against in the second, and overcome in the third, a five-act tragedy contains additional twists. In a tragedy like “Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon,” the climax reverses the hero’s initial happy fortune. In Balthazar’s case, he loses the success and fame his beautiful cage bring him early in the story through his own moral failings.