María de la Luz Cervantes

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María de la Luz Cervantes is the protagonist of Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “I Only Came to Use the Phone,” a woman whose attempt to make a simple phone call spirals into a nightmarish wrongful confinement in a mental institution.

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Statements (44)

Predicate Object
instanceOf fictional character
literary character
appearsIn I Only Came to Use the Phone NERFINISHED
appearsInCollection Strange Pilgrims NERFINISHED
associatedGenre magical realism
psychological fiction
short story
associatedWorkLanguage Spanish
causeOfInstitutionalization bureaucratic error and misdiagnosis
centralThemeRelation bureaucratic injustice
loss of identity
miscommunication
wrongful confinement
characterArc from ordinary traveler to institutionalized patient
conflictType individual vs institution
individual vs misunderstanding
createdBy Gabriel García Márquez NERFINISHED
emotionalTrajectory from confusion to despair
familyName Cervantes NERFINISHED
firstPublicationAuthor Gabriel García Márquez NERFINISHED
gender female
givenName María NERFINISHED
keyPlotEvent fails to convince authorities she is sane
is mistakenly taken to a psychiatric asylum
is wrongfully confined as a mental patient
loses contact with her husband
literaryPeriod 20th-century literature
maritalStatus married
medium prose fiction
narrativePerspectiveRelation depicted through third-person narration
narrativeRole protagonist
nationality Mexican
notableTrait desperation to communicate with the outside world
insistence on her sanity
primaryMotivationAtStart to make a phone call
protagonistOf I Only Came to Use the Phone NERFINISHED
readerResponseRole elicits empathy and horror at injustice
settingRegionContext Spain NERFINISHED
spouse Saturno NERFINISHED
storySettingContext mental institution
symbolicFunction embodiment of misinterpreted reality
victim of institutional power
transportContextAtStart traveling by bus
workOriginalTitle Solo vine a hablar por teléfono NERFINISHED

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

I Only Came to Use the Phone mainCharacter María de la Luz Cervantes