Plot summary: In Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses (Alguien desordena estas rosas), a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, a dead boy recounts how, every Sunday, he tries to take roses from the altar tended by a woman to take them to his own grave. The story takes place in the house where they both lived decades ago. Having died in an accident, the boy remains as a spirit tied to the place, while the woman, who was close to him in life, devoutly maintains the altar erected in his memory. Although she cannot see him, the woman seems to sense his presence and watches over the roses with growing unease. Through the boy’s memories, the relationship between the two and the accident that led to his death are reconstructed. The house, abandoned for years, retains traces of that past life: forgotten shoes, accumulated dust, and the restored altar. The story foreshadows a future outcome: the day will come when the woman dies, and then the boy must find the men who took her to the hill, as they did with him. Only then will she understand that it was his presence—and not the wind—that disarranged the roses on the altar every Sunday.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses by Gabriel García Márquez
The story “Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses” by Gabriel García Márquez tells the tale of a boy who, from inside the house where he lived and died, observes the passage of time and the routine of a woman who grows roses and tends the altar erected in her honor. Through the protagonist’s memories and actions, the mysterious relationship that unites them is revealed, marked by death, memory, and the enduring nature of emotional ties that transcend time and physical existence.
The story begins with the narrator revealing his particular condition from the outset: he is dead. Despite this, he remains fully aware of himself and his surroundings. It is a rainy Sunday, but as the rain has stopped, he decides, as on other occasions, to take a bouquet of roses to his own grave. These roses are grown by a woman, whom he will talk about throughout the story, and who uses them to decorate altars and wreaths.
As he watches from his corner, he describes how she remains prostrate before her saints, wholly absorbed in her prayers. The narrator waits patiently for her to fall into her usual Sunday ecstasy, during which he can approach the altar, pick some roses, and leave for the hill where his body has been buried for many years. However, his attempt is thwarted when the lamp flickers; she raises her head and fixes her gaze on the chair where he is sitting, although she cannot see him. The narrator realizes that he must wait for her to go into the next room to take her Sunday nap.
He then recalls how, on previous Sundays, the situation had been more complicated. The woman had shown increasing vigilance, an inexplicable uneasiness as if she sensed an intangible presence accompanying her. The previous Sunday, for example, she had moved restlessly around the room, carrying the bouquet of roses from one side to the other before leaving it on the altar, and then she had gone in search of the lamp. As she passed through the hallway, the narrator observed her closely: she was wearing the same dark sweater and pink stockings she had worn forty years ago when, as a child, she was taken to the room where her infant corpse lay. The women of the village had told her to cry for the dead child, who was like a brother to her. Obeying, she cried, soaked by the rain.
The narrator recalls that he has been trying to approach the altar for several Sundays without success, as she is always on the alert. However, he once managed to reach the roses when she left momentarily to look for the lamp. He carefully selected the most beautiful flowers, but before leaving, he heard her footsteps returning. He quickly arranged the roses on the altar and returned to his place. When she reappeared in the doorway, illuminated by the lamp, her face had a peculiar expression as if she had received a revelation. Despite the passage of time, she was still recognizable as the girl from back then, although now transformed into an aged woman.
The narrator also remembers the day he recovered her shoes. They were the same ones she had worn on the day of her death and which had been left to dry by the stove. For twenty years, they remained forgotten in the empty house. He remembered how, after her death, the house was vacated and stripped of furniture and belongings. Only the chair in the corner remained, where he had stayed ever since.
After this long period of abandonment, the woman returned many years later. When she arrived, she was carrying a suitcase, a green hat, and the cotton bag she had always used. Despite the decades that had passed, the narrator immediately recognized her as the girl with whom he had shared his childhood games. Her return even interrupted the chirping of the cricket that had been echoing in the uninhabited house for twenty years.
Although the room is full of dust and cobwebs, a silent reunion takes place. She hesitates at the threshold and calls softly, “Boy! Boy!” as if she expects to find him still alive. Contrary to what the narrator thought, she did not come to visit; instead, she decided to stay and live there.
She aired out the house, rebuilt the altar, and restored the old musky scents to the room. Although the others took the furniture and belongings, she brought back the essence of the house. Since that day, she sleeps in the next room but spends her days in the altar room, praying and caring for her saints. She spends her time selling roses to passersby, always pointing out that the ones on the right are for sale and the ones on the left are for the saints. While she works, she sits in the rocking chair, mending and rocking, keeping her eyes fixed on the chair in the corner, where, unbeknownst to her, the narrator continues to sit, whom she unconsciously cares for as if he were her disabled grandson.
The narrator waits for the right moment to take the roses to fulfill his purpose. He knows that a day will come when she will not return to the room. When that moment arrives, he must leave for the last time to find four men to carry her body to the hill, just as they did with him many years ago. Then, he will be completely alone in the house. But on that day, she will finally understand that it was not the wind that scattered the roses on her altar every Sunday.
Characters in Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses by Gabriel García Márquez
The narrator is the protagonist and the voice that drives the entire story. From the beginning, it is clear that he is dead, the spirit of a child who died decades ago and remains attached to the house where he lived. Although he is dead, he retains the ability to think, remember, and observe everything that happens around him. His existence is marked by waiting and the repetition of a ritual: every Sunday, he tries to take roses from the altar, which is tended by a woman, to take them to his grave, but he never succeeds. Throughout the story, his voice combines a melancholic and serene view of death with memories of his childhood and his tragic end when he fell from a ladder in the barn. His memories also reveal the bond he had with the woman when they were both children, suggesting a sibling or very close relationship. Despite his spectral condition, the narrator retains human emotions: patience, nostalgia, affection, and even a form of resignation to his endless stay in the house. His greatest desire seems to be to fulfill that small act of homage: to place a bouquet of roses on her grave as a way of maintaining a gesture of life amid his suspended existence.
The woman, whose name is not mentioned, is the other key character in the story. She is the one who returns to the family home after many years of abandonment and restores the rituals of the past: she tends the altar, grows roses, prays, sells flowers, and follows an almost unchanging routine. Her relationship with the narrator is marked by an emotional bond that dates back to childhood when they played together and had a close, affectionate relationship. When he had the accident, she was taken to see the boy’s body and told to cry for him “like a brother.” Now, as an adult, she still seems to feel the invisible presence of the narrator, even though she cannot see or hear him directly. Her restless movements, her vigils in front of the altar, and certain startled gestures suggest that she unconsciously perceives something she cannot explain rationally. She lives alone, devoted entirely to her flowers, her saints, and her customs as if trying to keep the memory of a frozen moment intact. The image of the woman shows the contrast between the physical passage of time—she has aged, gained weight, her ankles stick out—and the emotional permanence of her childhood memories. Without fully realizing it, she continues to care for that dead child as if he were still alive in some corner of the house.
The secondary characters in the story are alluded to as presences that appear in the narrator’s memories without playing an active role in the present of the story. The women of the village who took the girl to the room on the day of the narrator’s death represent the community that organizes the rituals of death: they prepare the body, tell the girl to cry, and establish her first contact with loss. The other members of the family or people who, after the child’s death, abandoned the house, removed the furniture, and left are also mentioned briefly. These figures serve as a backdrop that emphasizes the physical abandonment of the house until the woman returns alone many years later.
Analysis of Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses by Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez’s short story Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses is a deeply atmospheric tale that addresses themes such as death, memory, the passage of time, and the emotional ties that endure beyond life. From the very first lines, the reader is immersed in a narrative where the every day and the supernatural coexist serenely without resorting to drama or terror. The story does not need to explain the fantastical phenomenon: the fact that the narrator is dead and yet remains conscious is presented with complete naturalness, almost as if it were just another state of existence.
The structure of the story is built from the narrator’s perspective, who is both a spectator and a protagonist of the events. This narrator, a child who died decades ago, remains tied to the house where he lived and observes every movement of the woman who returns and inhabits that space once again. The routine marks the story: on Sundays, the narrator tries to pick the roses that a woman grows and arranges on an altar, but his attempts are usually thwarted because she, although she does not see him, seems to sense his presence and remains vigilant. This minor conflict, which may seem insignificant, sustains the narrative tension throughout the story.
At its core, the story is a silent dialogue between the living and the dead. The woman, although not fully aware of the boy’s presence, maintains an emotional connection with him that is manifested in her daily rituals: tending the altar, growing roses, and praying before the saints.
The narrator, for his part, relives in his mind the moments of his childhood, especially the last afternoon when he suffered the accident that cost him his life while they were playing together. The repetition of these memories accentuates the idea that time seems suspended in this house: the past and the present are constantly mixed without a clear dividing line. The space of the house is fundamental to the story.
It is not only the setting where the events take place but also a veritable repository of memories frozen in time. There remain the narrator’s shoes, left out to dry after his death; the dust and cobwebs that covered the house during the years of abandonment; the altar that the woman rebuilds upon her return; and the cricket that sings for two decades until the day the woman returns.
Everything in the house bears the traces of an interrupted life. In this sense, the house functions almost as another character: it is charged with presences, history, and a life that has been suspended but is still latent. García Márquez’s narration unfolds in a very particular narrative time. Although the present is the framework in which the narrator attempts to gather the roses, memories of the past are continually present in the story.
This constant alternation between the spectral present and the evocation of childhood allows the reader to reconstruct the events that led to the narrator’s death and the woman’s lonely life. The information is not presented linearly but through fragments of memory that the narrator recovers while observing the current routine.
In terms of style, the story reflects the characteristics of García Márquez’s writing: a calm and restrained tone, meticulous descriptions of everyday details, and the natural integration of the supernatural into the real world. There are no surprises or forced explanations about the narrator’s condition; his existence as a dead man who remains connected to the house is presented with the same normality as the woman’s actions in tending the roses. This subtle treatment of the fantastic is one of the hallmarks of the story, contributing to the creation of a strange, calm atmosphere.
The story also invites reflection on the persistence of emotional ties. Although the characters have no direct contact, they both seem linked by a fraternal relationship or deep affection that has endured despite death and the passage of time. The woman tends the altar, cultivates the roses, and repeats the same gestures for decades while the narrator observes, waits, and reminisces, trapped in a suspended existence that still keeps him close to her. Ultimately, both characters seem to be anchored in the same shared memory that keeps them united through time.
The ending anticipated by the narrator adds a final nuance to the story: a day will come when the woman will not return to the altar. When that happens, he must leave the house, find the men who will take her to the hill—the same fate that his own body suffered years ago—and remain alone in the house. But then she will understand what she never entirely accepted in life: that it was not the wind that scattered the roses but her old childhood companion, the dead boy who was always by her side.
This story, in its apparent simplicity, offers a delicate and profound exploration of themes such as death, loneliness, the weight of memories, and the inability to let go of the affections that bind us to those who are no longer with us. García Márquez manages to convey the presence of the supernatural with great subtlety as a natural extension of the character’s emotional lives in a space where time has stopped moving forward and where small, everyday actions become the only sustenance of a frozen existence.
