a man at the end of his life, who has seen his revolution and dream of a united Latin America fail. Figural labyrinth According to literary critic David Danow, the labyrinth of the novel's title refers to "a series of labyrinths that are contingent upon matters of history, geography, and biography ... that consistently and conclusively result in a dead end"—in this case, the General's own death. His final voyage along the Magdalena River involves a doubling back and forth from one location to another that leads him and his followers nowhere. The labyrinth does not lead to happiness; instead, it results in madness from constant pondering on the past and an impossible future. At the end of his life, the General is reduced to a spectre of his former self. The labyrinth also recalls the labyrinth built to imprison the minotaur in Greek mythology, and the endless travelling and searching of ancient Greek heroes. In Danow's view, "The Labyrinth mirrors the wanderings and travails of the hero in search for meaning and resolution to the vicissitudes of life". García Márquez depicts the General's body itself as a labyrinth. His doctor observes that "everything that enters the body, adds weight, and everything that leaves it is debased." The General's body is described as a "labyrinth coming to a literal dead end". The labyrinth is also expressed in geographical and architectural imagery. The country's destiny is imagined as a break-up, a folding of north into south. The seas offer the hope of a new life and a new world, but the closer the General is to Colombia, the less chance he has of moving on. García Márquez describes buildings as "daunting, reverberating (if not exactly reiterating) with the echoes of a bloody past". The portrayal of the General's world as a labyrinth is underlined by his constant return to cities and towns he has visited before: each location belongs to the past as well as to the present. The General in his Labyrinth blurs the lines between perdition in a man-made world and wandering in the natural world. Fate and love Bolívar's fate is known from the beginning, and García Márquez constantly uses images which foreshadow this ending. For instance, a clock stuck at seven minutes past one, the exact time of the General's death, appears repeatedly in the novel. This sense of fate is introduced in the epigraph, which comes