LIT 4303
Dr. Lillios
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
Reading Assignment: Read the book by Tuesday, March 22
Schedule:
Tuesday, March 15: Biography of Marquez, beginning of the novel, genesis of Macondo, role of knowledge in the text, nature of the characters and their quests, characteristics of Magical Realism
Thursday, March 17: Continue discussion of magical realist elements in the novel, Biblical allusions, the banana company and colonialism
Monday, March 21:
Submit journal entry to http://www.postww2lit.blogspot.com (see below) by midnight. Be sure to sign your entry.
Tuesday, March 22: Discuss blog entries in class (be sure to bring a hard copy of your own entry to class. Role of love in the novel and its relation to the structure. Marquez’s world view.
Journal 6 Assignment:
Read selection, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction” by Angel Flores. To search, go to JSTOR, type in “Angel Flores” and look for the 4th item.
What are the magical realist elements in the novel? What view of the world do they represent? How does Marquez link together the magical and realist aspects? How do you as a reader process the magical realism in the story? Is this an effective technique to handle extreme experience?
Write about a page or 200-250 words and then post to blogspot. Please try
to read the entries of the other students in class before Tuesday. You can post a comment on their entries, if you wish.
In his article, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction”, Angel Flores initially explores the nature of Spanish American fiction with regards to its emphasis on, and mix of, romanticism and realism. Flores then begins to explore the new direction of Latin American writers such as Borges, and describes the location of such writers as being within a “trend”(Flores 188) that he terms “magical realism”(188).
ReplyDeleteFlores refers to Kafka’s blend of the mundane with the fantastic, describing the way he mastered “the difficult art of mingling his drab reality with the phantasmal world of his nightmares”(189). I feel this aspect of magical realism is exactly what Marquez also seamlessly weaves into his novel. When Jose is seduced by Pilar in chapter 2, the physical, tangible feelings he feels are combined with huge, abstract and fantastic concepts of emotion. He no longer feels “the glacial rumbling of his kidneys” and at the same time he is anxious to “stay forever in that exasperated silence and fearful solitude”. The mix of the starkly physical with the vast considerations of humanity offers an element of magical realism.
Lucy Baugh
Marquez seemingly uses magical realism as a technique to handle an extreme experience. Like Vonnegut, Marquez creates a fragmented narrative and represents brutally realistic events—namely, the tragedy of war—in fictional terms so that he can do the particularly difficult subject justice, which discussing it on plain terms would not allow. Marquez uses magical realism as his outlet for this notion. Rather than frankly writing about the pointlessness of war, he creates a fictional world where gypsies roam, people grow into tattooed giants and reincarnation is possible in order to convey his thoughts to the average reader in an ironically more relatable way.
ReplyDeleteAside from the fantastic characteristics attributed to everyday objects that are scattered throughout the book (pots of boiling milk that turn into worms, magic carpets, spells of insomnia and floods of flowers, to name a few), Marquez focuses on the bending of time to provide a typically magical realist element to the novel. Magical realism “is predominantly an art of surprises,” explains Angel Flores, “from the very first line the reader is thrown into a timeless flux and/or the unconceivable, freighted with dramatic suspense”(190). Marquez’s novel places time as a cyclical motion: as the elders die out, new generations are born, but despite the fact that these characters are new people, they continue the same story. Every child is named after their father or mother. When family members are killed, their blood runs for miles down the street back to their childhood home. The continuous motion of time in One Hundred Years of Solitude therefore stands as Marquez’s way of displaying the South American tradition of placing importance on lineage and the need to preserve family ties. What is more, in “magical realist” terms, Marquez uses this abnormal portrayal of time to illustrate the ignorance of war. Throughout the generations of the Buendia family, no one truly knows what they are fighting for, only that they are preserving their family name and pride.
In this sense, Marquez uses magical realism as a way to break the mold of irrational tradition and convey a social problem that would not be as powerful if it were expressed in simply realistic terms.
One Hundred Years of Solitude presents a fictional story in a fictional setting. The extraordinary events and characters are fabricated. However, the message that Marquez intends to deliver explains a true history of his homeland of Colombia. Marquez uses his fantastic story as an expression of reality. Throughout the story, myth and history overlap. The myth acts as a vehicle to transmit history to the reader. What is real and what is fiction become indistinguishable.
ReplyDeleteBy maintaining the same tone throughout the novel, Marquez makes the extraordinary blend with the ordinary. He describes events in a condensed and apathetic manner, causing the extraordinary to seem less remarkable than it actually is. This tone restricts the ability of the reader to question the events of the novel. However, it also causes the reader to call into question the limits of reality and causes the reader to become accustomed to the extraordinary events in the novel.
As Flores mentions, artists after the First World War rejected photographic realism and instead turned towards symbolism and Magical Realism. Magical Realism offers relief from the gritty and mundane, depressing realism of the world. Perhaps, this is why magical realism offers lasting appeal for readers and is an effective tool in dealing with extreme circumstances. In general, people like to be transported to places that are unusual or exotic, they like to read stories that blur the edges between what's real and what's unreal. Magical Realism combines the brutal honesty, the humor, the audacity, and the marvel of magic all in one and causes readers to reflect and ponder deeper into the story.
Lauren Supersano
Simply put in the essay “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” the literary style of magical realism is an, “amalgamation of realism and fantasy” (Flores 189). As in the previous stories, all literary styles seem to be an attempt to convey reality in a time after war; this is a time where culture, language and traditions are generally destroyed. Magical realism is a form of not only escapism but also communication. The success of magical realism is apparent when it is deeply rooted in reality. While this is a difficult task to attempt Gabriel Garcia Marquez whimsically breeches the gap between reality and fantasy in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. His descriptive language lures readers in to the story and through this he allows opportunity to convey a message of adjustment and adaptation in a postwar era. As he draws the reader into the story, it is apparent that there is an eerie potential for the events to possibly occur just as he tells them. The characters are not surprised at what is going on throughout the book and eventually neither is the reader. Marquez’s craft of slowly setting up the reader for instances of magical realism can be seen in the arrival of the train to Macondo. The woman who tries to describe the sound of the train cannot find the words to do so because they are not in her reality. She explains that the train sounds, “like a kitchen dragging a village behind it” (Marquez 222). As Marquez skillfully establishes comparisons like this, the mindset of the reader is being trained to also make those jumps from something real to something imaginary.
ReplyDeleteSarah Joseph
The magical realist elements in the novel consist both of technological inventions and supernatural events of Biblical proportions. Though science and technology play a big role in the novel because the patriarch of the family becomes obsessed with scientific progress, the supernatural happenings bear more effects on the overall plot. The Buenidas survive through extreme experiences and live beyond the human lifespan. Men grow into gigantic proportions, while women suddenly float away into heaven. Babies are born with pig tails and eaten by ants. All of these magical realist elements are incorporated non-chalantly, as if they were a part of an established of reality that cannot be questioned. The Buenidas almost remind me of Greek gods, as all of them seem to be larger-than-life and equipped with some special powers, but their human flaws lead to their tragic downfall. This god-like status of the family creates an entire mythology for the novel, and Marquez’s incorporation of the mythical elements is so smooth and engaging that as a reader, I had no problem suspending my belief. I find the technique of magical realism effective in handling extreme experience, because the idea of supernatural events striking and altering the lives of characters allows for beauty and optimism in otherwise harsh environment of Mocondo and the ugly human nature. The characters have magical forces at their disposal to handle the unbelievable tragedies plaguing their lives, but these forces are also frequently the cause of their suffering. Ultimately, elements of magical realism allowed Marquez to create a family of incredibly memorable, strong characters whose ordinary human qualities are emphasized by the not-so-ordinary forces of nature which lead them to extreme situations.
ReplyDeleteMarquez seems to intentionally combine elements of realism and fantasy in order to create a sense of chaos. He wants readers to comprehend that reality at times is too bizarre and/or terrible, and has the ability to morph into a more magical world because of that absurdity. Both intertwine well enough so that readers are left with an understanding that one cannot exist without the other within this novel; the magic is real, and reality is magical. Angel Flores made a point that Spanish literature has been criticized improperly, being labeled into categories that do not truly depict what the novels are trying to present to audiences. They typically tend to possess romantic as well as realistic features. Extreme situations are therefore capable of being handled in a way where readers are not completely drowned by totally realistic terms. There is room for the mind to expand itself.
ReplyDeleteMarquez's use of time is characteristic of postmodern literature, as the past, present, and future tend to overlap. The characters suffer on a strange spectrum from being too nostalgic and trapping themselves within their memories to erasing their pasts altogether. His novel shows the turmoil that existed during Marquez's era in Latin America, as the town of Macondo attempts to keep their firm traditions while simulataneously dealing with war, the coming of outsiders, and the progression of a more modern era.
What I see as the biggest magical realist element in the novel is time. As it seems to flow with a nonlinear pattern. I could compare it to being slightly like the time in _Slaughterhouse Five_. The difference being its accepted as normalcy. Another is the island of Macondo, which reminds of “The Circular Ruins.” The world that is represented seems to be were thoughts have greater power and family is the best and worst thing.
ReplyDeleteMárquez links the magical with realist aspects through history. It becomes an alt-history to what we now in the world we live in, but the world in the novel it is life. In with taking unproved truths and creates proof. But as a reader, I process the magical realism in the story more as supernatural things. For me their is a mystical aspect from magic and I have the belief in some as if it is real. I do though find some magical realism more campy and just a jump the shark of reality. This technique to handle extreme experience is effective at some points and ineffective at others. As it is for me, magical realism in _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ is leaning to the Greek theatre and to “deus ex machine” where the Gods come in and save the day because the problem is so complex, humans cannot come close to find a solution, so Zeus does. To push though the extreme experience by way of magic is often simplifying the problem. The way magical realism does not seem to trite is when the extreme experience is also magical realism.
Ian.
The elements of magical realism are replete throughout the entirety of “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Everything from the fragmentation and foregoing of normal perceptions of time to the mystical characteristics of the gypsies and their magic amplifies how one understands the world the author has created. In Marquez’s novel, the magical and real elements are seemingly blended into each other, giving the events and outcomes of the story entirely new, more bold and prominent meaning. The death of Jose Arcadio and his navigating stream of blood, the death and rebirth of Melquaides, the tragic spell of insomnia in Macondo – all of these are fantastical representations of everyday concepts (life, death, illness, physiology). Marquez links the two realms of perception so seamlessly, that no one, neither reader nor character seems to notice the absurdity of the events. Instead, they are simply accepted as what they are, with their own set of meanings different than from what we perceive in the realm of reality.
ReplyDeleteMarquez utilizes magical realism to create an identity, not only for his book and his characters, but also for himself and a nation as a whole. Magical realism allows the author to escape a world that has been taken from him or that has had a set of rules imposed by people other than his own. Such is the case for many South-American magical realists, who lived through and succeeded a time of colonization and imposed structures. Macando acts as Marquez’s own Colombia, one different than the war-ridden Colombia he was raised in. Additionally, magical realism gives more meaning to the events in the novel. A death isn’t simply the loss of a person forever, but it becomes the loss of a person as well as a symbol reflecting their character, purpose or reason to be.
As a reader, the magical realism is apparent, because it describes what is never seen in reality, but as the story progresses, the line begins to blur, and a lot of what is magical is simply understood as normal and essential to the characters and plot. The reader must do their best to perceive and understand the absurd and otherworldly happenings that occur in Marquez’s world as realistically as possible, in order for the events to take on their most fulfilled meaning. For example, Ursula’s century long lifespan may seem like an unnatural and almost impossible occurrence, but as a reader it must be perceived as normal in order for Ursula to best fulfill her role as the watchful mother of Macondo and the Buendia family. It is in this manner that the magical elements of the novel not only assist in handling extreme experience, but it more easily creates the sensation of extreme and mystical experience.
-Wilson De Gouveia
I have to agree with Ian in that one of the biggest elements of magical realism is the way Marquez uses time. Everything in Macondo seems to repeat itself. Ursula, who as time goes on seems to take a backseat role in the action and simply watches what happens to her town. Being really, really old, Ursula notices when all the Aureliano's share the same characteristics, and when all Jose Arcadio's share the same lifestyles.
ReplyDeleteIf "One Hundred Years of Solitude" had not been advertised as magical realism, I probably would have thought the entire book is completely crazy. I went into it knowing that I should expect fantastic things to happen and more subtle, though still crazy, events. I read this book and didn't look twice when the blood flowed all the way through a town or when a women flew to the heavens or yellow butterflies surround and foreshadow a man's appearance. I don't question the magical realism in the book and that helps me focus more on what each act of magical realism seems to represent. Marquez links together the magical and the realistic seamlessly. Each act of magic has a deeper meaning that just something weird happening. A man cracks his head open while trying to get a glimpse of Remidos, and amber oozes out of his head, showing that part of Remidos sticks with a person after death. Jose Arcadio's blood makes its way back to Ursula, showing the bond between a mother and her son.
-Elliot Northlake
In One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez tells the story of the rise and fall of a family line that seems to be inexplicably linked to the city they live in. The story is told with all the detail of an average story but with fantastical elements that serve to reveal realistic truths. Each character in the novel posses a certain magical quality, making them more than human—an exaggeration of the real. For example, Jose Arcadio Buendia’s feverish quest for knowledge leads to his fateful isolation, Ursula is the unquenchable matriarch, and Remedios the Beauty literally raises to heaven in virgin purity. Marquez tells the story of these superhuman characters in the same matter of fact way that an average story would be told. The fantastical elements aren’t gawked over or stressed, the reader is asked simply to accept them alongside the everyday.
ReplyDeleteDiscussing the magical realism movement, Flores shows the similarities between the opening sentences of renowned magical realist authors. The stories open by asking the reader to accept the seemingly unbelievable by introducing the bizarre as commonplace. Similarly, One Hundred Years of Solitude opens by throwing the reader directly into the unknown. The real and the fantastical are intermixed from the beginning, leaving the reader in a world without definite structure. Of the ends of magical realist novels, Flores says they “ultimately may lead to one great ambiguity or confusion.” One Hundred Years of Solitude ends in a similar way. The story lacks an obvious moral or overall resolution. Although time has passed, the reader is left to feel just as Jose Arcadio Buendia and then the last Areliano felt—like every day was the same. As the Buendia home alternately flourished and was left to ruin, the family members died and seemed to reincarnate. Time is an endless flux—a repetitive cycle where its “always March and always Monday” (Marquez 348).
-Sam Krop
Magical realist elements in 100 Years of Solitude include the mixing of ordinary reality with the whimsical elements of the extreme. For example, in the opening scenes of the book which contrast the gypsies’ various treasures brought to Macondo, including flying carpets and ice. Marquez presents both these phenomena as commonplace, tying together a magical element (flying carpet) with a realistic detail (ice) and infusing the wonder of characters and audience into both. Someone mentioned in class Thursday how almost every paragraph seems to contain both an unrealistic aspect of Macondo and a relatable realistic detail; it is this seamless fluidity which Marquez uses to his advantage. He causes the reader to forget that certain aspects of or events in the book could even be considered “magical” by our standards – their reality seems so in tune with the other realities of Macondo that they can easily slip by. (For example: When Jose Arcadia is shot by firing squad – a realistic event – his mother Ursula simultaneously discovers worms in the pot of food she is cooking on the stove, and knows he’s been shot – a “magical” event.)
ReplyDeleteAs an effective technique to handle extreme experience I think this works in both a real and profound manner. Some moments in life are magical, and can be expressed better in terms of their emotional, spiritual, or inexplicable significance using mystic language and imagery. Angel Flores discusses coining the phrase “magical realism” because of a rejection of the other possibilities of “romantic realism” or “realistic romanticism;” as neither of these was the appropriate description for the new genre of Latin American literature. It is not just that the gritty real details, idealistic, or romanticized characteristics of the novel aren’t distinct in their presence; it’s that they are also supported by elements of supernatural, uncanny, or hyperbolic imagery. For example, Ursula’s fear that any children consummated with Jose Buendia with have pig’s tails or other animal parts. The image is fantastic in the true sense of the word. Marquez is allowing readers to remember, and experience in this novel, that life is full of wonder: it is neither entirely real, nor entirely romantic.
“I could not say what I admire the more: the ‘naturalistic notion of a fantastic universe, but which the detailed exactitude of the depiction makes real in our eyes, or the unerring audacity of the lurches into the strange.” In his article, Flores uses this quote from Andre Gide’s journal to explain the Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the effect of magical realism on the reader. This same feeling can be applied to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez infuses the magic of Macondo and the Buendia family seamlessly that in many cases it is almost unnoticed. I believe that Marquez uses the style of magical realism to comment on the condition of human nature. In the world he has created, it is easier to understand the seemingly absurd decisions and actions of the characters because it is seen in a fantastical environment. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, I believe the best example of this is when Aureliano is justifying the need for war. He claims that war is “not madness…war. And don’t call me Aurelito anymore. Now I’m Colonel Aureliano Buendia (101 in my edition).” The military label removes the emotional connection to killing. The emotional detachment of this action is easier for the reader to understand because it takes place in Macondo and not the “real” world. The blur between the real and unreal (as Gide described it) offers magical realists a unique world to explore as they attempt to explain the unexplainable.
ReplyDeleteSaraBeth Vanemon
In the novel, Marquez is showing the family dynamic with the use of the passing of time and the use of the town as time progresses. Time and the passing of time with the family dynamic are two major magical realist elements within the novel, and they are used to show that while time does exist, it seems to get mixed up as it continues, the family grows, and time gets lost eventually as people grow older.
ReplyDeleteI believe that these ideas of magical realism really show the world view that time is infinite, and as time continues, families grow and extend, and events and occurrences can get lost and shaken up through the passing of time. Time is a magical element because the stories that we hear from twenty years ago may have changed from the actual story of what really happened when the actual event occurred. Time is a realist element because time does pass, and as time passes it helps the family grow and real elements happen when time passes, like birth, life, death and everything in between.
I process the magical realism by being skeptical. It may not be the best way to do so, but always being skeptical keeps your guard up, and keeping your guard up keeps the magical elements separate from the realistic elements and a reader can make a judgement on what is real and what isn’t. I think this is an effective technique to handle extreme experience because skepticism keeps you from getting involved, and if you aren’t involved you can look at things from a strict scholastic view, taking each element into account and processing it correctly.
Lauren Slygh
In the article, "Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction," Angel Flores writes of Andre Gide's Journal, of a "peculiar fusion of dream and reality" that he saw in Kafka (189). The same can be said of the fusion of dream and reality or magic and realism in Marquez: "I could not say what I admire the more: the 'naturalistic' notation of a fantastic universe, but which the detailed exactitude of the depiction makes real in our eyes, or the unerring audacity of the lurches into the strange" (Flores 189). Marquez lingers in realistic elements just long enough to make the fantastical elements compound, fly off the page and ingrain themselves into the memory of the readers. For example: the baby born with the tail of a pig, the rains that last four years followed by a drought that last ten, the yellow flowers that cover the town after the death of Jose Buendia, the yellow butterflies that announce Mauricio Babilonia's arrival and death, the ghosts lingering the halls of the Buendia estate. Magical realist elements represent the worldview of a circular and cyclical repetition of time rather than as linear and progressive. Ghosts, beasts, soothsayers, prophets, premonitions, card readers are believed to be as real as the sun and moonrise each day. History can be forgotten and changed, so much so, that a massacre can be wiped from the memory of an entire town: "years later, when Aureliano became part of the world, one would have thought that he was telling a hallucinated version, because it was radically opposed to the false one that historians had created and consecrated in the schoolbooks" (Marquez 348). Each fantastical element is rooted in the real or at least the real to someone though perhaps not us. It requires a suspension of disbelief, which, "once the reader accepts the fait accompli, the rest follows with logical precision" (Flores 191). And that is what a reader must do, give into the magical elements, suspend disbelief and be open-minded to a world-view they do not entertain themselves.
ReplyDeleteCassie Turner
Just as Kurt Vonnegut used a subplot of time travel to express the absurdity of war, Gabriel Garcia Marquez employs the techniques of magical realism--the interplay between the fantastically unreal and the mundane exigencies of real life--to show events such as civil war and economic colonization--real and common in the world--as similarly fantastic as "a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling" and marking the death of a village elder (Marquez 140). The use of magical realism enables Marquez to faithfully examine extreme experiences in a way that would convey the confusion and unreality of those in Columbia, and Latin America, who experienced American economic colonization and civil war.
ReplyDeleteIn his essay, "Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction," Angel Flores describes the practice of magical realism as a way to tie myth to reality in order to prevent the mythological aspects of the work from undermining the bigger picture that these artists create for readers: "The practitioners of magical realism cling to reality as if to prevent 'literature' from getting in their way, as if to prevent their myth from flying off, as in fairy tales, to supernatural realms" (Flores 191). Flores argues that the magical realists to not want to be fantasy writers purely, in the sense that they write fantasy to explore fantastical worlds, but want to discuss the fantastic in the real world. Marquez follows this system in order to show the fantasy that issues like civil war and colonization can inspire in a beleaguered population.
In his portrayal of the civil war as prolonged and confused, Marquez uses "the legend of the ubiquitous Colonel Aureliano Buendia" to show that the civil war was not an event that was fully understood or realized by the inhabitants of Macondo. The contradictory reports saying that Aureliano had died or been victorius or been defeated serves to show that the civil war took on fantastical proportions as Aureliano undertook many attacks simultaneously in places separated by great distances. In this way, the very real civil war, becomes mythological, and Marquez employs this mythology as a way of showing how one of the commonest big actions of humanity, warfare, is experienced as fantastical by those who must live through it. While the book contains all the grim realism of actual civil war--lost family members and executions--it also weaves a story of how perception is formed and obscured. Because of its ability to show all the harsh realities of war and the fantastical dimensions it can take, magical realism contains a very powerful tool in examining extreme experiences.
Kyle Kretzer
As one of the most profound elements of Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, magical realism serves to offer a new perspective on reality and that which is familiar to the reader. His writing permeates with the marriage, the fusion of magic and realism, where his effectiveness as an artist depends on their interconnectedness. Separating magic from realism is an approach to analysis that will guarantee a loss of meaning, for meaning is constructed by their binary, complimentary nature. As a reader, I experience the text holistically, for there is just as much to glean from Marquez’s threads of magic as his commitment to reality.
ReplyDeleteIn Angel Flores’s essay, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” he argues that the magical realism was created through the “nightmarish” realities of Kafka and the absurdities of the Borges’s “labyrinth” (189). The literary geniuses of Kafka and Borges offered a cataclysmic force for magical realism and works like One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. Quoting Chirico, Flores writes, “’What is most of all necessary is to rid art of everything of the known which it has held until now: every subject, idea, thought and symbol must be put aside…Thought must draw so far away from human fetters that things may appear to it under a new aspect, as though they are illuminated by a constellation now appearing for the first time”’ (190). This way of insisting on revisiting reality and its familiarity, reconsidering the human experience and all its memories, is what characterizes Marquez’s achievement. Themes of humanity, time, love, corruption, all are turned on their heads with the integration of magical elements with the real. The magical facets of his writing offer a means of reconsidering our humanity and providing a new world that echoes ours. This world that presents love as both a blessing and a “disease” that haunts the family (Marquez 68). Time is non-linear and cyclical, as Jose Arcadio Buendia states, “I realized that it’s still Monday, like yesterday…Today is Monday too” (Marquez 77). After which Jose Arcadio Buendia breaks down crying, “The time machine has broken,” which offers the magical element to time (Marquez 78).
Ultimately, the magical facets of the text serve to offer an exaggeration of the plot and the characters’ emotions, creating a new world that gives the reader the freedom to explore the outer reaches of reality. This new world with all its fantastical elements is imperative for the reader’s experience, for it offers a platform for the recreation and rebirth of the familiar.
Kerri Libra
In reading Angel Flores’s piece, magical realism is explained in so many words as, making the everyday fantastical and the fantastical everyday as well as, the presence of romanticized ideas about the everyday and certain moments (as is very present in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work). Palying around with time and characters having their own magical/fantastical trait are also characteristic as we've discussed in class. Many aspects of Marquez’s One hundred Years of Solitude can be classified as “magical realism”.
ReplyDeleteThe time in the Marquez’s piece is distorted, the presence of the gypsies and a man who can return to town a giant, forces the reader to expand their disbelief along with other instances in the novel. The mentioning of children being born with animal parts, the almost supernatural power women can have over men and other such scenes in the novel reinforce the magical elements of the book however, the way Marquez uses these fantastical elements is done in the same fashion as he uses everyday descriptions and scenes so the real and fantastic flow together as one in a way that would make not having these magical elements would seem seem unusual.
One must absolutely expand their disbelief in reading works incorporating magical realism, however, I feel it reads beautifully. It really reminded me of The Tin Drum; you just have to find your footing, but once you do, the master piece of the work is clear as day. In such severe situations as the Buendia Family must face as well as say, Oskar and the people of his time had to face, magical realism aids in delivering the story. It allows the reader to see all else that is going on besides the atrocities; allows for the people to still be human, alive in such bleak circumstances.
~Sydni Gonzalez
Flores discusses that “finding in photographic realism a blind alley, all the arts- particularly painting and literature- reacted against it and many notable writers of the First World War period came to re-discover symbolism and magical realism” (188). Latin American writers began to practice magical realism as a means of escape from the romantic and realistic ideals that were being practiced throughout literature at the time. Marquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude practices the idea that “the novelty …consist[s] in the amalgamation of realism and fantasy” (Flores 189). The constant duality of realism and fantasy is seen in the simple descriptions of setting along with the fantastic scenes such as that of Jose Arcadio’s death and his blood trickling and finding its way all the way to his mother’s house. Ursula “followed the thread of blood back along its course” and finally “she found Jose Arcadio lying face down on the ground…and she saw the starting point of the thread of blood that had already stopped flowing out of his right ear” (132). This scene uses the fantastic in order to emphasize the Latin American value of family and the closely knit bond between Ursula as a mother and Jose Arcadio as a son. I believe that magical realism is a very effective technique to handle extreme experience because of the ways in which it allows the reader to analyze the situation in a different way than they are used to. Marquez roots the novel so deeply into real life circumstances that he is able to create an easily understood duality between the magical and the real.
ReplyDeleteShelby Thorne
Although Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is filled with a variety of wonderful magical realist elements, the instance that was most memorable (and effective) to me is the intense insomnia which affected Macondo. If Marquez’s novel were any other novel, the case of insomnia would’ve been presented in an entirely different manner; perhaps the author would’ve accurately described the known scientific symptoms and causes for insomnia. Marquez, on the other hand, presents the insomnia almost as another character arriving in Macondo. The insomnia is collectively felt by all in Macondo and each inhabitant’s dreams become visible for all to see. Such a strange phenomena is accepted as a natural occurrence to all in Macondo, depicting an important characteristic of magic realism as Flores mentions in his article, “Time exists in a kind of timeless fluidity and the unreal happens as part of reality” (191). As a reader, I greatly appreciate this technique as a mode of presenting extreme situations. I find that instances of magic realism bestow a hefty amount of meaning and romantic aesthetic to an otherwise bland situation. Marquez approaches insomnia with a poetic flare, rather than just like the nuisance that it is. Finally, elements of magic realism sprinkled throughout the book grant the story further mystique simply by allowing such fantastical events to occur, no questions asked.
ReplyDeleteTaissa Rebroff
Angel Flores describes magical realism as "the amalgamation of realism and fantasy," or the result of "photographic realism's" post World War I "blind alley" (Flores 3 & 4); this blind alley being the existential trauma of World War I. To that extent, One Hundred Years of Solitude satisfies both definitions.
ReplyDeleteThe magical realist elements employed in One Hundred Years serves several purposes. Firstly, like the wares and amusements brought by the gypsies it serves to enchant technology, which people tend to do in reality when confronted with the incomprehensible. Secondly, it constructs the microcosmic universe of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s world. Macondo is a place and time removed in a sense from reality, therefore giving Marqueze a singular representation of reality to play with.
Magical realism is a key tool for describing the extreme, or at least in my reading I imagine fantastic sensory exaggeration to represent psychological coping. For example, the haunting of Jose Buendia and Ursula by ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, and the reduction of the gypsy to smoke and pitch before delivering the announcement of Melquiades' death. To this extent, magical realism can be a preferable substitute to photographic realism since at some point, to evoke empathy, one must forsake words which fall short, and exaggerate or transform reality.
~Ben Slaughter
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ReplyDeleteGabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude stands as a startling example of Magical Realism in Latin American Literature. Angel Flores describes Magical Realism in terms of Marquez's work as "the 'naturalistic' notation of a fantastic universe" (Flores 189). This seamless infusion of fantastical elements, such as flying carpets and a blood trail that travels across town turning corners, into a world that is rooted in a fundamental reality that is tangible to readers. Marquez implements these magical elements throughout the novel to the extent that the timeline of the novel ignores all practical views of the passage of time. Generations of the family live side by side, with deaths that only occasionally happen from seemingly natural causes.
ReplyDeleteThis seamless blend can be seen clearly in the scene in which Remedios the Beauty is bathing and being watched by a man on the roof. He is entranced, as many man before him by her beauty, and ends up falling from the roof and cracking his skull. Marquez employs Magical Realism to further express the fantastical effects of Remedios the Beauty, "It [the smell of Remedios] was so deep in his body that the cracks in his skull did not give off blood but an amber-colored oil that was impregnated with that secret perfume, and then they understood that the smell of Remedios the Beauty kept on torturing men beyond death" (Marquez 239). Marquez even acknowledges that blood should come from the wound, but in Macondo the fantastic is reality.
This fantastic reality allows for a deeper meditation on what it is that drives people to love, or to start war, or to lose touch with reality. Ghosts frequent the house of the Buendias to help show the effects of the past and the cyclical nature of time. Marquez uses Magical Realism to present the chaotic history of Columbia in a way that presents many of the actual events in a fashion that sheds a much more poetic and philosophical light on the turmoil of the people.
-Matt Knight
Sorry about being late, due to some appointments. Now that the formalities are done, I can continue with the understanding of Marquez. If you know anything about Colombian history, you will know that it is full of strife. Instead of attempting to show Colombian history as a historian, Marquez attempts to envelope Colombian history through the lens of subversive undermining. It seems that discovering ice was a magical methodology that those of the tropics would find compelling. Marquez shows that Colombia has a rich multicultural background. The village he describes in his novel is invested in traditionalism which the Gypsies undermine. This is the transformation that Colombia attempts strive for: liberalism for economics and traditionalism for the family. That is why the main character attempts to flaunt his ideas of science while his wife attempted to contain his enthusiasm. The containment was his traditional family that his wife attempts to convey as the bread and butter of society. However, the protagonist attempts to subvert the idea of traditionalism. The money that he melts seems to be Marquez’s idea toward materialism – especially the materialism of the protagonist’s wife. It seems that she attempts again and again to explain the need for material possession. However, the protagonist shows interest in the magical ideas of science while showing distain for the realistic ideology of money, the ideology of temporal.
ReplyDeleteEric Brame
In his novel, Marquez blurs the difference between fantasy and reality, which is a huge element of Magical Realism. His characters maintain a reliable tone, which make all of the events in the story (even if they are myth, biographical or historical) very realistic. The novel gives unique perspectives to each character through their different magical beliefs. Marquez also uses magical realism in the town of Macondo to show the transition from simply times of magic, modern times, and different dictatorships. The affect on the institutions in the town is described as a change over time. At the beginning of the novel it is a magical town where no one dies in the town and they experience very little struggles and hardships. But as the book progresses, the magic becomes less noticeable, and the technological influence increases, with the incoming inventions and because of the railroad. Technology leads to different struggles in the town with deaths, fights, and political sturggles as they try to expand their horizon beyond their town.
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