100 Years Of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude By

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Magical Realism Genre of literature which uses a narrative technique that blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality and is characterized by an equal acceptance of the ordinary and the extraordinary; magic and reality are not distinguished.  The term was initially used by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925 to describe painting which demonstrated another possibility of reality, an altered reality.  The term has been attributed to the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier who first applied it to Latin American fiction in 1949.

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Well-known Works of Magical Realism • • • • • • •

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie Beloved by Toni Morrison House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Gabo”  Known fondly as “Gabo” in South America, particularly in his native Columbia and his home of Mexico City.  Born in Aracataca, Columbia in March 1927.  Lived with his grandparents because his parents had financial difficulties.  His grandfather was a liberal retired Colonel.  His grandmother was an avid storyteller; she sold candy animals to support the family.

“The tone that I eventually used in One Hundred Years of Solitude was based on the way my grandmother used to tell stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness…. What was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories and everyone was surprised. In previous attempts to write, I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.” 4

 Garcia Marquez studied law and journalism at the National University of Bogota and at the University of Cartagena.  He became a journalist and published several controversial articles. He was founder of Prensa Latina, a Cuban press agency and worked in Prensa Latina offices of Havana and New York.  He worked all over Europe and in Latin America. In 1955 he was the European correspondent in Rome and Paris for the newspaper, El Espectador.  García Márquez met Mercedes Barcha while she was in college, but they decided to wait for her to finish before getting married. They were finally wed in 1958, and they raised their family in Mexico City.  He worked as a traveling encyclopedia salesman, a journalist, and a poet. He was rejected by his first publisher, but he persisted.  He was influenced by the writings of Franz Kafka, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf. 5

 He had always wanted to write a book based on his experiences being raised in his grandparents’ house, but it wasn’t until a trip to Acapulco with his family that he suddenly became inspired, turned his car around, and returned to Mexico City.  He spent the next 18 months writing every day until his family was penniless. One Hundred Years of Solitude was the result of this. It was published in 1967.  Other Works:  Leaf Storm  Love in the Time of Cholera  Chronicle of a Death Foretold  Autumn of the Patriarch  In Evil Hour  The General in His Labyrinth  Short Stories • “The Handsomest Drowned Man” • “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” 6

 Fidel Castro became his most famous and controversial fan. Marquez claims that their friendship is mainly based on their literary interests.  He was exiled from Colombia and denied entrance to the U.S. from 1962-1996, even as the Nobel Prize recipient. He was finally allowed into the U.S. when President Clinton lifted the travel ban against him in 1995.  He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 for his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. During his acceptance speech, Marquez referred to a passage from the novel: “. . .A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth." 7

What is One Hundred Years of Solitude about?                   

An interweaving of reality and fiction A questioning of subjectivity Retelling of the history of Colombia from a critical perspective Retelling of the colonialization of Latin America Retelling of the Banana Strike Massacre of 1928 The story of 100 years in the lives of the imaginary Buendía family The story of the birth, development, and death of the imaginary town of Macondo The story of the life of Úrsula Buendía who lives well past 100 years old The story of civil war between the Liberals and the Conservatives A story of myth and history Allegory of the rise and fall of human civilization A story of solitude in all its connotations The isolation of a culture The isolation of an individual The circularity of history and the repetition of mistakes in history A reflection on time A commentary on the power of language The conflict between tradition and modernization Proof that reality is stranger than fiction and fiction more powerful than reality

. . . Or did you want a simple answer?

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Context: Colombia

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Historical Context  Like much of Latin America, Colombia was colonized by Spain, but between 1810-1819, there were several wars for independence. In 1820, Simon Bolivar became Colombia’s first president.

 The novel takes place in the imaginary town of Macondo and begins sometime in the early 1820s when there was relative calm or innocence, a kind of rebirth for the nation. This reflects the “Garden of Eden” phase of Macondo.  Macondo is believed to be modeled after Marquez’s hometown of Aracataca.

Simon Bolivar Liberator of Latin America

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Historical Context  Colonialism: Clash of cultures; Indigenous cultures of Mayans, Incas, and especially Chibchas (in the Bogota area) were over-run by Spanish colonizers.

 The conflict over the Panama Canal; the United States took control in 1903.  Post-colonialism: Western invasion and exploitation; Western companies invested, extracted, controlled, and then abandoned Colombia.  Battle ground for the ideological war between Capitalism and Communism  Cycle of political upheaval—one coup after another; conflict between the Conservatives and the Liberals  Dictatorships and the terror of the FARC— Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia— military wing of the Colombian Communist Party established after La Violencia of 1964

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Historical Context: Banana Strike Massacre of 1928  The “Banana Republics”  The United Fruit Company outsourced their labor to South America.  Workers become discontent with the terrible labor conditions; they held a strike and demonstrated in the city.  The United States threatened to invade if the Colombian government did not intervene to protect the United Fruit Company’s interests.  The conservative government deployed the army to open fire on the strikers.  The number of casualties has never been confirmed; estimates range from 47 to 3,000.  Marquez’s version of the events in his novel has become one of the most commonly cited.

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Characters—Buendia Family Tree

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Characters The book takes place over the course of a hundred years, so the events and characters are described in rapid-fire succession. Major turning points flash by quickly: births, deaths, marriages, love affairs. The Buendía characters are contrasted and repeated to show the inherited family traits, the bad blood, and the repetition of mistakes. The Buendia men are divided between the Arcadios and the Aurelianos. Arcadios

Aurelianos

Extroverted Adventurous

Introverted Interested in intellectual pursuits

Spontaneous

Reflective

Sexually promiscuous Physically strong

Solitary Physically weak

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Characters

First Generation of the Buendia Family and Inhabitants of Macondo Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran Melquiades and the Gypsies

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Characters

Second Generation of the Buendia Family Colonel Aureliano Buendia Jose Arcadio Buendia Amaranta Buendia 16

The Women Whom the Buendias Loved Pilar Ternera, Rebeca, and Remedios Moscote 17

Characters

Third Generation of the Buendia Family Aureliano Jose, Arcadio, and the 17 Aurelianos 18

Characters

Fourth Generation of the Buendia Family Remedios the Beauty The Twins: Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo 19

Jose Arcadio Segundo

Aureliano Segundo

Big and strong

Thin and boney

Interested in Melquiades’ manuscripts

Wants to see an execution but later becomes disturbed by it; becomes involved with cockfighting and interested in bestiality

Begins to have sex with Petra Cotes after his brother but keeps it from him and makes Petra Cotes think that he is Jose Arcadio Segundo; Contracts venereal disease from Petra Cotes

Gives venereal disease to Petra Cotes

Stays with Petra Cotes and eventually keeps her as his mistress even after he marries Fernando del Carpio, the intruding Festival Queen

Leaves Petra Cotes

Becomes rich because animals proliferate and grow to extreme sizes because of the magic of his union with Petra Cotes

Wants to build a waterway to the ocean to allow ships to come to Macondo

Squanders money and papers his house with it

Brings one log raft up the river to Macondo 20 with the French prostitutes on board

The Last of the Buendia Line Aureliano 21

Founding of the isolated town of

Plot Synopsis

Maconda by Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran Appearance of the gypsies, led by

Melquiades who befriends Jose Arcadio Buendia Introduction of inventions, such as ice, telescope, and alchemy Jose Arcadio Buendia is very curious and becomes very isolated in his interest in the gypsies’ inventions. He is also introduced to Melquiades’ manuscripts, and he becomes obsessed with translating them because they contain prophesies. His oldest son, José Arcadio, is very strong and spontaneous like him.

His younger son, Aureliano, is very intense and driven like him. As more outside influences enter Macondo, the town changes and loses its “Garden of Eden” state.

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Plot Synopsis

Ursula Iguaran, the Buendia matriarch continues to hold the family together in her belief that they will endure desite all the conflicts. Technology, industrialization, imperialism, and other forces of modernization are quickly invading and destroying Macondo. The influence of outside government is shown through the appearance of Don Moscote who commands the citizens of Macondo to paint all their houses blue. The railway is built bringing in more negative influences than positive. 23

Civil wars erupt over the conflict between the Liberals and the Conservatives, which causes violence. Aureliano leads a rebel group and becomes the leader of the Liberal cause as Colonel Aureliano Buendia. The days of peaceful Macondo are gone, and the government changes several times. Arcadio, Jose Arcadio’s son, becomes the most vicious dictator of all, and he is eventually killed by a firing squad. Colonel Aureliano Buendia loses sight of what he is fighting for; winning is now more about pride. His tradition of handing out gold fish that represented his cause turns to his obsession of melting them down because they have come to represent something that he no longer stands for.

Plot Synopsis

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The United Fruit Company moves into Macondo to start a banana plantation business. This represents the height of capitalist imperialism in the book. Local workers are exploited for cheap labor and the working conditions are very poor. The Americans who own the plantation come into town and set up their own wealthy area of town. The banana plantation workers eventually decide to strike, and thousands of them are massacred by the

local army after they are directed by the United Fruit Company and the US government. The bodies are dumped into the sea, and the government hides the evidence. The people all lose

their memory and forget the massacre. Torrential rains continue for five years, which creates a flood that causes Macondo to slip into isolation. 25

The whirlwind of destruction that descends on Macondo is paralleled by the destruction of the Buendia family and their home, as they become more isolated, divided, and demented. As Macondo begins to fade away, many of the Buendia family members are so focused on nostalgia or their own limited preoccupations that they fail to see the demise of their own family. Several members of the Buendia family have become incestuously obsessed, which literally causes the end of the family line, but also symbolically reflects their isolation.

Finally, Aureliano (II) Babilonia, the last surviving Buendía, translates the ancient manuscripts of Melquiades, which Jose Arcadio Buendia was originally obsessed with, and discovers that all the predictions are true and they have only been living out their predetermined fate. The book makes a full circle as the town of Macondo returns to its isolated state.

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Motifs and Themes The Gypsies The Railroad The Gold Fish Yellow Flowers Rain/Deluge Time and History The Bible Prophesies/Manuscript Memory and Forgetfulness Technology versus Tradition The Power of Language Subjectivity/Perception

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Rhetorical Devices Compact writing style

Fast paced narration Third person omniscient References to TIME

Character repetitions and confusion Foreshadowing, flash-forward, and flashback Magical realism

“Brick face” narration of magical events Allusions 28

Primary Characteristics of Magical Realism 1. The irreducible element of magic defies the laws of the universe as we know it. Proof of the irreducible element of magic is that it is seen by more than one person so that the event cannot be blamed on hallucination or a dream. 2. The reader hesitates between the different interpretations of an event so that he/she does not know for sure which is correct. The hesitation occurs when deciding between the uncanny and the marvelous. *uncanny—can be explained by circumstances within the real world *marvelous—new concepts of the world need to be developed in order to understand it 3. The world is described in great detail, which is also a characteristic of literature from the genre of realism. 4. There is a closeness between the two realms or worlds – the magical and the real. 5. Basic concepts are questioned, such as time, space, and identity.

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Secondary Characteristics of Magical Realism 1. Metafictional element is present. This means that there is a self consciousness to the text. The text (story, novel, film, or artwork) is aware of the writing or the creation of the text. Perhaps a character is an artist and is aware of the problems of writing. The text talks about the process or the act of writing itself. 2. Linguistic magic or the literalization of metaphor: Language doesn’t reflect the world. Language shapes the world. 3. Fresh or childlike vision—Marvels and wonders are presented naively or without doubt. The real begins to seem magical. Magic is not created, but is shown to exist in reality, in our real lives. 4. Mirrors—Spatial or temporal 5. Reversals—Characters are the reverse of each other. Time can go backwards. 6. Repetitions---Events, characters’ names, actions 7. Breaking of the laws of cause and effect, such as a reversed relationship (the effect leads to the cause). 30

8. Metamorphoses 9. Journeys—There is sometimes a journey between realms, but the journey is not clearly defined because the magical and the real are not separate. The journey is a passing between and within these realms. 10. The Real is made to seem ridiculous and marvelous. 11. Revolutionary—The text is often critical of the official, conventional, or accepted norm of society. This is also true of Realism. 12. Narrative stance becomes an explicit issue. There is a questioning of the distance between the narrator and the author or between the narrator and the audience. Strange things happen to the narrator. 13. Magical Realism seems more popular compared to the Modernist fiction from which it comes. In other words, it is not read only by those interested in literary studies but by a more general reading audience.

14. There are surprises for the reader. 15. There is reflection on pre-Enlightenment types of belief systems. There is a sense that the text is set in an area of belief in such miracles or magic. 31 16. Magical Realism usually presents confusions and obscurity rather than clarity and distinction.