Violin is a novel by Anne Rice. The genre of the book is fantasy and the text allows for many comparisons to made between fantasy and magical realism.
I felt that there were a lot of fantastic elements in this book. An example of a fantastic element is when Tirana laid in bed with Karl after he died. She kept him in the house for about four days after his death because she didn’t want the funeral parlor to burn him; she wanted to be with him forever (8). I feel this is more toward the fantastic because I cannot see anyone keeping someone after he is dead. The smell alone would make me want to get throw out the body. Another element of fantasy was when she would kiss him as if he was alive. (10). I don’t think that anyone could kiss a dead person when he wasn’t kissing back. I feel that these are all things that we would never do and this would never happen.
Wendy B. Faris quotes, ” Magical realism combines realism and the fantastic in such a way that the magical elements grow organically out of reality portrayed” (163). I saw this aspect a lot in this book. Fantastic elements combined with realism elements to make magical elements appear. Some of the examples were when Triana kept Karl as if he was still alive. I wanted to think that he was still alive because she kept him so long after his death.
I didn’t personally run into many realistic elements. Most of the elements of realism where when the author described a character or the setting where it was taking place. The elements that I did run into were at the beginning of the book when the author described the violinist. He was tall and gaunt, but not in an unattractive way. He had black hair with brai…
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…on of the Imaginary in Latin America: Self-Affirmation and Resistance to Metropolitian Paradigms.” Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Wendy Faris and Zamora. Duke University Press, Durham and London,1995.125-144.
Faris Wendy B.. “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction” Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Wendy Faris and Zamora. Duke University Press, Durham and London,1995.163-190.
Guenther, Irene. “Magical Realism in SpanishAmerican Literature” Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Wendy Faris and Zamora. Duke University Press, Durham and London,1995.33-73.
Leal, Luis. “Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature” Magical Realism:
Theory, History, Community. Wendy Faris and Zamora. Duke University Press, Durham and London,1995.119-124.
Rice, Anne. Violin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.,1997.
Magical and Realistic Elements in The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship
Magical and Realistic Elements in The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in a small Colombian town in 1928 and has written many short stories and novels over the years. One of his short stories, “The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship”, published in 1972, is in a book called A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes that was published in 1991. This was an interesting story and had many magical and realistic elements.
The main magical element in this story would be the ghost ship, but many others exist, too. The things that the ship did were magical. Every March on one certain day, the ship would come, and it never made a sound, not even when it crashed. It always came at night and would disappear when the beam of the rotating light from the colonial city hit it. It followed a red lantern and turned into a real ship once it was away from the shoals where it crashed. The ship looked magical being described as “the largest ocean liner in this world…whiter that anything, twenty times taller than the steeple and some ninety-seven times longer than the village” (379). Another magical element was a chair that the main character’s mom had, called “the murderous chair”, “evil” or “the throne of misfortune” (376-377). It was called these names because, the main character’s mom and four other women after her died in the chair the same way. When found, they were “still warm, but half rotted away as after a snake bite” (376).
The realistic elements were the small village where the main character lived and the people there. The larger colonial city on the other side of the bay and its “old slave port and rotating light” make the picture clearer so it seems more realistic (375). The bay, buoys, and harbo…
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…lieve that strange things do happen, but they are a little more realistic than these.
The many magical elements invade the realistic elements in this story. These elements make the story more interesting and make it challenging for the main character. He is misunderstood because no one will believe him about the ghost ship. The author seems to side with the main character and believes the ghost ship is real. The magical elements create many questions, and these cause me to believe that this story could never be real, even though I do believe that there could be ghosts. If a person will keep an open mind, he or she may find all kinds of things that will amaze himself or herself.
Work Cited
Marquez, Gabiel Garcia. “The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship.” A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. Ed. Thomas Colchie. N. Y.: Plume Printing, 1991: 373-379.