The book Seventh Heaven was written by an American author by the name of Alice Hoffman. Seventh Heaven was published in the year of 1990. Seventh Heaven was a book based on life in the suburbs and the spiritual essence of the people who lived there. The author who wrote this story seemed to make the essence known that magical realism was definitely about these people and that they lived it everyday. Magical Realism lived everyday and will keep living as long as there is life on earth. Wendy B. Faris is an author that has written many stories. During the course of this story, things happened physically and magically that no one could explain
Magical Realism was first thought of within the years of 1870 and 1880 according to Ludwig Meidner. Over the years, many different authors have their own opinions of when magical realism began. Some of these are as Franz Roh, Irene Guenther, and Luis Leal. During the course of this story things that happened and physically and magically that no one could explain.
The magical elements in the story were so apparent. The houses were identical, the families got lost on the streets that they lived on, and they went into other peoples homes; thinking that they were in the right house. The smells of the berries cooking and the smell lingering even after the women had been gone for quite some time is another magical element. Then as soon as the house was sold and the house was occupied, the smell was gone. To have an odor, that had been there for so long seems unreal.
The realist element in the story was the teenager who was killed in a car wreck whom no one seemed to care about. The father seemed not to have any emotions and that situation is what life is like today. For example, a boy walking past the girls; home heard a dog barking and he asked the girls father; whose dog was barking. He said, “Oh it’s just that damn girls of mines dog the damn thing won’t shout up since she died and I put the damn thing outside for good.” Realist elements seem to be real not imaginary or fantasy. The mother in the story seemed to be real, a hard working single mother of two children who was trying to make ends meet.
Sublime Elements in Of Love and Other Demons
Sublime Elements in Of Love and Other Demons
The book Of Love and Other Demons (1994), written by the Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has more characteristics of sublime literature than of magical realist literature. Magical Realism and the sublime are so closely related that distinguishing between the two is hard. They are more closely related than magical realism and the fantastic.
Of Love and Other Demons has elements of magical realism. Of all the magical elements, the most important and the most obvious is the dream that is shared by both Sierva and Delaura before they meet. The long red hair of Sierva is an example of a magic realist element that is hidden. The death of Father Aquino and other mysterious events are also important in this story.
Most likely, the dream that is shared by both Sierva and Delaura is the most important of all the magical elements However, this element may also be indentified as sublime. In the sublime, there is a “frightening breakdown of identity, a breakdown that leads to another world of dreams and imagination, and of spirit” (qtd. in Sandner 54). This one event, called transcendence, has a huge effect on the characters and the outcome of the rest of the story. Through this dream, Delaura realizes he is in love with Sierva whom he has not even met. The first of Tolkien’s gifts, related to the sublime, Recovery, is used here. “It is the placing of ordinary objects from our everyday world that compels us to perceive them in a new way” (qtd. in Sandner 56). As in magical realism, “reality is ‘reconstructed’ through ‘spiritual’ phenomena” (Guenther 35).
Textualization, another magical realist characteristic (Theim 235), is used in this story. The charac…
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…anish American Literature.”Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham; N.C.: Duke UP, 1995. 119-124.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Of Love and Other Demons. N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995. 1-147.
Sandner, David. “Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-Century Children’s Fantasy Literature.” The Fantastic Sublime. Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press. 45-65,142-147.
Simpkins, Scott. “Sources of Magical Realism/ Supplements to Realism in Contemporary Latin American Literature.” Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham; N.C.: Duke UP, 1995.
Theim, Jon. “The Textualization of the Reader in Magical Realist Fiction.” Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham; N.C.: Duke UP, 1995. 235-247.