One Hundred Years of Solitude Magic realism is a literary form in which odd, eerie, and dreamlike tales are related as if the events were commonplace. Magic realism is the opposite of the “once-upon-a-time” style of story telling in which the author emphasizes the fantastic quality of imaginary events. In the world of magic realism, the narrator speaks of the surreal so naturally it becomes real.
Magic realism can be traced back to Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote during the 1920s,according to noted critic Franco (309). In fact, Jean Franco notes that “the techniques utilized by García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude are frequently compared to those of Jorge Luis Borges” Franco (309). However, it was not until the 1940s that Latin American writers began to experiment widely with new techniques and introduced stream of consciousness narration, unusual time sequences and other devices into the novel.
In the 1940s, a group of Latin American writers published works which incorporated new techniques. …
Multiple Themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Multiple Themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude
How the theme of the novel is developed and enhanced by plot, character and setting.
This novel seems to have multiple themes. One important theme is that every action causes a reaction, and one person’s doing can result in something unpredicted. Similarly, it also seems to say that fate is bound to happen, no matter what is done to try to change it. In this novel, when Jose Arcadio Buendia marries his cousin Ursula, they are cursed to have a child with the tail of a pig. I believe that this is just a way of saying that they are destined for downfall and failure. They are afraid and tired of people whispering and pointing, so after Jose kills a townsman, they decide to retreat into the jungles of South America. With the help of other settlers, they found their own little town, named Macondo, in hope of escaping the wrath of fate. Their family lives through one hundred years in this manner, before their destiny is fulfilled.
This novel is about how a family is able to survive, for a time, in solitude. So, it is appropriate that the setting is a newly settled village, which is deep in the jungle, away from the world that has condemned them. One Hundred Years of Solitude is an almost magical story where the past, present and future seem to merge into one. It tells the story of a family, rather than an individual, and how two people’s mistake results in their descendant’s downfall. If the setting was in an urban environment, the story would have made no sense, or at least lost a bit of its effect. Instead, these people start from scratch and build up their own civilization. Over the course of a century, civil wars occur, along with tragedies, angels appearing, and family members losing their sanity.
The novel is written in decades, with each one exploring a main character and with the other characters lives, the book tangles itself up, until everything blends together, to return to the book’s beginning, as Macondo continues towards its inevitable self-destruction.