We were asked to offer our list of the fantastic or add to JGB’s list in one or two ways… I want to offer an alternative of how two of the fantastic elements that he offered may also be considered one. The idea of “reanimation” and “elasticity of time” happen to coincide in the sense that one needs the other to survive.
The idea of a predetermined fate is widely accepted through Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. As time and nature are cyclical, the nature of their names are cycled through, as well as their fates and the history of the town, suggesting that there is technically no free will and that all their actions, ideas, and experiences are predetermined by the cycle before them. This type of recycling of experiences, of truths, and of time is what might be deemed to be fantastic. We also have a type of overlapping of time and crossing of dimensions in a malleable form. We understand it when José Arcadio Buendía’s spirit from the past appears in the present and is spoken about in the present. And again with the gypsy, Melquíades’ spirit is past, but it is also current since he is the author of the manuscripts.
Additionally, the moments that are described in which it is just as difficult to think of the past as it is the future, this sense of amnesia and the loss of time, fall into this fantastic.
It is only at the end of the novel that we fully comprehend that there are two kinds of time in Macondo, linear and cyclical, which are always happening simultaneously. The notion of ‘reanimation’ depends of the elasticity and recyclability of time, and of story.
I agree that we lose our sense of time in OHYOS because of the criss-crossing of the past, present, and future. Many of the Buendia’s do share the same experiences and fates, but I think that shows both the complexity and simplicity of their characters. There is the question of whether anyone in Macondo had free will because of what we know in the end, but I like to think they did. The novel reads as a historical document or a biblical text and at the exact moment an event happens it’s recorded. However, that again is complicated because of the elasticity of time; it’s not recorded in a linear way. There’s simply no single answer and too many questions.
I think that without the changes in our sense of time, OHYOS would not have had the same effect. In a linear telling of the story we would have lost the confusion that is desired. The cyclical and linear mixing of timelines is a way to show the characters more fully and the realm of the fantastic more fully. Memory also doesn’t follow one timeline. Sometimes it will appear to be cyclical and others it will be a linear memory. There is no way to preset how a memory will be remembered. The timeline also depends on context of the situation to be determined if it will be told in a certain way.