ENCW 202 Spring 2020
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 24th, 2020
We first meet the character of Pilar Ternera on page 25 of the novel. Around that time a merry, foul-mouthed, provocative woman came to the house to help with the chores, and she knew how to read the future in cards. Initially, Pilar took on the role of seductress: she sleeps with Jose Acardio, a […]
Posted in Fantastic, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 24th, 2020
One Hundred Years of Solitude demonstrates the extent to which the fragile distinction between reality and fantasy depends on the context and assumptions of time and place. The banana company, as well as Fernanda’s delusions of being a queen, are both powerful examples of how even frustrated ambition ultimately leads a person to succumb to a […]
Posted in Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 24th, 2020
Time is in flux in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The future is continuously referenced throughout the novel, and the current events are written in the past tense. Because of this, we never quite have a firm stance. Garcia Marquez prepares us for this in the opening line that is both future and past. These […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 24th, 2020
The concept of mental health in this book was a constantly present theme, particularly in the beginning of the book. There are times, however, when the mental health turns into a fantastic element. The ‘insomnia plague’ was the first major thing I noticed. The people were all concerned about catching a sickness that would cause […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 24th, 2020
In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the story is written in a way that shows the time that is being written about. Marquez is showing this in his writing by having the men be the ones that go to war and doing all of the masculine things and making things […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 23rd, 2020
“Looking at the sketch that Aureliano Triste drew on the table and that was a direct descendant of the plans with which Jose Arcadio Buendia had illustrated his project for solar warfare, Ursula confirmed her impression that time was going in a circle,” writes Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and as […]
Posted in Captivity, coronavirus, dystopia, Isolation on Mar 23rd, 2020
This morning I came across a brief article online about social distancing and its relation to Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police. Published at Slate, the article is titled “The Dystopian Novel for the Social Distancing Era,” and the author, a D.C.-based writer by the name of Joshua Keating, draws parallels between the permanent disappearances in Ogawa’s novel and the […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 22nd, 2020
You may remember that I asked you to attempt to keep track, as you made your way through One Hundred Years of Solitude, of the varieties of the fantastic that appear in the novel. I’d like to identify a few here as a means of spurring an even greater list: Exaggeration. As we’ve discussed in […]
Posted in Fantastic, fear, Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Social Fears, Transformations, Utopia on Mar 21st, 2020
How many years does it take for something to finally be viewed as fantastic? Five? Twenty? One hundred? I found myself pondering this as I read One Hundred Years of Solitude. As the years go by, we see bits and pieces of the modern world beginning to make their way into the isolated Macondo—the railroad, […]
Posted in coronavirus, Fragility on Mar 20th, 2020
Here is another interesting article, one that discusses both Albert Camus’s novel The Plague and Elia Kazan’s film Panic in the Streets. The essay’s author, J. Hoberman, writes: Camus’s Plague and Kazan’s Panic are both set in port cities open to the world and feature dedicated medical protagonists who struggle against apathetic authorities. The Plague evokes the […]
Posted in coronavirus, dystopia, fear, Isolation, Loneliness on Mar 19th, 2020
Throughout this course we have explored the realm of fantastic in fiction and the amount of varieties within the category. If we were to have read a story about a pandemic that caused mass hysteria and isolation just a couple months ago, before the pandemic became a force to be reckoned with, we would have […]
Posted in coronavirus, fear, Horror, Social Fears on Mar 19th, 2020
Upon reading many of the blog posts this week relating to COVID-19, I noticed a lot of us talked about the dystopian genre or various works of literature we were reminded of. In the class Deviant Forms and Bodies with Professor Nevison, we’ve talked a lot about how different monsters reflect different cultural and societal […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 19th, 2020
When I began to see and read the posts about Covid-19, I believed, just as most of us reasoned, that this virus was not something to become panicked about, as an overwhelming amount of sickness and mass death couldn’t be the cause of a virus that was being compared to having a cold. The beginning […]
Posted in Captivity, Desperation, dystopia, Fantastic, Isolation, Loneliness, Longing for Answers, Mystery, Obsession on Mar 19th, 2020
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” We’ve all heard of cabin fever. Well, welcome to self-quarantine during the Coronavirus, with social distancing and young folks who are being advised to stay far away from the Boomers. So far my room is clean; we created an at-home office for me in the old guest room; […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 19th, 2020
I saw a post today warning people against reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 classic “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This confused me, as I believe the only people ever to be in danger of reading that story are high school juniors, and I’m pretty sure all of them are busy finding new and better ways to avoid […]
Posted in coronavirus, dystopia, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 19th, 2020
As I was reading OHYOS I kept trying to pin down the fantastic elements. But there were so so many and none of them were fantastic enough to be fantastic in my mind. No matter what I was reading (a man followed by butterflies, people paying to view ice, a girl just floating up and […]
Posted in coronavirus, dystopia, Fragility on Mar 19th, 2020
The outbreak of Covid-19 brings the fantastic into the non-fiction. In this class, we discuss the fantastic and scary aspects of stories, not our current state. According to the CDC, the number of cases was 4,226 on March 16th for the United States. Today, March 18th, the number is 9,345. World wide the virus has infected 219,228. If […]
Posted in Fantastic, Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 19th, 2020
Garcia Marquez weaves countless varieties of the fantastic into the first forty pages of his novel. Starting from the opening line, we are given both future and past at the same time. “Many years later,” we are told, “as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his […]
Posted in coronavirus, Death, Desperation, dystopia on Mar 19th, 2020
I read a post on social media that said: “Sometimes I feel like this year is being written by a four-year-old, a lot of people got sick so they bought a lot of toilet paper and stayed home.” This unfathomable idea, or what was supposed to be incomprehensible, of COVID-19, has set people out on […]
Posted in coronavirus, Disappearance on Mar 19th, 2020
For a moment, take yourself out of reality. Pretend that what is happening is on a television screen or the pages of a novel. It seems far-fetched, almost impossible to imagine as reality. It might even seem like a tired concept. After all, how many movies are based around a mysterious pandemic sweeping the nation? […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 19th, 2020
The past few weeks have been unforgettable as a sickness that frightens many has rapidly spread across the United States. It is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime. So much so, as a matter of fact, that it almost doesn’t seem real. The fantastic aspect of this begins with the public panic part […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 19th, 2020
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, there are many different aspects of religion and cultures being introduced throughout the story. It is starting with the older generation, in which they hope that the younger generations will continue the religion and culture in their own lives. The religion and culture was seen in all […]
Posted in coronavirus, dystopia on Mar 18th, 2020
In my history classes, people always joked about the fact that we were overdue for a plague, likely thinking it wouldn’t happen. Now here we are, cancelling large-scale events, closing down schools for the rest of the year, hoarding toilet paper, and locking ourselves away while preparing for the worst. Even returning to Sweet Briar […]
Posted in coronavirus, Death, Desperation, dystopia, Loneliness on Mar 18th, 2020
Receiving emails all stating the same thing, hearing the news all reciting the same scripts, it brings to mind a few familiarities. Naturally, the first thing that came to my mind was the movie Contagion released in 2011. The idea of a pandemic sweeping the planet and taking out certain people. But it also reminds me […]
Posted in coronavirus, Death, Desperation, Fragility, Loneliness, Longing for Answers on Mar 16th, 2020
This pandemic is undoubtedly fantastic. It makes me think of The Memory Police. In comparison, the current situation with the coronavirus (COVID-19) is temporary (hopefully), whereas in the novel, they were permanent, and we retain our memories of the things we have lost. Our freedom has been limited. We must practice social distancing and for […]