ENCW 202 Spring 2020
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Apr 1st, 2020
In the book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. During this novel, we read about a family and how, and for generations, they struggle in the town of Macondo. The town is visited by gypsies which creates fantastic elements. I think my favorite part of this book was the character, Jose Arcadio Buendia, who dedicated much […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Over the last year, I have noticed that foreign writers have a different writing style than American ones. They capture the human experience so differently, they write about it so beautifully that I wonder if they know something we don’t. Is it because their culture and heritage is older than America’s? Were they raised with […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
I enjoyed this book. It did take me time to read it, and there were parts that I had to re-read because of the timeline jumping, but I liked the imagery and storyline. Out of all of the notes I made inside the book, this particular statement in the back summed it all up for […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
We have deemed this loss of time and type of isolation elements of the fantastic. However, I would argue that Gabriel García Márquez has managed to tell us the story of not only Colombia’s history but the history of many Central and South American countries. Of which were contempt living as they were before tourism, […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
In the ending of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez wants one to know that things take time and quite to be done. I also think that he is saying that you may not always be able to teach your findings to anyone that wants to learn it as one may not have […]
Posted in Animals, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
With this novel dealing with multiple elements relating to the fantastic, one component that stood out to me was death, or the use of “death” and the ritual surrounding it. Melquíades’ death, as it was described, was anticipated, but “ the process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical.” […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 26th, 2020
In my last blog post, I talked about the theme of circular time in One Hundred Years of Solitude. This theme can also be seen in the last pages of the novel, as Aureliano reads Melquiades’s parchments: Aureliano had never been more lucid in any act of his life as when he forgot about his […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Although the novel has many sad parts, the ending where Aureliano knew he would die touched me the most. Maybe because it was the end of the story or perhaps because it was the end of the family. “Then he skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 26th, 2020
There is an advantage for an author using the novel form with the fantastic versus a short story or combination of stories as we have read previously in class. One advantage is the author’s ability to use foreshadowing and dropping hints of the fantastic. In OHYOS there are many fantastical elements at play. An example […]
Posted in Death, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
A good ghost story is something that has always been able to captivate me. It’s no surprise that the short section about Prudencio Aguilar was such a delight. However, there is something to the way that Garcia Marquez designed the encounter that stands out as both melancholy and terrifying. The terrifying part is in Aguilar’s […]
Posted in Fantastic, Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Of course, as we all know the entire novel OHYOS is fantastic — from the timeline, the gypsies, the incest, and the naiveté of the people of Macondo. In the second half of OHYOS there is many fantastic elements in the story. For example, when José Arcadio dies, the blood from his ear forms a trail that […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 25th, 2020
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 […]
Posted in Isolation, Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 24th, 2020
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, some of the big conversations are about how reality meets fantasy. Another conversation relating to that is how does the past meet the present (and how the present meets the future). This is where the Gypsies come into play. For years in the fictional town of Macondo, groups of Gypsies […]
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 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 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, 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 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 One Hundred Years of Solitude, Utopia on Mar 14th, 2020
One Hundred Years of Solitude is very fast-paced because it covers a century of the Buendía family, and the movement in time distorts the line between fantasy and memory since years sometimes pass by without mention or notice from the narrator. The story opens by informing the reader that they will be going back in […]