Wikipedia, of
course, has a fat entry on this.
Sobre el autor y la obra
-
García Márquez
o
Colombia, 1927-present
o
“One
of the most significant authors of the 20th century”
o
The
author who is the most read and most influential both inside and outside Latin
America, besides Borges (Franco 328)
o
One
of the Big Four of the Boom
-
This
is his most famous novel
-
Characteristic
of Boom and also transition between boom and post-boom
Comps Example
Questions
-
Discuss
the relationship between Latin American and Latina/o literature by choosing
three representative authors/works. For example, similarities and differences
between Paz’s Laberinto de la soledad and
Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. (Works to consider: Paz, C. Fuentes, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa,
Allende, Anzaldúa, J. Álvarez.)
o Here, it’s important to remember that Allende’s Casa de los espíritus is like a feminine reworking of García
Márquez’s Cien años de soledad
-
Boom,
realismo mágico, and lo real maravilloso; postboom and neobarroco; precursors; modernity (see
the “Modernismo since 1940” section of list) and the controversy over
postmodernity in Spanish America. Authors: Borges, Huidobro, García
Márquez, Rulfo, Carpentier Asturias, Cortázar, Allende, Puig, Sarduy, Fuentes,
Poniatowska, Valenzuela. Note:
other movements which are associated with some of these writers, such as
surrealism (Cortázar) or the use of popular culture and other genres in
narrative (Puig), etc. Some suggested, secondary readings: Rodríguez Monegal,
Shaw, González Echevarría, Hutcheon.
o
This
work is representative of transition between boom and post-boom
What Franco
says (Intro to Spanish American Lit,
Chapter 11)
-
Marked
García Márquez’s emergence as a major figure in Latin American literature (329)
-
Story
of the rise and fall of the community of Macondo and of the Buendía family
(329)
-
Summary – pg. 329-330
-
Theme
of inappropriate sexual relations, incest and age differences (329-330)
-
Conveys
the wonder and strangeness of a continent, evoking the marvelous and fabulous
world of its early chroniclers (330)
-
Not
simply a national allegory; has also been read as a novel on literary creation,
and as a reworking of Oedipal relations (330)
-
Gap
between “private” inner life and public action, which divides the characters
(331)
-
Theme
of solitude (329) – Isolation/solitude in various forms
-
G.
M. focuses on period of development of the nation sate, from Independence to
the 1930’s (329)
-
G.M’s
constant tone of nostalgia and melancholy (330)
What Cambridge Companion: Latin American Novel says
(Chapter 4, pg. 85)
-
This
novel is indicative of transition from Boom to post-boom
-
Radical
questioning of the nature of reality and literature’s ability to describe it
(boom)
-
Tone
of pessimism (boom)
-
Largely
linear narrative framework (post-boom)
-
Deals
with an ordinary rural culture in a down-to-earth way (post-boom)
The Postmodern Novel in Latin America: Politics, Culture,
and the Crisis of Truth – Raymond Leslie Williams
Chapter 1:
“Introduction to the Spanish American Modernist and Postmodern Novel”
-
Ursula’s
version of truth is fundamentally contextual because she is from a primary oral
culture; she ridicules truth claims (5)
-
José
Arcadio Buendía understands and believes in truth claims – ex: sign that says
“God exists” (6)
-
Novel
ridicules the ultimate truth claim – the existence of God (6)
-
Anecdote
of a banana workers’ strike – seems fantastical/impossible, but actually the
most historically correct part of book (6)
-
In
some senses, this is a novel that relates truths that correspond to real
historical issues (6)
-
This
novel was one of the last significant confrontations with truth in Latin
American modernist fiction (7)
Basic summary
(Wikipedia)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is the story of seven
generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. The founding patriarch
of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula Iguarán, his wife (and first
cousin), leave Riohacha, Colombia, to find a better life and a new home. One
night of their emigration journey, whilst camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio
Buendía dreams of "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the
world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to found Macondo at the river
side; after days of wandering the jungle, José Arcadio Buendía's founding of
Macondo is utopic.
Founding patriarch José Arcadio Buendía believes Macondo to
be surrounded by water, and from that island, he invents the world according to
his perceptions. Soon after its foundation, Macondo becomes a town
frequented by unusual and extraordinary events that involve the generations of
the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic
(mostly) self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo,
the city of mirrors; just the cyclical turmoil inherent to Macondo. At the end
of the story, a Buendía man deciphers an encryption that generations of Buendía
family men had failed to decode. The secret message informed the recipient of
every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía family’s various generations.
Some random
ideas
-
Influenced
by non-lineal time frame of Borges (Jardín de los senderos bifurcantes)
-
Also,
influenced by modernism and Cuban vanguardia
-
As
a metaphoric, critical interpretation of Colombian history, from
foundation to contemporary nation, One Hundred Years of Solitude presents
different national myths through the story of the Buendía Family, whose spirit
of adventure places them amidst the important actions of Colombian historical
events — such as the nineteenth-century arguments for and against the Liberal
political reformation of a colonial way of life; the arrival of the railway to
a mountainous country; the Thousand Days War (Guerra de los Mil Días,
1899–1902); the corporate hegemony of the United Fruit Company ("American
Fruit Company" in the story); the cinema; the automobile; and the military
massacre of striking workers as government–labour relations policy
-
One
Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is the story of seven generations of the
Buendía
-
There
are three main mythical elements of the novel: classical stories alluding to
foundations and origins, characters resembling mythical heroes, and
supernatural elements
Some interesting characters from Wiki’s ginormous character list
-
7
Generations, 2 female patriarchs...
-
José
Arcadio Buendía: dreams of the city of mirror that is Macondo
-
Úrsula,
his wife, succeeds where he fails (strong woman)
-
Coronel
Aureliano Buendía- has 17 children, 4 of his sons are murdered
-
Arcadio,
in 3rd generation, becomes a dictator. Liberal forces in Macondo fall and he's
shot by a conservative firing squad.
-
Remedios,
the beauty, in the 4th generation is too beautiful (and maybe too wise) for the
world. One afternoon, while folding sheets, ascends into sky.
-
José
Arcadio Segundo: (4th gen) He plays a major role in the banana worker
strike, and is the only survivor when the company massacres the striking
workers. Dies at same moment as twin, theory of them being switched at birth
(his brother, Aureliano Segundo, represents Colombia's economy: gaining
and losing weight according to the situation at the time.)
-
Fernanda
is Aureliano Segundo's wife. She's an outsider, a little crazy, a strong
matriarch
Seventh generation, Aureliano, is the one born with pig's tail (as was always feared out happen)
Seventh generation, Aureliano, is the one born with pig's tail (as was always feared out happen)
-
Melquíades-one
of the gypsies, comes back from the dead, stating he could not bear the
solitude of death, but later becomes first individual buried in Macondo.
Mr. Herbert is a gringo who showed up at the Buendía house for lunch one day. After tasting the local bananas for the first time, he arranges for a banana company to set up a plantation in Macondo. The plantation is run by the dictatorial Mr. Brown.
Mr. Herbert is a gringo who showed up at the Buendía house for lunch one day. After tasting the local bananas for the first time, he arranges for a banana company to set up a plantation in Macondo. The plantation is run by the dictatorial Mr. Brown.
Themes /
Important ideas
-
Influence
of boom
o
Radical
questioning of the nature of reality and literature’s ability to describe it
o
Tone
of pessimism
-
Influence
of post-boom
o
Largely
linear narrative framework
o
Deals
with an ordinary rural culture in a down-to-earth way
-
Influence
of postmodernism
o
Questions
reality and nature of reality
-
The
city of Macondo
o
The
city Macondo appears like a utopia at the beginning. Everyone has the same
social status, nobody’s superior. As the novel develops, the vision changes and
it becomes the opposite of utopia…
-
Latin
American identity
o
Satirical
representation of Latin America
o
The
novel is somewhat representative of Latin American history
o
With
every member of the family living only for him or herself, the Buendías become
representative of the aristocratic, land-owning elite who came to dominate
Latin America in keeping with the sense of Latin American history symbolized in
the novel
o
The
emergence of love in the novel to displace the traditional egoism of the
Buendías reflects the emergence of socialist values as a political force in
Latin America, a force that will sweep away the Buendías and the order they
represent.
-
Solitude
o
Macondo
is a very solitary town
o
Isolated
from the rest of the world, the Buendías grow to be increasingly solitary and
selfish, his egocentricity is embodied, especially, in the characters of
Aureliano, who lives in a private world of his own, and Remedios, who destroys
the lives of four men enamored by her beauty
-
Magical
realism
o
Pilar
Ternera – reading future with cards
o
Family’s
fear about a child being born with a pig’s tail, and then it eventually happens…
(Aureliano III, seventh generation)
o
Child
eaten by ants – Aureliano III (7th gen)
o
Parchments
with messages about Macondo’s fate
o
Ghosts
from past that revisit family members
o
Etc…
-
Repetition
of history, prevalence of past
o
Protagonists
are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time
o
Characters
are often visited by ghosts from past – Ideological transfiguration ensured
that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and
estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of
dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that
haunt and reinforce such social conditions
o
The
novel is somewhat representative of Latin American history.
o
Repetition
of character traits between family members of various generations reproduces
the history of the individual characters and, ultimately, a history of the town
as a succession of the same mistakes ad infinitum due to some endogenous hubris
in our nature.
-
Symbolism
o
Ghosts
visiting family (fatalism)
o
Colors,
especially gold and yellow – Yellow and gold are the most frequently used
colors and they are symbols of imperialism and the Spanish Siglo de Oro. Gold
signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death,
change, and destruction.
-
Sexuality
and incest
o
Buendía
family's propensity toward incest; furthermore, the fact that "throughout
the novel the family is haunted by the fear of punishment in the form of the
birth of a monstrous child with a pig's tail
-
Temporality,
fluidity of time
o
Idea
of history as circular/repetitive (repetition of names and characteristics
between family members over generations)
o
Novel
is relatively chronological but includes some flashbacks and some “flashforwards”
into future
o
Inseparability
of past, present, and future
-
Questioning
of reality, subjectivity of experienced reality
o
(This
is very postmodern and post-boom)
-
Power
of language (and reading)
o
Various
languages fill the novel, including the Guajiro language that the children
learn, the multilingual tattoos that cover José Arcadio’s body, the Latin
spoken by José Arcadio Buendía, and the final Sanskrit translation of
Melquíades’s prophecies.
o
The
final act of translation can be seen as the most significant act in the book,
since it seems to be the one that makes the book’s existence possible and gives
life to the characters and story within.
-
Motifs
o
Memory
and forgetfulness
o
Bible
and biblical allusions
o
Gypsies
(act as links, offer transitions from contrasting or unrelated events and
characters, blur lines between fantasy and reality)
GENERAL PLOT NOTES
*** There are pretty comprehensive Sparknotes on this book, from which this summary comes :)
(I’ve just copied the points I thought were most interesting)
Ch.1
Story begins with flashback. José Arcadio Buendía as
curious, obsessive (with magical implements)
J.A.B.-driven by a desire for progress and search for
knowledge, which forces him into solitude. (becomes unkempt, antisocial,
interested only in pursuit of knowledge…sounds like a grad student!)
-Macondo: Hard working people, orderly, as yet unvisited
by death (utopia), isolated.
-discovery of greatest invention in the world: ice.
Ch. 2
-back in time- when Ursula and JAB were born
(cousins, incestà fear of genetic defects).
Motive for leaving their previous village: mockery of JAB’s
“impotence” and successive murder of Prudencio Aguilar.
-flashforward- Ursula is sad her son has left to be
with gypsy lover, walks for 5 months trying to follow them…but then, she
discovers a simple two day journey that connects Macond with civilization
time: back and forth creates mythic, oral feel. we are in a
“murky historical swamp”.
Blurred narrative between history, memory & fiction.
-the story of J.A.B. can be viewed as parable for the human
quest for knowledge.
Ch. 3
Episode of insomnia, which causes memory loss. Inhabitants
label everything (e.g. “God Exists”)
-Melquiades comes back from the dead with a cure.
-Episode of magistrate trying to dictate the color of the
house (with a comeback like: we don’t need your laws)
Ch. 4
-Melquiadez finally dies. Rebeca (adopted daughter) marries
Italian Pietro and Aureliano marries Remedios.
-J.A.B. slips into insanity (exhausted by his endless
research into the unknown), sorrowful re: the solitude of death, convinced the
same day is repeating himself & ends up tied to a tree (symbolizes tree of
knowledge) until his death years later.
As Macondo modernizes, it also has more social problems.
Prosperity is linked to horrors of capitalism (e.g. girl being forced to sleep
with many men to pay off debts)
JAB’s Macondo is a “utopian portrait of what an ideally
communist society might be like” (as Márquez was a sympathizer of Cuban Rev.)
YET, his strong reaction against dictatorship and oppression in later chapters
(during revolution against harshly regulatory gov’t) indicates disapproval of
oppressive tendencies of communism.
Ch. 5
Things start of well with Remedios and Aureliano; when she
dies, “the house plunges into mourning”.
because of the mourning, there is yet another delay in
Pietro’s and Rebeca’s wedding.
-First church is built and priest recognizes that JAB is not
mad, but rather speaking fluent Latin. (yet, before the church is built, shame
is unknown and people worship God without a church)
-impending war between Conservative gov’t represented in Macondo by magistrate
(Aureliano’s father in law) and the insurgent liberals. Later, Aureliano
Buendía becomes Col. Aureliano Buendía because of his leadership of liberal
forces.
Ch. 6.
Col. Buendía is off to civil war, fathers 17 children.
Arcadio, an illegitmate child, becomes dictator of Macondo (he’s awful, even
tries to sleep with his mom!)
Then, conservatives re-take town, Arcadio is executed.
Pietro commits suicide (unrequited love)…Amaranta feels terrible and burns her
hand as penitence.
Novel as mimetic: imitating reality, which includes a
seemingly infinite number of voices, wide array of emotions and qualities.
Márquez has belief of modern life as entropic, chaotic.
Ch. 7
Liberals lose war and Col. Buendía is sentenced to execution
by firing squad, saved at last minute by his brother.
-Begins to realize that he is fighting not for ideology but
for pride alone….starts writing poetry again.
-José Arcadio dies, Rebeca becomes a hermit, living in
solitary grief.
-JAB, tied to a tree, finally dies and the sky rains yellow
flowers.
Ch. 8.
Aureliano José develops incestual interest in his aunt,
Amaranta.
Col. Aureliano travels through Carribean starting liberal
uprising. Macondo settles into relative peace (leader is conservative but also
humane and intelligent-later, when he is sentenced to death, Col. arcadio
buendía refuses to commute the sentence though he is noticeably hardened by
war).
Ch. 9
Execution of Moncada (leader who was well liked) is the
beginning of the end. Withdrawn into himself, Colonel Buendía becomes a shell
of a man, unemotional and utterly solitary, without any memories. It is
only when Gerineldo Márquez is condemned to death that Colonel Buendía is
forced to confront himself, finally acknowledging the emptiness of the war. The
liberal party signs a peace treaty that betrays it’s ideals, then there is an
attempted suicide (a lot of suicide/murder). Ursula takes the ímpetus to try to
rescue the house, en plena decadencia.
-general feeling of people being unable to connect
emotionally with other. Language funtions as a barrier between humans, a
dilemma inspired by the biblical Babel.
-continued urges for incest are symptomatic of family’s
isolation.
Ch. 10.
Aureliano segundo “begins to delve into the esoteric
mysteries still preserved in Melquíades’s lab”. His twin brother commits
bestiality. Then, twins start sleeping with Petra (who doesn’t realize they’re
not the same man). Aureliano stays with her and their magical union causes even
the farm animals to be supernaturally fertile…which means prosperity and
consequent displays of wealth.
Ch. 11
Religious
and prudish Fernanda marries Aureliano Segundo (who contintes his affair with
Petra)
Fernanda
tries to make the house a “facsimile of an aristocratic home”; rigidly formal
and unpleasant.
Anniversary
of civil war armistice. 17 sons of Col. Buendía receive Ash Wed. crosses that
never come off. One son decides to stay in Macondo, build ice factory (which fulfills prophecy of
town made of ice). Also, railroad connection, linking Macondo with industrial,
modern world. Technology brought by the train is far more miraculous than the
magnets and telescopes that the gypsies used to bring.
One
Hundred Years of Solitude suggests that life is best when lived with
exuberance and with few inhibitions: certainly, most of the characters in the
novel seem to be uninhibited by traditional religious morals, sexual or
otherwise.
Ch
12.
Banana
plantation arrives-along with cinema, phonographs, luxury imports and more
prostitutes (chaos+uncontrolled growth)
-wealthy
banana plantation owners set up dictatorial police force.
-when
17 sons turn into soldiers, threatening to start war again, they’re shot
(crosses on head have become targets)
Ch.
13
Ursula
is going blind, time is passing more quickly
-house
is grim and ghostly quiet without children.
- There
is a certain amount of irony in García Márquez’s proposition that modern
technology and the pace of modern change confuse the villagers’ sense of
reality. After all, these are people who seem unfazed by the plainly
miraculous. This reversal of the reader’s expectation is in fact a reversal of
social norms: supernatural phenomena are expected in Macondo, but technological
phenomena seem unreal. (which relates to Western technology in lives on
L.Americans)
-Remedios
the Beauty –lacks a sense of self, driven only by animal emotions….functions as
a symbol of the beautiful innocence that Macondo has lost (and too pure for the
world, she just floats into the sky)
As the book
moves on, however, death plays a bigger role and time begins to pass so quickly
that it becomes hard to keep up with. For instance, children grow into adults
in the space of a chapter or two. In addition to paralleling the Bible, this
increase in the pace of time reflects the span of a human life, where time
seems limitless at first but starts to fly by as the years go on.
Ch. 14
Amaranta, the
elder, sewing her own funeral shroud, announces she will die at disk, offers to
take letters from living to the dead. She dies, still a virgin.
Again, yellow
symbolizes death/loss, when Babilonia was followed by yellow butterflies,
courting Meme, he is shot in the spine and paralyzed.
Ch.
15
Meme
ends up in convent (again, solitude)
Banana
plantation workers begin to organize for strike, gov’t convenes them for a
meeting (3,000 people) and they are subsequently shot and murdered and dumped
into the sea (which is biographical, on the part of García Márquez). All of
Macondo forgets this happened.
Ch.
16.
More
rain (like Biblical flood), decay, loss. Town is receding backward into memory.
Ch.
17
More
people die. Once prosperous Petra and José Arcadio Segundo can no longer throw
such lavish parties, but they still love each other.
Ch.
18.
More
little details of people’s lives and deaths.
Ch.
19.
Macondo
in irreversible decline.
CH.
20
The
end of the Buendías.
Melquíades’
prophecies are finally deciphered- they are a description of the entire history
of the Buendía family. The one reading this realizes the text mirrors his own
life (and perhaps the lives of others from L. Am??) and around him, an
apocalyptic wind swirls, ripping the town from its foundations, erasing it from
memory.
[Aureliano]
had already understood that he would never leave . . . races condemned to one
hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Certainly
the prophecy has succeeded as literature that simultaneously shapes and mirrors
reality, just as One Hundred Years of Solitude tries to shape a
fictional world while simultaneously mirroring the reality of García Márquez’s
Colombia. Melquíades’s vision, early in the novel, of a city with walls of
glass, has come true in a sense: Macondo is a city made of glass and of mirrors
that reflect back the reality of the author’s world.
No comments:
Post a Comment