10/16/08 One Hundred Years of Solitude

If there was one literary term that encompasses all of the novels we have encountered this semester, it would undoubtedly be magical realism. Though it has been brought up briefly throughout the semester, it seems that One Hundred Years of Solitude will be the novel to best emphasize the term. What I have noticed most about Garcia Marquez is how matter-of-factly the mention of these examples of magical realism has been, yet at the same time, the reading thus far has not been littered with it to the point that One Hundred Years of Solitude begins to read like a fantasy novel. Murakami had a talent for blending the real and surreal, but A Wild Sheep Chase tended to be a surreal novel throughout, whereas One Hundred Years of Solitude seems to create a more balanced approach between the seemingly normal and magical realism. The best example that comes to mind would be Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia’s visions of Prudencio Aguilar’s ghost. What made the vision of his ghost more impactful than, say, Boku’s vision of The Rat was that One Hundred Years of Solitude started off relatively normal, with the exception of the surreal town in which nobody has died.