Category Archives: Márquez

Week 8 – One Hundred Years of Solitude (Part 2)

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Well, I finished the book during the reading break, which in hindsight I realize was a bad idea.  I was struggling to figure out what to say this week, so I decided to just focus on the last chapter, which in all honesty was interesting but also kind of disappointing. There was a lot that was done in the last chapter that tied up the book, but also simultaneously left the reader wondering about the ending. Personally, I felt like the ending was kind of abrupt and that there was kind of a build-up throughout the novel that kind of fell through at the end. I don’t know what I was expecting because it was kind of obvious what was going to happen, but nonetheless it felt anti-climatic. I guess the “simple-ish” ending added to the realistic aspect of the book. In reality not everything has or needs a big, splashy ending. Anyways, besides the way the book ended there is one piece of imagery that I can’t forget, and that’s the ants.

When Ürsula and José had their child and it was born with the tail of a pig, I knew the kid was going to end up having the same fate as the rest of the family. However, I never anticipated for it to be so gruesome and quick. I expected there to be a mention of the kid growing up and dying or maybe just being forgotten about, but instead we get told that the baby was devoured by ants. The imagery from the lines “And then he saw the child. It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path in the garden.” (pg.553), is so clear in my mind. I did not expect Márquez to write about a baby succumbing to such a brutal death, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. The imagery is just so haunting and it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

Overall, I would say this was a good book and I did enjoy it. I had read Márquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold“, and didn’t really enjoy it but this book made me change my mind about his writing style. He really knows how to capture magic realism in such a beautiful way.

Question to think about: Every character dies a sad death at the end of the novel, however Márquez writes the most gruesome death for the newborn baby. Why do you think he chose to kill the baby like that? Did being eaten by ants add something more to the story?

Week 7 – One Hundred Years of Solitude (Part 1)

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I really enjoyed this book, it was an interesting read. There were times when I did get a bit lost or confused, but the confusion tended to dissipate as I continued reading. I also did have a hard time remembering which character was which, and who they were connected to, because all of the characters seemed jumbled up to me but also interconnected in a way, kind of like a spider’s web. With that being said, I had a hard time writing a blog post for this book. The story was relatively straightforward and there wasn’t all that much going on, yet somehow I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say. After thinking about it for a long time, one big theme popped out to me in the novel and that was time and family.

All the characters in the novel are tied to their families history, which is unfortunately plagued with bad luck. It seems like no matter what they did, the characters would always be tethered to their family’s past, like there’s an invisible string (Taylor Swift reference) that cannot be broken and will force them to experience their own bad luck. This idea that everyone’s fates are predetermined adds an element of sadness for the reader, and it made me wish for some of the characters that the saying “family isn’t always blood”, was applicable in this story.

Furthermore, there was something captivating about reading a story where you knew the end of every characters story because despite that you kept hoping that someone would be able to escape the “curse”. There was also an added sense of realism because it showed that the past cannot always be escaped, which I think a lot of us can relate to. Anyways, with the idea of predetermined futures for the characters it made the story seem circular in a way. It seemed like a never ending cycle, where everyone was bounded to the same fate.

Also, a bit of a side-note but this book reminded me so much of the book East of Eden by John Steinbeck, maybe because I read it again recently. In that novel the characters tried to see if they could escape the evil in their family, similar to how the characters in this book were trying to escape their families history. For those of you who liked this book, or didn’t, I definitely recommend this book.

Question to think about: The idea that no one can escape their family’s past is a big theme throughout the novel. So, in your opinion why do you think Márquez created this world where every characters future is predetermined?