Hi everyone! I hope your reading break was restful and enjoyable:) Daniel, sorry for the later post this time around–I’ve encountered quite a few flight cancellations and delays over the past few days so have been playing catch-up–excited to get back into the swing of things! 

I have really been looking forward to getting to delve into this book by Márquez, especially after Jon talked about how highly acclaimed it was within Latin American literature. As some of my other peers have mentioned, this book seems to have been much easier to navigate compared to others, such as Borges (sorry Jon–we can’t escape Borges, haha)–we were even given a family tree at the beginning of the book this time around! I’m glad we get to spend two weeks on it. This theme and legacy of magical realism within this realm of literature excites me. Before I delve into the rest of my blog, I wanted to attach a link to a clip of an episode of Netflix’s Narcos (my favourite TV show) that talks about Colombia’s close ties and roots in magical realism. It was my first ever introduction to this concept! 

Back to discussion on the first half of this book, I usually have gotten confused and had difficulty keeping up in past books when there are multiple characters and they are introduced in various ways, especially when the story is non-chronological, but I feel that Márquez did an effective job of introducing and developing characters throughout. My favourite character so far is Ursula. She is a strong woman who holds her family together. It is oftentimes these characters that I closely relate with and I admire her efforts to show love and care for those around her, even if she was a bit harsh at times. For example, she is assertive in her care, such as telling her husband that “if [he] has to go crazy, please go crazy all by [him]self!” (9). Although tough love can be hard, the matriarch of the family tries to bring light to the curse on her family. As the lecture mentions, Ursula is well aware of the repetitive nature of events that her family experiences–one that at one point was feared for being eternal (396). I appreciate her as a grounding sense of character throughout the book. 

I’m very excited to continue reading this book as we progress into the next week! Before I leave, my question for you is: Can you provide an example of where this theme of time/repetition repeats itself? How does it contribute to the greater overall story? 

See you next week:)