Tag Archives: family

García Márquez

Week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude and Collapse

I found that I enjoyed the second half of One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez significantly more than I enjoyed the first half. Many of the symbols, broader themes, and patterns started to become more coherent for me, and this awareness infused each chapter with much more significance.

The imagery of “spiral and collapse” has persisted throughout my reading of the text, and I believe it fittingly characterizes the world of Macondo and the Buendías. I imagined the plot, rather than a classic mountain, as a large corkscrew that coils forward in time but continually reifies the past’s events and tragedies. When I reached the end and read about the tornado winds that finally swept Macondo away, I thought this was a fitting symbol to complete the narrative. At the center of this spiral, trying bravely and desperately to create order within the chaos of the family, is Ursula, the relentless matriarch. She is one of the only constants in the midst of changing yet repetitive characters and events. In a sense, I imagine her being the “eye of the storm” in the center of the spiraling hurricane of this family.

In the second half of the novel in particular, we see Macondo and its founding family spiral through chaos and false progress. Capitalism and imperialism seem to overburden the once idyllic town until it explodes under the weight of its many tragedies. Conversely, we see the Buendía family collapse in on itself. This is illustrated quite vividly through their repeated turning in on themselves incestuously. Shut away, wading yet again through their enduring and collective solitude, the spiral finally seems to crash into its center upon the death of its indelible matriarch. But, like the text suggests, I think the beginning of the collapse really came upon the death of Pilar Ternera, who has always acted as a shadowy and unloved matriarch in her own right. Pilar is also one of the few founders of Macondo, present throughout the text. Despite being rejected, she births two sons of the Buendía family and comforts/”grandmothers” several others. In addition, she has a special relationship with time that seems to place her at the center of this hurricane too; able to envision events of the past and future, she seems to know the Buendías’ fate all along. When she dies, this spiral has finally lost the integrity of its center and collapses in forcefully.

This quote illustrated this imagery and Pilar’s role most for me: “There was no mystery in the heart of a Buendía that was impenetrable for [Pilar] because a century of cards and experience had taught her that the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle” (396).

To bounce off of Jon’s discussion question, I think the family’s fate could have been saved by the naming of the last Buendía Rodrigo, rather than another Aureliano. The text repeatedly alludes to their destiny for greatness and I believe this greatness could have been truly preserved with the symbolic ending of the name cycle. Question for discussion: Do you think something else could have saved the Buendías from their fate?

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García Márquez

Week 7: One Hundred Years of Solitude and Spiral

The first half of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was a vibrant and overwhelming ride. It felt as if the narrative spun into chaos within the first 30 pages. It was beautiful to experience but also disorienting and somewhat tedious. Like the title suggests, and as Jon mentioned in his lecture, the greatest enemy of the characters (and the readers) here is tedium. A slow-boiling circus of chaotic personalities and circumstances that never seems to progress past its repeated mistakes.

Given the nature of magical realism and also the events of this novel, I found it difficult to differentiate the momentous from the mundane. Metaphorically speaking, García Márquez’s writing was extremely saturated and rich – it felt like a deluge of vivid colors – and hence, at times I wanted to put on sunglasses to mitigate the blinding intensity. Even the syntax of García Márquez’s writing seemed to contribute to this flood of imagery. He crafts his narrative through large blocks of text in which context, points of view, and time periods can fluctuate without apparent connection. Even dialogue would sometimes be buried in these long paragraphs, giving the reader a choppy sense of organization and progression. As I settled into the book, I began to acclimate to García Márquez’s game and found myself getting used to finding profound passages embedded in seemingly unrelated text – for example, “Amaranta’s sensibility, her discreet but enveloping tenderness had been weaving an invisible web about her fiancé, which he had to push aside materially with his pale and ringless fingers in order to leave the house at eight o’clock” (107). Breathtaking passages like these felt like were difficult to identify and ruminate on because they were often sandwiched by an excess of equally intense descriptions and events.

One thing I loved in particular about the text was the absurd humor, planted dryly at unexpected moments. There are too many instances to mention, but this one in particular truly made me laugh out loud: “He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians” (71). Moments like this especially stuck out because their simple and blunt delivery stood in contrast to adjacent passages of serious intensity.

Disney’s Encanto popped into my head repeatedly in the first half of the novel. Upon further research I found that I’m definitely not the first to make this connection and many believe that One Hundred Years of Solitude may have been a significant (or entire) source of inspiration for La Familia Madrigal. Both the Buendía and Madrigal families live in massive, multi-generational mansions in the jungle of Colombia, acting as the social and political leaders of their village, and juggling surreal and magical powers. I loved thinking about this possible connection as the novel progressed; it helped to lighten some of the darker aspects of the plot.

Question for discussion: How did you make sense of time in the novel? At times it felt like the narrative crawled along at snail’s pace and then sped into overdrive skipping across decades. I could never get a sense of the children’s ages or relationships to each other. Do you think time is also subject to the magic of Macondo?

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de la Parra

Week 2: Mama Blanca’s Memoirs and the Performance of Beauty

Mama Blanca’s Memoirs by Teresa de la Parra was truly a joy to read. Her description of social interactions and relationships, in particular, made profound of the otherwise mundane. It’s difficult not to quote the entire text for this purpose, but one passage in particular that I think illustrates this talent is about Mama Blanca’s sisters, “My five sisters and I formed a rising staircase stretching from seven months to seven years, and from our enthroned stairway we ruled over all of creation without ostentation.” This quote also highlights a major theme of the text, which is the fantasy of childhood. In both the foreword and the following text, de la Parra takes care to describe the sweet, innocent, tender adventures of youth – a time for both narrators of incredible abundance and magic and absent of any serious preoccupations or anxieties. It was lovely to read about Mama Blanca’s childhood adventures through her own eyes and then return to the foreword and understand that this joyful, mischievous spirit never quite left her.

Another theme I found myself returning to was that of classism and the severe power dynamics of wealth and status. This theme was especially played out through the story of Vicente Cochocho, a “hired hand” of Piedra Azul plantation. Vicente, literally called “louse,” is often described as ugly. It becomes clear throughout the passage that attractiveness and elegance are more than just exterior aesthetics in de la Parra’s world, they are tools for social upward mobility. In this sense, characters described as ugly, including Eleuteria and Aquilina, Vicente’s partners, lack power, not simply because they are poor, but importantly because they lack beauty. In a way, to the others, his ugliness justifies his position on the plantation and his subsequent treatment. Beauty is a major preoccupation of the characters in Mama Blanca’s Memoirs, especially Blanca Nieves’ mother. De la Parra writes, “Far more than in her own person, Mama’s vanity had its abode in our six heads.” Blanca Nieves’ performance of beauty is a significant theme of her early childhood. Over time, she comes to understand that her value lies in her beauty, specifically in her hair, saying, “My honor … had its seat in my hair and in no other part of my person.” In this case, despite the labor it requires, beauty grants Blanca Nieves status and power, in whatever modest sense.

Finally, a theme I found woven throughout every passage of the text was that of law and order, punishment, and justice. This is illustrated through the relationships and power dynamics between parents/caregivers and children, masters and subordinates, and older and younger siblings, to name a few. Blanca Nieves seems to have a keen sense of justice and we can see this especially in her descriptions of the “hired help” working at Piedra Azul: her contempt for caregivers like Evelyn, who are authoritative and harsh, and her admiration for Vicente, who is kind and selfless. Question for discussion: How do you see Blanca Nieves’ sense of justice playing out in the relationships and dynamics of her own family and community as an old woman?

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