Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, I found myself enchanted by his narrative resembling something not unlike a fairy tale. In the confluence of fantastical elements and on-the-ground actualities, Marquez is able to communicate to the reader their familiar hopes and dreams, as well as experienced anguish. It is in this way it can be viewed as a fairy tale for adults — or an otherworldly tale whose morals inform our known reality. 

    Time and time again, the narrative grounds the dreamlike events which surround the day-to-day lives of his characters with human struggles including philosophy, spirituality and, at its most basic, human pitfalls. Take one of the characters in the book, the founder of Macondo José Arcadio. Through the pursuit of passionate love with his mistress—described as something like an “earthquake” (Márquez 37) —Arcadio is left with the result that he is to become a father sooner than anticipated. Such situations are commonplace throughout the book and illustrative of the follies which make us human even among a spectacular world. Not long after, when Arcadio and his eccentric friend Melquíades meet a fellow nomadic gypsy later on, a more abstract struggle is presented in the form of mortality and belonging: “He really had been through death, but [the Gypsy] had returned because he could not bear the solitude” (Márquez 55). Although the circumstances of the man being exiled from his tribe might not be relatable for all, human emotions surrounding loneliness and belonging are ubiquitous. 

    Throughout its pages, the narrative refutes the assumption of the reader that it is an escapist fairy tale; in this sense One Hundred Years of Solitude is more honest than one, as the story chooses not to shy away from the dark side of humanity. In its rendition of how women are abused in the real world, the character Aureliano crosses paths with a girl who is forced into prostitution by her grandmother. “He felt an irresistible need to love her and protect her,” Aureliano soon finds; and his overpowering desire for the girl drives him into wishing to “marry her in order to free her from the despotism of her grandmother” (Márquez 58). It is only after reaching this conclusion, and coming back the next day, that he finds the girl has left town and is subject to the same tragic fate. 

    By the end of reading Part I of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I found the tales of Márquez as highlighting the author’s belief in universal humanity. In keeping with this idea, my question for the class would be if you found any of the vignettes speak to your own human struggles or experiences, or if they remained more magical than real. S