For once, it has been nice to have more than a week to read a book. With a novel of this size and pedigree, it is preferable to have more time to properly process it, instead of having to rush through. It feels as though as a class we finally made it to a topic we have sort of been discussing throughout the whole term. Dr.Beasely-Murray put it in a very succinct way in his first lecture on One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was that all Latin American literature is by default discussed somehow in relation to García Márquez. Whether it is viewed as a precursor or a successor, all literature of the region seems to be centred around García Márquez and his pioneering of magical realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude. And the influence does not stop at literature. This cultural ubiquity that García Márquez accomplishes over the region surpasses even literature as I am reminded of the opening shot of the popular Netflix series, Narcos, which begins with a definition of the term Magical Realism. While I have not seen more than half of the first season of that show, it does not have much to do with magical realism as far as I can tell. The only unifying factor is that Narcos takes place mainly in Colombia, the same country that García Márquez hails from.
Turning to the text, I found it surprising how readable it was. Despite this, the somewhat whimsical and random direction that the narrative takes makes it very easy to follow and yet more difficult to understand. What I mean by that is, while all the events portrayed throughout the text are clear and coherent to me so far, I have not been very successful in parsing out a deeper meaning to some of the more random elements of the story. Perhaps that could be my own fault for trying to over-assign meaning to a text with such a storied history. It is also difficult for me to definitively say anything about the text when I have not finished it yet.
Take, for example, the insomnia disease that spreads, possibly from the Indigenous people to the citizens of Macondo. The collective impact of the insomnia sickness on the entire community of Macondo affects different people uniquely. The clearest interpretation I can come up with for what this episode means is that the insomnia sickness represents how trauma affects an entire community. Aureliano (the second? first? I think first) eventually crafts a cure from the specific root found on the riverbank near the town, demonstrating the need for collective action in the face of problems that affect everybody.
My question for this week is: what stood out to you in the first half of One Hundred Years of Solitude? Are there any specific events or episodes in the narrative that have impressed you for one reason or another?
I found the insomnia plague to be really interesting. Sleep is something that is not often described in literature, let alone the total absence of it. The relationship between memory and sleep, as demonstrated by Macondo’s widespread memory loss, is also intriguing. I was so memorized by this event that I actually did further research for fun, and I found an academic article on the insomnia plague that might interest the class: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358000/#:~:text=The%20insomnia%20plague%20appears%20in,evil%20that%20attacked%20their%20tribe.
The takeaway? Macondo’s sleeping plague cannot be medically diagnosed.
I’m glad you found this novel readable. However, it touches on complex issues that you have identified very well. The interpretations for this reason are open… your approach to the topic of oblivion from trauma is interesting. When we get to the end of the novel you will see that this idea can be productive to find meaning in the narrative in its intricacies.