This weeks reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was one of the most accessible and enjoyable readings so far. Although there was something of a lack of overall plot, this can be said for several of the previous readings and there is always enough happening that the novel reads smoothly and remains entertaining.
The many relationships between characters that seem to be constantly in flux due to changing feelings, deaths, illness, etc. reminded me slightly of a soap opera and were similarly entertaining. After watching the lecture this effect makes a lot of sense. On the one hand the work points to larger social phenomena and movements, but on the other it asserts that through all of these larger powers the life of the individual continues and although it might seem unimportant in the grand scheme pf things is important and dramatic to those immediately experiencing and being affected by it.
This novel shares many themes with previous readings, notably madness, local rural communities, revolution, sex and incest, ageing and death, and family. Particularly madness, sex and incest, and revolution somewhat counterintuitively relate to the overarching theme of play. Play can also include playing with expectations. Each of these themes messes with the expected order of society and the common understanding of how the world works. Yet, as pointed out in the lecture these challenges to the expected are inevitably useless.
Sex and incest have been notable in a few of the readings for this class. Is this a common theme of 19th and 20th century literature or is it a (mis)conception of rural communities? Or are these occurrences separate and hold their own individual functions within each work?
I really enjoyed this reading and controversially did not find it very hard to follow and. found that despite the many characters with the same names that Márquez did a good job at making them differentiable to the reader. My only qualm would be the lack of an overall purpose or goal in the novel at any given moment, although this is rather the point.
Question for the class: Obsession and madness seem to often go hand in hand, for example for José Arcadio Buendía or Rebeca. Does madness highlight the irrelevance or the significance of a theme or idea? Does the madness of a character over a specific topic show that they have understood something to a deeper and meaningful level that puts them out of touch with those around them who do not understand it? Or is the opposite true, that they become out of touch with those around them because of the insignificance of their obsessions?
I’m glad you liked this novel where this “multitude” of characters fills all the spaces of the fictional world with their lives. It is true that some tend to be melodramatic, like in a sop opera, but there are references to the history of Latin America that break that feeling of mere entertainment. That is why the game of the novel is complicated, and that is why how Dr. Beasley Murray says it is so difficult for other writers to imitate.