Mar
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Marquez: post 8
Posted by: | March 7, 2010 | Comments Off on Marquez: post 8
I must say this edition of the book has really helpful and interesting footnotes that aid in explaining and pointing out things I would have never noticed nor known. The footnotes highlight how cleverly constructed and thought out the book is. For example they emphasize how Márquez finds so many ways to encounter solitude: isolation from family, love, death, life, ect and writes about so many different ways of dying. A footnote that I found especially intriguing is the quote describing Arcadio’s lust for his mother Pilar, “él, [Arcadio], la buscaba y la encontraba en el rastro de su olor de humo” (p212). The footnote compares this quote to Arcadio’s father’s desire for Pilar, “Jose Arcadio siguió buscando toda la noche en el olor de humo que ella tenía en las axilas” (p113) to show the repetition in the images representing craving and lust for Pilar shared by father and son.
Cien años de soledad, seems to be a huge critique of society, especially in terms of self-involvement and greed. Beginning with the obsession with technologies and all the parts of war, especially Aureliano’s transformation into a dictator. The reader reads the events of the story knowing their fate is solitude from the title and from the patterns of how each circumstance ends in the book. I also think, war and technology aid in establishing the theme of loss of innocence, because they show the gain of knowledge and experience. And of course the book has a copious amount of deflowering and incest scenes that take place, an obvious example of loss of inncence.
I can see many similarities between Cien años de soledad and El reino de este mundo. The argument made by Carpentier that utopia does not exist on earth but people must continue fighting for progress can be made for Cien años de soledad also. Especially when you look at the scene where Don Apolina Masocote is replaced by Arcadio’s dictatorship, an even more gruesome dictatorship.
Overall I still really like the book even though it is definitely really long!
