Critical Review Of One Hundred Years Of Solitude

The author of the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude “is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is a novelist; renowned author, short story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Marquez originally wrote this novel in Spanish and later on translated it into many other languages. Marquez is also a Colombian novelist and is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 (González Echevarría, 2019). Marquez left his school and studies to pursue a career in journalism. He is considered as one of the most remarkable authors. Marquez had published four books in Spanish before “One Hundred Years Of Solitude'. Gravity’s Rainbow, Devil Lies In Couper, Love In The Time Of Cholera, Leaf storm are some of his published books. This was the authors first time writing in the genre of magical realism and now is considered as founding fathers in Latin magical realism. 

“One Hundred Years Of Solitude” is a 1967 novel. The magical realism style of this book established it as an important novel in the literature. Issues of time and history are influential themes in nearly all the works by the author so there is huge social, economic, and political impact in this novel like the :banana massacre incident of 1928, increasing colonization, and modernization; nature of patriarchal society at that time, history of Columbia, dominating nature of conservative government prioritizing war can be clearly observed. 

This novel is an epic family saga which follows the story of seven generations of buendia family, in town of Macondo, located in Columbia. The head of the family is Jose Aracdio Buendia who is the founder of this fictional town, which is a mythical place of isolation, which later on gets connected to the outer world. We follow over 100 years of this family through all their exploits involving love, violence, hatred, guilt, and death in the town they live. “Each Buendia in his or her own way eventually becomes isolated or alienated either from choice or from circumstances beyond his or her control”. For example the character Ursula: as her old age she wrinkles and eventually ends up being a plaything for her grandchildren, Jose Areliano has to deal with the sickness, Meme has to go through traumatic events. This book also does complete justice in reflecting the cultural aspects of Latin America. 

The main argument in the book is about the repetition of history with some layers of magical realism and struggle between old and new ways of life which is tradition and modernity itself. This book deals with the fact of people being nostalgic, getting stuck in their life, unable to move on from things they have no control of. Reality becoming magic would be the perfect tagline for this book. As a reader I find the writing technique of this book very considerate and appropriate and I fully enjoyed reading this book. The real aspect and fictional aspect are blended perfectly here. This book takes you in a journey full of different: emotions and transitions so, the way you perceive thing changes as you turn the pages and get more involved in the book. As the story goes along there is more and more details we get to know. 

The element that makes this book special is magical realism: which is heavily rooted with various historical, political details and the rawness, yet the concreteness of the characters. Every character has only said about 4-5 sentences along their lives in the book, but each sentence reflected with precision the nature of each character. Like when Jose Aracdio said “The world is round, like an orange” it reflected his amazement with the wonders of the world, yet his inability to understand them. The same thing with Ursula and all the other characters, everything they say, no matter how little, reflects a certain aspect of their true nature. Talking about the weak aspect this book: it is very dense with much information and there is very little room for dialogues within the book. 

This book perfectly portrays how basically nothing changes because we all seem to be trapped by history, a history that no one knows and therefore is criticized to repeat. The aspect of magical realism is different in this book unlike the modern day magical realism we get to see these days. Consequently, talking about people who might want to read this book, if you are someone who call themselves a fan of magical realism, especially if you have not dug deep to the roots of the genre related to literature I definitely prefer to suggest this book to such audiences. 

References

• González Echevarría, R. (2019). Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Biography, Books, Nobel Prize, & Facts. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez [Accessed 7 Jan. 2019].
•  Márquez, G., Solitude, O., Márquez, G., Rabassa, G., Cholera, L., Márquez, G., Grossman, E., Foretold, C., Márquez, G., Rabassa, G., Whores, M., Márquez, G., Grossman, E. and Demons, O. (2019). Gabriel García Márquez. [online] Goodreads.com.Availableat: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13450.Gabriel_Garc_a_M_rquez [Accessed 7 Jan. 2019]
• Bergdahl, E. (2019). 9 Magical Facts About 100 Years of Solitude. [online] Mentalfloss.com. Available at: http://mentalfloss.com/article/74166/9-magical-facts-about-100-years-solitude [Accessed 25 Jan. 2016].
• Help, H. and Solitude, O. (2019). What is the meaning of solitude in the novel 100 year of solitude? | eNotes. [online] eNotes. Available at: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-meaning-solitude-novel-100-year-solitude-161661 [Accessed 7 Jan. 2019].