The Limits Of Reality In One Hundred Years Of Solitude

The limits of reality in One hundred years of solitude.

Here magic realism is revealed in its fullest, as this episode, the view of a long dead person does not at slightest surprise the individual, who come eye to an eye with a ghost.Actually, characters returning from death are one of the main features of the book. Therefore, to quote Maggie Ana Bowers, “<...> magical realism is such a paradox that is unified by the creation of the narrative in which magic is incorporated seamlessly into reality”.

All the analyzed characters would seem pretty ordinary from a domestic point of view, as they maintain jobs to feed their families, they complete daily chores and tasks and strive for a better living. However, when Gabriel García Márquez adds them some extra special powers, like possibility to tell the future, communication with dead spirits and capability to return from the grave, they become magical real.

Gabriel García Márquez combines magic and religion from the Western perspective, this trick might be explained by logic, but in Latin America it is perfectly normal to justify the miraculous event through God. More to the point, the author allows the reader to skip over the absurdity of levitating priest by transmuting it into a very realistic result – the money which was collected, was a means to build a church in Macondo. As the levitation is explained by religion, it is much easier for the reader to accept it, as this has become natural for humans to explain the unknown through higher forces. To extent the point of rising into the air, it must be said, that levitating is not an uncommon event in Macondo. Levitating, just as the presence of dead spirits, create magical realism in One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

Magic in Macondo is an everyday occurrence and Gabriel García Márquez uses exaggeration to create fantasy so deep, that every reader is drawn into it. In the town of Macondo the people are not affected by the mystical happenings in any way, because they encounter the supernatural on daily basis. This natural reaction makes it easier for the readers to accept the strange incidents that the inhabitants of Macondo call reality. The author skips the absurdity of the levitation, talking ghosts, flying carpets, endless rain, children with pig's tails and turns it into a possibility, which is based on customs, traditions and religion. By combining the real and the imaginary, Gabriel García Márquez created fantastical, yet convincing novel. Naomi Lindstrom was right stating that “[i]t is the novel that consolidated García Márquez image as the great teller of tales among the writers of his generation. One Hundred Years Of Solitude demonstrates to the full García Márquez’s ability to utilize the repertory of stratagems a skilled plot-weaver employs to captivate an audience”.