One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year. As mentioned in previous blog entries, I was absolutely in love with the diction, the lyrical structure of the sentences, the way Márquez was able to make absolutely everything sound beautiful. He has a voice unlike anything I have ever read, and from the first page, I was sucked straight into this story. I absolutely loved every moment…
…until the end.
I have to say, the ending of this beautiful novel left me with a disgusting taste in the back of my mouth. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t enjoy the last quarter of the book nearly as much as I had the beginning. Úrsula, the steadfast woman who held the house together, who had a cure for every possible ailment imaginable, the woman who brought in the most reliable source of income for the family for years and years, was turned into a blind and hallucinating plaything for the little children. I was very annoyed that Márquez did not give her a more dignified death. Once she died, there was really no one left that I wanted to read about. I had already invested a great deal of emotion and love into the stories of Úrsula, José Arcadio Buendia, Amaranta, José Arcadio, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Rebeca, Aureliano José, Arcadio, Aureliano Segundo, and Remedios the Beauty. I did not care much for the reclusive José Arcadio Segundo, and I had very little love for any characters after. Fernanda del Carpio was a stuck-up little snob who overpowered Úrsula and forced the entire household to go through stupid rituals so that she could feel more like a Queen. I had absolutely no sympathy for her. Santa Sofia de la Piedad, the wife of the late Arcadio, was the only living character that reminded me of how the book began, and she rarely appeared. The house seemed dominated by Fernanda and her wayward children. They were all off at boarding school, so we never really formed a bond with the characters. Our first impression of Meme is when she shows up to the house with about sixty of her classmates without telling her parents that they are coming. My first thought was, “Wow. What a spoiled little brat.” Then, just as I was beginning to like her rebellious character, her lover is shot trying to visit her and she is sent to a convent, never to be heard from again. José Arcadio was a boring character that only surfaced long enough to be in love with the late Amaranta and then die.
The last hope I had for this novel rested in Aureliano, the son of Meme and her lover. As a child, he was kept in captivity and refused any contact with the outside world by none other than the wicked witch of the west—Fernanda. Again, what a selfish little princess. I was secretly waiting for some moment with that adorable wild-child would find a window he could sneak out of and go cause trouble like the beloved Buendias of the beginning of the novel. Instead, he remained thoroughly trapped, and when he was finally allowed into the outside world, he had lost all curiosity for it. When Amaranta Úrsula returned to Macondo with her husband Gaston, I was shocked at how boring and lifeless Márquez portrayed Macondo. In the beginning, Macondo was such a magical place, always buzzing with life. They were visited by the incredible gypsies, they took up arms and rioted when Don Mascote tried to dictate their lives, and there was a shower of yellow flowers when José Arcadio Buendia died. What has become of all those people now? What happened to the Macondo we all grew to love?
But most of all, what truly horrified me about the ending was the fact that the BABY WAS DRAGGED OFF AND EATEN BY ANTS!!!! Did Márquez really have to do that? I almost threw up when I read the line, “It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path in the garden” (414). So I will happily describe how I think the book should have ended. Amaranta Úrsula should have borne a child by her husband Gaston, who is not a Buendia, and therefore the child would not be a Buendia. Then Amaranta Úrsula and Aureliano’s love affair should have begun. When the child was old enough to travel, Gaston should have found out about the love affair and then taken the child far away from his unfaithful mother. While Amaranta Úrsula was pregnant with Aureliano’s child, that is when Aureliano should have deciphered the last lines of the Gypsy poem and realized that Macondo was about to be swept off the face of the earth. Then father, mother, and unborn child could have at least died together, rather than be killed separately by childbirth, ants, and the destruction of Macondo. And then the book could have ended with the child of Amaranta Úrsula and Gaston hearing of the deaths and one day returned to Macondo with dreams of rebuilding it as it had once been. This way, the Buendia line has died off, as was predicted by the gypsies, but there is still a glimmer of hope in the hearts of the readers for the legendary Macondo to be rebuilt. (912)
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Falling In Love with Gabriel García Márquez
(Dear Mr. Coon,
I apologize that this blog is a day late. I'm currently in Virginia, as you may know, to celebrate my mom winning the Alumna of the Year award from the University of Virginia. Since most of yesterday was spent at the university listening to her give speeches and such, I planned to write the blog when I got home last night. Unfortunately, I became really ill in the middle of dinner and ended up going home and sleeping for twelve hours. I won't go into the gross details, but if you need to hear from anyone else, both my mom and Alexis Glascock can attest to my state.
This little blurb was not counted in the final wordcount. And just in case you need a good laugh, please know that I'm leaning halfway out the window, balancing my laptop just to try and steal the neighbor's interent wireless connection so I can post this blog :) Have a good weekend.)
From the moment I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I knew I was going to fall in love. Gabriel García Márquez has absolutely captured me, and to be honest, I’m not even sure how. The book does not really revolve around any character in particular, there is very little dialogue, and the plot jumps around every few pages. Yet somehow, I cannot put this book down. Something about the lineage of the Buendía family, the hopes we share with Úrsula for the future of the family, and the eloquence with which Márquez neatly wraps the book into one complete package keeps any reader absolutely entranced and desperate for more.
When I first wrote about the strength of Úrsula, my favorite character up to that point, I had no idea what a vital role she would play throughout the book. In fact, I was rather upset wondering how many pages she would live through. But Úrsula has lived on, and in fact she “resisted growing old even when she had already lost count of her age” (246). I found myself incredibly impressed with Úrsula throughout the novel, especially when Colonel Aureliano Buendía left young Arcadio in charge of Macondo, and the latter “became the cruelest ruler that Macondo had ever known” (105). Úrsula grew more and more enraged until finally, on the day that Arcadio dragged Don Mascote out into the street with the intention of shooting him, Úrsula ran after him with a pitch-covered whip, until she “chased him to the back of the courtyard where Arcadio curled up like a snail in its shell” (105.) I was so impressed with Úrsula’s fearlessness in this scene; she single-handedly overthrew Macondo’s bloody dictator and took over the rule of the town. Despite how many people Arcadio had had shot just for disrespecting him, he found himself powerless in the face of his grandmother. I also love the way with which Úrsula welcomes all into her home, from Colonel Aureliano’s seventeen children to the young orphan Rebeca to Aureliano Segundo’s ridiculous wife Fernanda del Carpio. If the book has a main character, I believe it is Úrsula, the caretaker of the Buendía lineage and the keeper of the peace in Macondo.
Another striking feature of the novel is the incredible depth of love and tragedy. So many times, we feel hopeful for the lonely characters, hoping that they have finally found love, and oftentimes, it is followed only by tragedy. For example, Amaranta never finds love. She falls for Pietro Crespi, who instead falls in love with her sister, Rebeca. We see the desperate need to love and be loved in Amaranta’s character when she goes so far as to threaten Rebeca with death should she marry Pietro Crespi. When Rebeca becomes disenchanted with Pietro Crespi and instead marries José Arcadio, however, we find hope for Amaranta’s happiness. I will never understand why Amaranta chose to tug Pietro along by a string rather than accept his proposition to marry her. As he showered her with affection and gifts, she continued to turn up her nose until she had driven him to commit suicide. She destroys her own hopes for happiness with a man she had loved so deeply that she was ready to murder for him, and for what? Later in the book, Colonel Gerineldo Márquez seeks her affections, spending hours with Amaranta in the sewing room and bringing her gifts. And yet Amaranta tells him “Let’s forget about each other forever…. We’re too old for this sort of thing now” (163). She clearly has no desire to be alone, being that right after she told the Colonel her final answer, she “locked herself in her bedroom to weep over her solitude unto death” (163). The closest she comes to letting herself love and be loved is her run-in with Aureliano José, a man she had raised from the time he was a little child who fell in love with her and even deserted the army to come back for her. She refuses him, however, and he ends up dying just outside a movie theater, shot by Captain Aquiles Ricardo.
One Hundred Years of Solitude has become an absolute favorite of mine, and I plan to go about reading the rest of Márquez’s work in my spare time. Though I still cannot figure out what it is exactly about this book that has captured my imagination, I’m sure I will reread it many times throughout my life. In fact, I’m actually dreading writing the final paper on the novel, because I have no idea how to encompass everything I love under one thesis statement. (773)
The articles I plan to use are:
Fiction as History: The Bananeras and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Eduardo Posada-Carbo
Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 395-414
Published by: Cambridge University Press
(though it may talk too much about the war the book was based off of and not enough about the book itself)
The Necessity of the Literary Tradition: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One-Hundred Years of Solitude"
James C. Jupp
The English Journal, Vol. 89, No. 3, Our History, Ourselves (Jan., 2000), pp. 113-115
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Cien anos de soledad: History and the Novel
Anna Marie Taylor
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 3, Colombia: The Anti-Imperialist Struggle (Autumn, 1975), pp. 96-112
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Color's Strife
The poem White Lies by Natasha Trethewey is a heartbreaking poem about what it was like to fight one’s own color just to find acceptance. Trethewey tells the story of herself as a young girl hiding her true skin color as a means of finding acceptance. The use of vivid imagery and colors throughout the poem allows Trethewey to paint us a melancholy picture of not only the shame and fear, but also the courage and determination that guided the life of a young African American girl growing up in Mississippi.
White Lies is a personal poem written about Trethewey’s childhood. Her parents had interracially married, which was against Mississippi law at the time. Trethewey was born with skin light enough that she could pass for a white girl, and she spent her youth lying about her heritage and where her family came from. Her feelings of shame toward her background are evident when she writes, “I could easily tell the white folks / that we lived uptown, / not in that pink and green / shanty-fied shotgun section / along the tracks” (7-11). Though driven by shame, however, that shame led to a strong sense of determination, one that inspired her to make her own dresses so that she could pretend “came straight out the window / of Maison Blanche” (13-14). Every young girl dreams of fitting in—Trethewey learned that pretending to be white would win her friendship and love. In the lines “I could even keep quiet… like the time a white girl said / (squeezing my hand), Now / we have three of us in this class” (14-17), we begin to understand how lonely this poor girl is. Unable to identify with either race—white or black—and hurt by a divorce between her parents, Trethewey’s desperate need to belong is understandable.
The most striking feature of White Lies is Trethewey’s use of colors. In the first ten lines alone, Trethewey mentions a color eight times. By introducing the poem this way, Trethewey imprints the importance of color into our minds, making us aware throughout the poem. She plays around with a double meaning of the word “white”, used not only to signify what she views as the superior race, but also to place less weight on the lies she has told. We view lies very differently from white lies—the former is something we’ve known is wrong from childhood, and the latter is a little fib told to avoid hurting another’s feelings or to hide something trivial. Ironically, Trethewey uses the word “white” to mean both important and unimportant. Her reference to color in the very last stanza, however, is the one that leaves the biggest impression on us as readers. Unlike the first stanza, the last contains only one mention of a color, signifying the importance of this final image. Trethewey says that whenever her mother caught her lying about her heritage, she “washed out my mouth / with Ivory soap” (23-24). In a sense, Trethewey’s own tongue is stained white from all the white lies she’s told, and yet her mother is using white soap to wash out all the white lies. Trethewey, rather than resisting, “swallowed the suds / thinking they’d work / from the inside out” (26-28), a symbol of how desperately she wants to identify with only the Caucasian side of her background. She believes that white is pure, and therefore must wash out all the blackness inside her with the Ivory soap in order to find her place in the world.
White Lies is a sad poem of yearning and loneliness. Trethewey is caught in a life where her friends only accept her because she is living a lie, and her mother does not accept her for who she wishes she were. Though the title of the poem at first seems to suggest that the lies Trethewey told were trivial, a deeper reading proves that they were anything but. (669)
White Lies is a personal poem written about Trethewey’s childhood. Her parents had interracially married, which was against Mississippi law at the time. Trethewey was born with skin light enough that she could pass for a white girl, and she spent her youth lying about her heritage and where her family came from. Her feelings of shame toward her background are evident when she writes, “I could easily tell the white folks / that we lived uptown, / not in that pink and green / shanty-fied shotgun section / along the tracks” (7-11). Though driven by shame, however, that shame led to a strong sense of determination, one that inspired her to make her own dresses so that she could pretend “came straight out the window / of Maison Blanche” (13-14). Every young girl dreams of fitting in—Trethewey learned that pretending to be white would win her friendship and love. In the lines “I could even keep quiet… like the time a white girl said / (squeezing my hand), Now / we have three of us in this class” (14-17), we begin to understand how lonely this poor girl is. Unable to identify with either race—white or black—and hurt by a divorce between her parents, Trethewey’s desperate need to belong is understandable.
The most striking feature of White Lies is Trethewey’s use of colors. In the first ten lines alone, Trethewey mentions a color eight times. By introducing the poem this way, Trethewey imprints the importance of color into our minds, making us aware throughout the poem. She plays around with a double meaning of the word “white”, used not only to signify what she views as the superior race, but also to place less weight on the lies she has told. We view lies very differently from white lies—the former is something we’ve known is wrong from childhood, and the latter is a little fib told to avoid hurting another’s feelings or to hide something trivial. Ironically, Trethewey uses the word “white” to mean both important and unimportant. Her reference to color in the very last stanza, however, is the one that leaves the biggest impression on us as readers. Unlike the first stanza, the last contains only one mention of a color, signifying the importance of this final image. Trethewey says that whenever her mother caught her lying about her heritage, she “washed out my mouth / with Ivory soap” (23-24). In a sense, Trethewey’s own tongue is stained white from all the white lies she’s told, and yet her mother is using white soap to wash out all the white lies. Trethewey, rather than resisting, “swallowed the suds / thinking they’d work / from the inside out” (26-28), a symbol of how desperately she wants to identify with only the Caucasian side of her background. She believes that white is pure, and therefore must wash out all the blackness inside her with the Ivory soap in order to find her place in the world.
White Lies is a sad poem of yearning and loneliness. Trethewey is caught in a life where her friends only accept her because she is living a lie, and her mother does not accept her for who she wishes she were. Though the title of the poem at first seems to suggest that the lies Trethewey told were trivial, a deeper reading proves that they were anything but. (669)
Friday, April 11, 2008
Four Hundred and Seventeen Pages of Eloquence
I have just started reading Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I was shocked to find myself hooked from the first page. While most books start off slow, One Hundred Years of Solitude immediately delved into a fascinating world of gypsies, magic, crazy scientists, and a mysterious mention of a Colonel in front of a firing squad. Márquez succeeded in grabbing my attention from the first line.
What I love most about Márquez’s work is the beautiful language. I have always been a fan of Spanish and how lyrical the structure sounds; One Hundred Years of Solitude, having been translated from Spanish, has the same lyrical quality that I love. I barely had to reach the second page to discover a quote I loved, “Things have a life of their own…. It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls” (2). Marquez’s language is so elegant that he can even make Buendía and his men’s trek through a gloomy forest in despair sound beautiful.
The first character to grab my attention was Úrsula, Buendía’s wife. I was amazed at how supportive she remained despite her husband’s crazy actions. While Buendía founded the town of Macondo and successfully built each house with such precision that “no house got more sun than another during the hot time of day” (9), he later lost all his work ethic to his fascination with gypsy magic. Buendía wastes the money Úrsula’s Father’s had saved for his daughter, first to buy gypsy items and later to melt in a concoction rumored to double the amount. No matter how many times he fails or how much he hurts his wife with his actions, however, she stays by him. Though she loses her temper when he tries to tell his children that the world is flat, she continues to work in the gardens to support her family while her husband chases his fantasies about magic. I was most impressed with Úrsula when Buendía returned from his journey to find a route to civilization and decided to move. She was calm and collected as he made his preparations and packed his items, then chose the opportune moment to ask him hat he had up his sleeve. She refused to be moved by his tales of a better life, knowing that Macondo was the place she would raise her children and live out her days. Úrsula stays admirably strong in the face of her husband, carefully choosing her words to remind Buendía of all that he has been missing while so fascinated with his Gypsy magic. He finally realizes what he has done to his family, “contemplating the children until his eyes became moist” (14). Úrsula impressed me immensely with her ability to fill her husband’s head with reason after so many years of irrationality. She is a very strong woman.
While the lineage of the story is very hard to follow, considering the characters have the same names, I find myself fascinated rather than annoyed. Each time a new character is encountered, he or she raises a new mystery, a need to find out how he or she is tied into the grand scheme of things. Why is Colonel Aureliano Buendía standing before a firing squad? When does he come upon the Spanish galleon that his father found in the forest? How is each character a piece of the puzzle that makes up the rise and fall of Macondo? I admit, I am not terribly far into the book yet, but this was intentional. I don’t have the time to read as much as I would like to, and these past few busy weeks have been no exception. I have been saving this book to read this weekend, lying in the sun and dreaming about Márquez’s magical world. So far, I am extremely intrigued by One Hundred Years of Solitude and cannot wait to piece together the fantastic puzzle such an eloquent writer has created. (660)
What I love most about Márquez’s work is the beautiful language. I have always been a fan of Spanish and how lyrical the structure sounds; One Hundred Years of Solitude, having been translated from Spanish, has the same lyrical quality that I love. I barely had to reach the second page to discover a quote I loved, “Things have a life of their own…. It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls” (2). Marquez’s language is so elegant that he can even make Buendía and his men’s trek through a gloomy forest in despair sound beautiful.
The first character to grab my attention was Úrsula, Buendía’s wife. I was amazed at how supportive she remained despite her husband’s crazy actions. While Buendía founded the town of Macondo and successfully built each house with such precision that “no house got more sun than another during the hot time of day” (9), he later lost all his work ethic to his fascination with gypsy magic. Buendía wastes the money Úrsula’s Father’s had saved for his daughter, first to buy gypsy items and later to melt in a concoction rumored to double the amount. No matter how many times he fails or how much he hurts his wife with his actions, however, she stays by him. Though she loses her temper when he tries to tell his children that the world is flat, she continues to work in the gardens to support her family while her husband chases his fantasies about magic. I was most impressed with Úrsula when Buendía returned from his journey to find a route to civilization and decided to move. She was calm and collected as he made his preparations and packed his items, then chose the opportune moment to ask him hat he had up his sleeve. She refused to be moved by his tales of a better life, knowing that Macondo was the place she would raise her children and live out her days. Úrsula stays admirably strong in the face of her husband, carefully choosing her words to remind Buendía of all that he has been missing while so fascinated with his Gypsy magic. He finally realizes what he has done to his family, “contemplating the children until his eyes became moist” (14). Úrsula impressed me immensely with her ability to fill her husband’s head with reason after so many years of irrationality. She is a very strong woman.
While the lineage of the story is very hard to follow, considering the characters have the same names, I find myself fascinated rather than annoyed. Each time a new character is encountered, he or she raises a new mystery, a need to find out how he or she is tied into the grand scheme of things. Why is Colonel Aureliano Buendía standing before a firing squad? When does he come upon the Spanish galleon that his father found in the forest? How is each character a piece of the puzzle that makes up the rise and fall of Macondo? I admit, I am not terribly far into the book yet, but this was intentional. I don’t have the time to read as much as I would like to, and these past few busy weeks have been no exception. I have been saving this book to read this weekend, lying in the sun and dreaming about Márquez’s magical world. So far, I am extremely intrigued by One Hundred Years of Solitude and cannot wait to piece together the fantastic puzzle such an eloquent writer has created. (660)
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