100 Years of Solitude Test & Discussion

This morning, please take the exam for 100 Years of Solitude. When the class is finished with the test, we will hold a discussion on the book in the Socratic seminar form.

While we are waiting for our peers to complete the test, if you find you finish early, please work on your writing portfolio. You might write a story set in your researched country, or use this knowledge to write a magical realist story.

Characteristics of magical realism include five primary traits:

1. An "irreducible" magic that cannot be explained by standard or accepted notions of natural law or physics. 
2. A realist description that stresses normal, common, every-day phenomena or realistic depiction of characters. 
3. This realistic style reporting unrealistic events causes the reader to be drawn between the two views/extremes of reality and fantasy. 
4. These two visions or realms (realism/fantasy) merge or intersect. 

Time is reported both as history and the timeless or infinite (see Borges in the posts below...); space/physics are often challenged; identity is broken down at times.

Secondary characteristics sometimes included in magical realist stories:

• The work is often metafictional or self-referential. (See blog post below on metafiction)
• The text may use a "verbal magic" where metaphors are treated as reality. "She was as disruptive as a tornado," might have a character cause accidents all around her when she moves, or like a tornado, be followed by an ever-present gust of wind, for example.
• Characters states of consciousness (awareness of themselves/surroundings, etc.) may include primitive or childlike points of view about the world that seem to dislocate the reader's initial perceptions/understanding of things that should not be true based on our own reality. Ex. gravity might not work all the time or a whole town might get insomnia from eating candy or a couple could strike a match or cause of fire solely based on their body heat or passion...but this is reported to us as if these things were natural or usual.
• Repetition, as well as mirror reversals, are employed.
• Metamorphoses take place. (remember the short story "Horse" or "Axolotl"?)
• Magic is often used against the established cultural order: authority, governments, rules, lawgivers, scientists, the ruling class, the rich, religious institutions, etc.
• "Ancient systems of belief and local lore often underlie the text."This results in a respect (however complicated) for local faith or superstition. Often superstitions or taboos are recognized as "true" and "real"--often causing conflict with characters of the ruling or established cultural order...(see above).
• Collective symbols from our shared collective consciousness, legends, archetypes, and myths rather than individual or personal ones haunt the work.
• The fiction in form and language often embraces the carnivalesque. [See link for an explanation...]
• Magical realism has a tendency to defamiliarize a scene for readers; readers learn that they are often not ready to understand the situation, that what we think we know is found to be untrue or strange, for it has something entirely unexpected to teach us.
• Magical realism in some forms can be understood as a post-colonial move that seeks to resist European (or "white" notions of naturalism or realism.)

Discussion Questions:

1. Discuss the importance of the setting in the novel. How is Macondo a character in this book?
2. Using Ecocriticism, consider how nature is represented in this novel. How are natural forces treated in the book? How does Marquez effectively create conflicts between person v. nature? For what reason do these conflicts occur? Why might this be important to understand the point of the novel?
3. Discuss your favorite character in the novel. Why was this character compelling to you or how did the character catch your attention?
4. There are so many characters in this novel. Why? What might Marquez be trying to do by providing us with an epic story like this? What was your experience trying to figure out the different characters in the novel? What did you learn about writing interesting characters in stories from reading this book?
5. Take a feminist/gender focus or reading of this text. Are female characters interesting or powerful in this book? Which females? Why or how are they inferior or superior to the males? Compare/contrast the female characters in this novel with the males. Who comes out represented in a better light?
6. How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
7. What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference--the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity--in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
8. Describe your experience reading (or attempting to read this novel). How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning for us? What scenes, chapters, or sections of the novel held you entranced or bored you? Why? What are we to conclude from this reaction?
9. Why might critics say that this book should be "required reading for the human race"? What lessons or viewpoint does it offer us that we cannot get through other sources of media? Would this book have made a better: poem, tv series, stage play, or film instead of a novel? Why or why not?
10. What might we learn about writing from reading this book? What did you learn about writing from reading?
11. Other questions/topics you would like to discuss?

HOMEWORK: None.