Wednesday, August 21, 2013

My First Post!


I especially enjoyed One Hundred Years of Solitude, and found it to be an interesting read. I was impressed by the descriptive detail and entertaining turn of events. Although I often had trouble keeping track of the characters, the chart in the beginning helped me organize my thoughts. I enjoyed the insanity of Macondo with the mixture of realistic and supernatural qualities. I was fascinated by every character and how meticulously and well thought out each story was. Tin Drum was a more difficult read and required more effort to focus on. I was able to read One Hundred Years of Solitude more quickly due to its more, what I believed, interesting context. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I also had trouble keeping track of the characters! I would read the name Aureliano Segundo and have to ask myself,"Who are his parents again?" The family tree at the beginning of the book definitely helped me clarify such questions. I think Marquez purposefully made certain family members have the same names, and confusingly similar lives to show (as we discussed in class yesterday and today) the cyclical nature of the Buendia family. In fact, Ursula constantly wonders why her sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, etc. keep making the same mistakes. Pages 151-152 show Ursula's unhappiness with the cyclical nature of the family. The book states, "Aureliano Jose, just like Arcadio in other times, had ceased to belong to her. It was as if his return home, the possibility of existing without concerning himself with everyday necessities, had awakened in him the lewd and lazy leaning os his uncle Jose Arcadio." Ursula compares him not only to Arcadio, but also Jose Arcadio. Two repetitions. She then goes on to say, "They're all alike, at first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin". Ursula is always the first to see the resemblance between family members and the cyclical nature they all adhere too.