Upon reading allegory of the cave, I could not stop thinking about Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude". In "100 Years of Solitude", Ursula believes her children will have pig tails becasue of her incestuos behavior and ultimatly reality conforms to her perceptions and she does. Plato, in "Allegory of a Cave", displays a vivid image of chained men watching the shadows of reality, however they percieve the shadows as reality and therefore, for each of the chained men, it is their reality.
I just thought this was interesting. Do ya'll think the idea of subjectivieness to reality is portrayed in a similar or different manner in both writings? Could it be somewhere in between?
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5 comments:
Blaine certainly presents an interesting concept I had not even previously considered. Both texts address the issue of the perception of reality versus reality in similar manners. Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" directly shows the misperction of real objects by the prisoners by making them perceive real objects' shadows as reality. In this case, the reader can distinguish that the prisoner's have a false concept in mind. Márquez, on the other hand, uses the genre magical-realism to portray the misperception of fantastical elements as reality. For example, the gypies come to Macondo and show off their flying carpets. The reader clearly understands that this is an impossible phenomenom. However, because the text is written in magical-realism, it is hard to judge the characters as misperceiving reality because their fantasy actually is a reality.
Blaine, I think this is an awesome point. The distortion of reality is such a common theme, and it really does depend on the subject. In 100 years of solitude, the characters' reality becomes rooted in whatever they PERCEIVE to be reality. Just lke Plato's Allegory of the Cave, they perceive shadows as reality, and the "light" becomes overwhelmingly surreal. Both works depict understood parts of reality based on their setting and interpretation of their personal reality.
I agree Blaine. Both works question reality. In One Hundred Years of Solitude the town of Macondo has a distorted vision of reality, from outsiders point of view. Allegory of the Cave also gives the chained people a different form of reality. They propose the question of if there is an ultimate reality that is true for everyone or if each person's perception of reality is the only important reality for them.
I agree with you all. In both pieces of works the characters are blinded from reality. The city of Macondo and the cave share similarities in that they keep their charcters from facing reality. Both pieces at the end force the characters to face the harsh reality they have not been able to face.
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