Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Superstition
Sometimes I think that my mother is a nut bag. My mom has all these wild superstitions that were passed down to her by my grandmother. In One Hundred Years of Solitude there are many passages where the supernatural comes into play. In the video that the class watched, Márquez states that his grandmother's stories (from his childhood) of the supernatural was what created this dimension to his book. A couple instants in the novel that come to mind is the ghost of Prudencio who haunts José Arcadio Buendía and of course the famous pigs tail. The ghost of Prodencio hits home for me because my grandmother and mother had convinced me there was ghost haunting my bedroom till the second grade. This "ghost" appeared whenever I had not cleaned my room, which was often. The pigs tail reminds me of when I was told not to lie and if I did my nose would grow like Pinocchio (I do feel this warning was common with most parents). The technique of mixing reality and imaginary in literature, as the class, learned is magical realism. The use of this technique makes the fantasy aspect of the novel more life like and relatable. The way in which Márquez uses magical realism and the old fables of his grandmother made One Hundred Years of Solitude, for me, a relatable story, that is the superstition layer of the story.
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2 comments:
I also think my mother is a nut bag. Unlike your mother however, my mother places her crazy superstitions upon herself. My mother added magical realism to her own life. If a black cat crosses the street in front of her, she will turn around and go the other way. My mom is also convinced that the ashes of my dead dog will bark if she places them inside of a cabinet instead of out in the open. My mother refuses to accept that I no longer believe in Santa Claus, and she will threaten me with no gifts if I do not admit that he is real. Although she is hard to handle, I have come to believe that adding a bit of magical to life's realism as she does is a spectacular way to live your life. As Marquez proved to me in his novel, adding a bit of magic makes reality so much more interesting.
I think the whole pinocchio thing is a really good analogy. Parents tell their kids things (like not to lie and to clean rooms, like you said), but with a threat of unreal consequences. It is opposite in the book. The Buendias have real consequences, so they make their actual actions into the unreal aspect of it all. Whether it's in real life or in a book, combining the real with they mythical just makes everything more comprehensible and produces the desired results. Parents get kids to tell the truth and clean their rooms, and the Buendias get to live life without taking any real ownership of their actions
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