Upon first reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I did not make the connection between Aureliano Babylonia and his friend Gabriel, even though Gabriel says his relative's last name was Marquez. Therefore the author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, leaves the town of Macondo right before it disappears in order to document and preserve the town. We see this preservation of the town through the actual novel. This hidden meaning makes the novel more interesting to me, even though I missed some of these details the first time.
I think Marquez's ability to hide details such as this so that they are only visible to an observant eye plays an important role in his overall purpose of writing the novel. For our paper on use of history, I wrote about how Marquez utilizes historic events to show the oppression of Latin America and draw the citizens to action. His skill in doing so proves that this novel must undergo careful analysis to dissect the full meaning.
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I think another interesting hidden detail of the book is how Melquiades basically wrote the book that we read. When Marquez describes the manuscripts, he talks about how the order of events was really strange, which definitely reminds me of the book. I think this a really cool breakage of the fourth wall. My mind was absolutely blown.
As Luke said, Melquiades writing the manuscripts in San script was an interesting way to break the fourth wall. Not only did Marquez include the text of the novel within the novel, but he also used himself as a character. I think that the inclusion of these small details gives the work a broader meaning. Instead of just being about the Buendias, the novel has broader themes such as the oppression of Latin American nations, understanding these themes just requires a close reading
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