In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 years of solitude, the concept of time is skewed throughout the course of the novel. The sense of time is well represented in the first sentence of the novel, “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” This sentence goes into the future while looking into the past at the same time. As the reader later finds out, the people use machines before they “discovered” ice. Which, in itself is a contradiction of a traditional linear timeline.
The concept of time also ties into the style of magical realism by blurring the line of reality and fantasy. By changing pace of the timeline and jumping back and forth from past to present to future, the idea of reality is skewed. As a reader, you might not always know where you are in the story at any given time, and that is intentional on Marquez’s part. The cyclical timeline of the Buendía family allows for history to repeat itself. And for certain family members to have different traits. For example, the Aurelianos tend to be mentally strong and more reserved, while the Arcadios tend to have more physical strength and are more impulsive. Through these names and the character traits repeated, remembering who is who and who did what can be difficult at times.
1 comment:
Sophia, I agree with your notion that Marquez “skewes the concept of time to form his story into a style of magical realism.” To add to your claim, I believe by jumping from past present to future and back, Marquez reconstructs the stereotypical tale that’s traditionally told in a novel. It implies that a novel’s timeline doesn’t necessarily need to be linear in order to make sense. This parallels to the idea that magical realism also goes against the typical mindset of a person’s opinions and judgements; meaning that certain situations and circumstances at might seem obscure and strange to someone can actually be perceived as normal and static. This ties into the tone of the novel as well in the fact that Marquez writes the entire novel in a very static tone. By telling his thoughts in this tone, he creates this idea that extremes can be interpreted in a very nonextreme or STATIC manner. It relates the ideas between magic and realism, just as the genre implies by its own name.
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