The Concept Of Fantasy And Reality In Marquez's On

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

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For the most part, people accept the world in which they are presented. Whatever environment a person is raised in is the environment that is accepted as normality for its inhabitants. If at any time something else is introduced to that "normal environment" that is not consistent with the inhabitant's ideas of normality, then that item is usually not accepted readily. Such is the case for the people of the fictional city of Macondo in Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude whose magical world is presented with a world of modernity and technology to which they must adapt and ultimately fall prey to. This novel, although containing quite a bit of fantasy, shares many elements with traditional realist novels. Marquez's novel is complete with depictions of violence and sex and it directly addresses intricate political and social issues throughout. The overall tone of the novel is matter-of-fact, with events portrayed as if they had actually occurred.

Even those elements of the novel that appear "magical" or fantastic are probably representations of Marquez's reality. His novel describes the unique reality of a Latin America caught between modernity and a time before technological advancement that has been all but destroyed by civil war.

In this environment, what might otherwise seem incredible begins to seem commonplace both to the readers. This is probably due to Marquez's "…habit…of giving precise figures for things"(Essay Topics) as he does throughout the novel by giving numerical data concerning the number of workers killed in the massacre, the length of time that the rain lasts, how many wars Colonel Aureliano Buendia fights, wins, and loses, and so on.

Marquez's hometown itself witnessed a massacre much like the massacre of the workers in Macondo. In Marquez's Latin America, real life probably seemed like a fantasy that...