Breaking the Cycle: The Importance of Free Will in One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude discusses a multitude of complex issues. However, perhaps the most provocative issue discussed is how time seems to repeat itself throughout generations of the Buendia family. Gabo frames the matriarch of the family, Ursula, and a family friend, Melquiades, as the sources of wisdom and perspectives that could prevent the family from repeating mistakes. However, it is the family members’ choices to not listen to Ursula’s better advice that leads to the Buendia family’s eventual downfall. Gabo suggests with the events in One Hundred Years of Solitude that it isn’t fate that causes events to happen; instead, he encourages his readers to take personal responsibility for themselves and learn from the past to build a better future. One Hundred Years of Solitude isn’t about fate, but instead is about exercising freedom in an informed and responsible manner.
When looking at One Hundred Years from a text-self perspective, one of the things I see within myself is my Catholic background and upbringing. I was raised in a Catholic family and am presently a practicing Catholic. Though I am a practicing Catholic, I struggle with the institution of the Catholic Church, particularly with the tradition of elitism through the Latin mass and the lack of transparency of financial and theological practices by the Vatican. In this novel, I saw the Catholic Church theology being respected but the forceful tradition (as depicted in Fernanda) being criticized.
Gabo makes his position on the Catholicism from the very beginning; he is accepting of the faith but not of the institution of the Catholic Church. Colonel Aureliano Buendia spends a decade of his life fighting in a civil war against the priests, but still cannot remove himself completely from the tradition. After receiving a gift of a prayer book from the Colonel once he returns from war, Ursula remarks “how strange men are (…) they spend their lives fighting the priests and then give prayer books as gifts” (Garcia Marquez 162). The next generation of the Buendia family brings into it the forceful presence of Fernanda, an indimidatingly pious woman who holds her faith over the rest of the family member’s heads. Fernanda is a lonely woman who the family works to appease but never relates to on a deeper level. Aureliano Segundo continues to see his mistress, Petra Cotes, and appeases Fernanda by saying that he will make sure to die in their marriage bed and not in Petra’s bed. The family as a whole spends much of their time mocking Fernanda for her staunch Catholicism and took their own measures to deal. “Amaranta felt so uncomfortable with [Fernanda’s] habit of using euphemisms to designate everything that she would always speak gibberish in front of her” (Garcia Marquez 210). Despite Fernanda’s religious fervor, she isn’t the one who receives the miraculous experience. Instead, Remedios the Beauty, the non-traditionalist and nonconformist of the bunch, is the one who ascends into heaven. “Fernanda, burning with envy, finally accepted the miracle” (Garcia Marquez 236). Gabo shows that it isn’t blaent piety that wins the love of God, but living a good, if unconventional, life.
Seeing this evidence of respect for the faith but not for the institution resonated with my struggles. I am reminded of the year that I received my confirmation as a Catholic. My home parish had just finished a remodeling project which I had disagreed with (the church had just been remodeled 10 years before) and now wanted the candidates to contribute money of their own to help the budget deficit. I preferred (and still prefer) to pick my own causes to donate my money to and certainly saw no need to put my hard earned money to a project that I disagreed with. Instead, I questioned (to myself) why my money couldn’t be put toward the community. I never gave money to that particular drive.
I also see a lot of myself and my faith in what I chose to write this paper on. When talking with other people who have read this text, people who weren’t impressed with the text saw the ending as anti-climatic and grim. However, I don’t see the text, and its ending with Aureliano reading his family’s story (Garcia Marquez 415) as grim, but as an optimistic call to action. I see Gabo promoting an intrinsic sense of free will through One Hundred Years of Solitude. Though his characters repeat things time and time again, they have the benefit of better advice, both though Ursula (reason) and Melquiades’s texts (revelation). This is a Catholic way of looking at how we know things. We each have individual experiences which, through those experience’s outcomes, can shed light on whether we should or should not repeat them. However, we also have the Bible, which gives us direction on what we should and should not do. The Buendia family’s downfall occurred because they neither looked toward reason nor revelation on how to act. Instead, they blindly went about a path that had been traveled before – but the key is they had the choice (and the benefit of better advice telling them) not to.
It is often said that families are doomed to repeat their own history – abusers’ children are more likely to abuse, alcoholics’ children are more likely to drink, and children of the obese are more likely to be fat. With this in mind, I turn to the text-text section of this paper. “Cat’s in the Cradle”, by Harry Chapin discusses a father-son relationship from a father’s perspective. The opposing philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger can illuminate both the consequences of this song and of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In “Cat’s in the Cradle”, a father discusses his son growing up and his “absentee parenting” style during those crucial years. In the chorus, his son asks “when you coming home dad?” to which the father responds “I don’t know when but we’ll get together then son/You know we’ll have a good time then” (10-12). The interesting thing about this song is how the son responds to his father’s absence. Throughout it all, he promises “I’m gonna be like you, Dad/You know I’m gonna be like you” (6-7). The song ends with the father calling his son and asking him to spend some time with him. The son has a plethora of excuses that make him unable to come to visit. The father comes to the realization that “As I hung up the phone it occurred to me/He’d grown up just like me/My boy was just like me” (43-45).
Who is to blame in scenarios, like the ones detailed in “Cat’s in the Cradle” and One Hundred Years of Solitude, where families repeat themselves in generational cycles? Are these cycles avoidable or can we, with awareness, transcend these cycles into something better? Nietzsche and Heidegger would respond differently to these questions.
Nietzsche says that “the eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a dust grain of dust” (Loeschenkohl 2). Nietzsche sees cyclical history as being defended in particular by the Law of Conservation (energy can neither be created nor destroyed). In addition, “recurrence (…) is not a matter to discuss, nor is there anything that we can do to influence this circular movement” (Loeschenkohl 3). Personal responsibility for your life path is not necessary for Nietzsche; we have no control over these cycles. According to Nietzsche, time and history is doomed to repeat itself over and over again. Human beings have no responsibility for the cycles of history and are helpless to stop it from occurring.
In regards to both “Cat’s in the Cradle” and One Hundred Years, the cycles that are seen both with the father and son and with the Buendia family are inevitable. The Catholic Christian way of looking at this text with Ursula and Melquiades as the two sources of wisdom would be vehemently rejected by Nietzsche; he saw Christianity as slavery to people to make them live conventionally. Instead, he would not only acknowledge the cycles in the families as happening but would in no way hold the family members responsible for taking part in the cycle that lead to their downfall.
Heidegger’s philosophy differentiates between beings and Being. As humans, we have Dasein, or “being for whom there is Being”, or “being that makes issue of its own being” (http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heidegge.htm). Heidegger says that we get so caught up with everydayness that we forget to live out our full destiny of “being-with” the world, or “being present in the world, in the presence of other transcendent presences in the world” (Johnston 167). For Heidegger, all humans have a choice to make. “Either I have (…) an unexamined mode of existence, or (…) I can choose a mode of existence in which I assume responsibility for my own life” (Johnston 167). "Because the subject must be understood in terms of his authentic potentiality-for-Being; so, the subject is the basis of care and selfhood is possible in the authenticity of Dasein's Being as Care” (Heidegger and Social Theory). In other words, people have the ability to take personal responsibility for their own lives in living in the present within the world.
In response to “Cat’s in the Cradle” and One Hundred Years, Heidegger would say that the cycles that both the father and son and the Buendia family repeated could have been prevented. Heidegger would have turned to both Ursula and Melquiades in One Hundred Years and said that the family members’ Dasein’s should have been more authentically present in the world around them, been aware of both reason (Ursula) and revelation (Melquiades), and made their decisions based on these resources. Heidegger is an idealistic Christian thinker and believes in the notion of free will; by taking personal responsibility for their actions, things could have been different. In “Cat’s in the Cradle”, Heidegger would say that either the father or the son could have noticed the cycle of distance between them and stopped it at any point, if their Dasein had been present. However, none of them made that choice, and suffered as a result.
How would Nietzsche and Heidegger look at the last sentence in One Hundred Years of Solitude? “Races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth” blatantly states that the Buendia family was condemned to their ending. Nietzsche would leave this cyclical condemnation as is – the family didn’t have a choice and did they best they could with their lot. However, Heidegger, and myself, would say that the condemnation was self-imposed; by not making the choice to be authentically present and concerned in the world, the Buendia family came to a lonely end.
Gabo’s ideas on the past guiding our free will can enlighten world leaders on how to react to situations put in front of them. September 11, 2001 was a day that will live in infamy for many Americans. Only one other time before (December 7, 1941) had the United States been attacked on our own soil. Terrorist attacks, even on our own citizens, can be ignored by American citizens when they take place on foreign soil. However, once things come closer to home, like during the Pearl Harbor attacks and the attacks of September 11, United States leaders are pressured to act. Gabo would tell our politicians to look to the past to see how to react to terrorist situations in the present.
Despite the Japanese perception of aggression coming from the United States, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States reacted strongly. The people of the United States couldn’t conceive an attack on their own soil, yet with the power of aircraft, it happened. Once Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States had a choice to make – should we or should we not declare war on the Japanese and enter a world conflict that we have been trying to stay out of in the process? The United States made the choice to enter World War II, leading to the death of 300,000 American soldiers. The Japanese were the last of the Axis powers to surrender during World War II. The Truman administration made the decision to drop the atomic bomb once on Hiroshima and once on Nagasaki, leading to even more death and unforeseen health defects for generations to come. “If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries, and unfortunately, many civilian lives will be lost” (Truman Radio Address 8/9/1945). Only after these deadly weapons were put to use did the Japanese surrender and World War II end.
Today, the Unites States has a similar situation on its hands. Despite the continued presence and improvement of aircrafts from the days of Pearl Harbor, not to mention a continued history of imperialistic presence in Middle Eastern countries and the unpopular support of Israel, people of the United States saw an attack on our soil as nearly impossible. When the attacks of September 11th happened, the United States had a choice to make – should we or should we not declare war on terror, particularly the terrorist group (Al-Qaeda) who took responsibility for the attacks? The United States made the choice to enter into a war with an unseen enemy. “Our war begins with Al-Qaeda but it does not end there. It will not end until ever terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated” (Bush Television Address 9/20/2001). This war has resulted in continued strife in Afghanistan. “Expectations are now being lowered across the board and people talk dismissively about the grand vision for the future of Afghanistan as laid out at the Bonn Conference in 2001” (Pannell 2006). In addition, the situation in Iraq is becoming more and more unpopular with the American people, with just 23% of people polled approving of the way the Iraq war was being handled in March of 2007 (Connelly 2007).The United States has had a two front war for seven years now and is looking for the best possible solution to leave Iraq. How should we do this?
This is a very complicated question that the United States can gain insight on by looking at how the Pearl Harbor situation was resolved. Though the United States is well aware of the negative impacts of atomic weaponry, we have yet to shut down our production of them or destroy our stored weapons. Though the United States has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Unites States “has failed to meet America’s NPT obligations and to seize the opportunity to delegitimize nuclear weapons as a tool of foreign and military policy (…) the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), open for signature in 1996, has not been ratified by the United States and other key states, blocking its implementation” (Kimball 1999).
In the past, the United States used an atomic weapon on a country to force surrender. Using that weapon caused much more damage than we could have imagined, both in the present time and in the future generations. The past would tell us that using a weapon of such magnitude can have unprecedented affects. However, the weapon did result in surrender. With the past data, what should the United States do? We certainly have not taken actions to discourage atomic weaponry; while we tell the rest of the world to discontinue production on atomic weapons, we continue to store them up and refuse to sign any agreement to not use them.
When looking at One Hundred Years of Solitude from these various text perspectives, one comes to see that Gabo details a family with a cyclical history, it was not fate but their own obliviousness that led them to a solitary fate. One can see Gabo’s Catholic background as well as his stance on the church in the way that he structures his novel. Nietzsche and Heidegger and their opposing philosophies add another dimension to Gabo’s work by supporting his view of cyclical history, but only if you make unaware choices. Finally, Gabo’s work can advise world leaders on how to react to problems in their countries – look at the past and be aware of what’s occurring in the present. In today’s world, where it is easy to fall into the trap of blaming repeated mistakes on fate, One Hundred Years of Solitude shines a critical light on the power that we ourselves have to control our destiny.

My Own Musings...

Why do we read? This is a very broad, and quite possibly loaded question, but I feel the need to ask it. I'm currently in a clinical placement in which I'm teaching 2nd grade students that it's cool to read, that reading is fun, that you really need to use this someday. This is a message that I will continue to spout as I pursue my teaching career, but I fear that I don't have a firm purpose for reading myself.

This isn't to say that I don't love reading, that I don't treasure each moment that I get to myself in a book. However, when books like Beasts of No Nation come up, I find myself a little nauseated, a lot angry, and a wee bit unsure of why I continue to flip the pages. And why, one may ask? Because this book is gruesome in it's content and child-like in its delivery. I don't want to think of children splitting another human's head open with a machette...I'd rather see them orderly in my classroom, eagerly (or, at least compliantly) opening up their next treasure to read.

Yet, I continue to flip the pages. Why? Not because it's assigned, because I have been in the boat of BS-ing my way through reading assignments successfully before. With this book, I could just resort to the generic "wow, look how violent he is!" ploy. Not because I'm enjoying it. The only setting I can deal with blood in is donating it and I am scared of both weapons and the people who wield them. I'm drawn to this book, to almost every book, even if the content makes me uncomfortable.

Due to the recent personal happenings that are occurring in my life as of late, there is nothing I desire more than to have a REAL conversation with someone and make that kind of connection. However, everyone around me seems to be stuck in "life's good" mode and unwilling to leave that to deal with my need. My books, Beasts of No Nation included, at least allow me to have a conversation, a complex interaction between me and the author with the characters as middle men. While the conversation I"m looking for would probably be best had in person, people don't want to have it. So, I am forced to be content to participate in the thought experiments of authors like Iweala about death, dying, responsiblity, and youth.

Will people ever be able to have a conversation anymore? Though idealist I am, I am starting to lose hope in this. Even now, I who want the conversation have so many distractions at my disposal – music on , computer and AIM ready, cell phone at attention, and a movie waiting for me after this blog (another text I can interact with). So, though my 2nd graders won’t understand my reasoning and even middle and high school students would struggle with the idea, this is why I read. To interact on a deeper level that the world seems afraid to share in.

So, after my movie, I’ll curl up in bed, open up Beasts of No Nation, and find out what Iweala wants to say in response to my confused thoughts next.

Happy Reading…

Persepolis...

Author's note: This has been an off-week for me. Like seemingly everything else in my life right now, this blog entry is disorganized and potentially incoherent. My apologies.

Graphic novels are an interesting genre because one not only has to read the text itself, but also the visual images that connect with them. The visuals add another dimension to the text as well as make the reading of the novel more approachable.

Why did Satrapi write this novel? To inform the public of the experience of the marginalized Iranian? To release her story from inside herself? To pay homage to her family and their experiences? I cannot answer this question. But, I'd like the approach the first question of whether Satrapi is able to inform people of the experience of the marginalized Iranian.

Satrapi is different from many in a few ways. For the sake of the thought experiement, I'd like to compare her adolescent experience and some of her decisions to that of my own. Satrapi grew up in a two parent home that had an involved extended family. I grew up in a single parent household with the marginal presence of an extended family. Satrapi's family was able to afford to have a maid come in and clean. A maid would not have been a luxery even thought of for my family. When the situation gets bad, Satrapi's parents are able to have her leave the country to continue her education. In addition, when the situation in Europe gets bad, Satrapi's family can afford to bring her back home. Though adolescents has the potential of sucking for all young people (myself included), leaving the USA was never an option. Grin and bear it was my message. My family took a very Germanic approach...adolescence and its embarassments are character building. Go get some character.

Granted, the political situations in the United States and Iran are really different. I have been fortunate enough to have never had war on my home soil, which Satrapi experienced as a child. However, given my family circumstances versus Satrapi's, if my family had been in Iran, which one of us would have been able to tell our story...Satrapi or myself? Satrapi would have won out.

Satrapi's experience is a memoir. A reflection on her own life. While I don't think she pretends to tell the story of all Iranians during the Islamic Revolution, the real danger can come in when a Western audience like ourselves project Satrapi's story onto every Iranian out there. Satrapi's socioeconomic status allowed her the opportunities to leave and tell her story. I can't help but think about the many young men who recieved plastic keys to heaven if they only fought in the war and died a marytr. This was a reality that, had Satrapi been a boy, would never have had to worry about because her family had the means to look outward. This memoir, while informative and comic, does not and cannot tell the story of the Iranian people as a whole though. We must keep that in mind when reading so we don't pigeonhole the Iranian people.

One Hundred Years: A Closure

Before starting on my blog for the week, I just want to say that the amount of material that this book can give one to think about and discuss could, quite seriously, take an entire semester. I'm not even joking. If this book is to be done in the future, I would spend longer with it, just to be sure that a class attempts to do it justice...both with making sure the plot is understood by all and by going into some of the MANY ideas that Garcia Marquez brings up.

Now, to give the text some consideration. Last time we were given a handout on the theorist Frantz Fanon. Fanon, a Marxist, discusses Nationalism as an essential tool, but potentially dangerous to the identities of downtrodden nations. "While viewing nationalism as a necessayr and important tool, he warns that it threatens to force emerging African nations into molds provided by their European predecessors...[new nations] will be ruled by a postcolonial burgeoisie trained by Europenas to approach problems in characterictically European ways". I see this text as applicable to many things we discussed in class.

Garcia Marquez works to fight against colonizing powers of Colombia. He also works to fight against the structure and corruption of the Roman Catholic church. However, he grew up in an atmosphere and environment in which both colonizing powers and the Roman Catholic church played an undeniable influence on his development. It's funny in how, in trying to fight against these powers, he actually uses their structures in his text. While he fights against Catholicism, Garcia Marquez's structure of One Hundred Years resembles the Bible. While he works against the colonizing ideas in his text, it is not the colonizers that are anhiliated but the people native to the area. Also, I have to wonder about the audience of this text. Was he looking to reach the people native to Colombia, or did he want this text to reach out to the colonizing powers? Either way, there is a difference in how the text is read by taking into consideration the audience.

This Fanon handout also called to the "intellecutals" to be sure to set up an authentic culture for oppressed nations. However, I would have to call into question the ability of these "intellecutals" to set up an authentic culture after having been bred in Western tradition. Just look at Garcia Marquez...though he is denouncing many things, he turns to Western (or authoritiative) structures to organize himself. Perhaps the Spivak handout should be brought up...no one, not even intellecutals, can set up an authentic culture once Western influences have come in.

But maybe something kind of cool can come out of a hybrid culutre...not necessarily authentic to the before Western influence, but cool nonetheless. Just look at One Hundred Years...while not without its Western influences, it still maintains a unique story (not to mention a Nobel Prize Winning Story...) with a power all of its own.

Garcia Marquez's Labyrinth

I found the most recent discussion that we had in class on One Hundred Years being like a labyrinth to be most provocative. I was, however, annerved by the different defininition of labyrinth that was being used while in class. My experience with labyrinths has not been a scary one, nor has it been a confusing one. Instead, I have come to see the exercise of walking a labyrinth as being a calming and at times frusturating one.

On retreats that I work, we have the teens walk the labyrinth. They come to see that walking a labyrinth as a journey. There is only one entrance and one exit to the labyrinth. At times, you are closer to the center of the labyrinth and other times you are further away from it. Though other people are in the labyrinth, the journey that you take is solitary and uniquely your own. We help these candidates make the bridge from this being a journey to this being like the relationship that we all share with God. At times we feel close to Him, and other times we feel further away. As Genesis said, from dust we are made and to dust we shall return (one entrance/exit). Finally, though there are other people around in the labyrinth, the journey and relationship that we have with God is unique.

This is the kind of Labyrinth that I see when reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. Ursula says on p. 193 "I know all of this by heart! It's as if time had turned around and we were back at the beginning!" Because each of the family members chooses to live their lives in a solitary fashion, they are doomed to repeat the same cycle of their forebearers. It was also commented in class that it seems that the family members are born in Mancondo and come back to die in Mancondo (one entrance/one exit). At times the family members have a close-knit relationship and at other times they are far away from one another. Time gives Ursula a unique perspective. She can see that her family is operating in cycles, with only one entrance and one exit. Yet, despite the support of other family members, decisions that are made from one generation to another are made over and over again. "Colonel Aureliano Buendia could understand only that the secret to a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude" (p. 199).

The family all lives in one house, all in the game of life together, yet the reader finds them operating in solitary journeys which have only one beginning and one ending. This seems kind of nihilistic now. Do we not have any control over what we do? Despite witnessing history, are we doomed to repeat its mistakes through our stubborn solitary existences? If we are in solitary journeys, why is human contact so important for most? These questions that my labyrinth theory brings up I'm unable to answer right now. This theory seems kind of bleak in appearance, but maybe it's being aware of the labyrinth of life that gives an edge. I guess I'll have to keep reading to get some of these questions answered...

*Said in the tune of the WHITE CHRISTMAS song* Brothers...Brothers...

So, this week has been one of family bonding for me. After my mom was admitted into the ICU, my sister and I were able to spend some quality time together...for better or worse - this week. Though we are only 12 months apart (the term "Irish Twins" was employed at one time...), we are different women. My sister feels more of an obligation toward domestic things. I have no such desire at the moment. My sister is drawn to and good at working with the natural sciences. The last time I was in a labratory, I burned my finger on the match, before the experimenting even began. When we were younger, Beth was the "tomboy" of the bunch. However, now I claim the title of Comfort Queen.

When reading Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years, I couldn't help but compare the relationship of Jose Arcadio and Aureliano Buendia to that of the one my sister and I share. While we aren't at the point of death quite yet, I see the adolescent period, the experiences and reinforcement that children get as crucial to building the people the they will become. My sister and I are just leaving that period of "main identity formation" and moving into the period of adulthood, so I will work on comparing the adolescent experiences that Jose Arcadio and Aureliano had and what impact that had on the people they became.

Many psychologists focus on (with good reason...) focus on identity formation as essential to adolescents. Erik Erikson called this the "identity crisis". Freud focused (as he did with every other category of growth) on sexual development, calling adolescents the "psychosexual developmental stage". Piaget called adolescence the entrance into the "formal operations stage" in which all aspects of identity could be approached. In Garcia Marquez's novel, sexual identity is developed early and very differently in Jose Arcadio and Aureliano. This development of sexual identity played a large part on the men that these boys developed into.

Jose Arcadio's development started early, and other people had a large development on his perception of self. Jose Arcadio's mother walked in on him while he was dressing and thought him "so well-equipped for life that he seemed abnormal" (p. 25). His mother sought the advice of the woman who would be Jose Arcadio's first lover, Pilar Ternera. Pilar first groped Jose Arcadio and then began having regular sex with him, which only ended when Pilar told him "Now you really are a man" (p. 31) because he was going to be a father. Jose Arcadio ran away, did not recognize his son, and became a giglio of sorts. "Five pesos from each one...and I'll share myself with both" (p. 90). What a man.

Aureliano's journey was different. From the beginning, he felt out of place and awkward because he was not as well endowed as his brother. As a result, people didn't give him the same expectation as they gave his brother and Aureliano grew up to be a quiet, withdrawn man. "Everyone thought it was strange that he was now a full-grown man and had not known a woman. It was true that he had never had one" (p. 50). He ended up having sex with the same woman as his brother did (because he watched his brother go through that same process) and had her child, who he recognized as his own. When he did get married, it was to a child, Remedios. After her death, Aureliano went wild - being a revolutionary who laid his seed everywhere. "He had seventeen male children by seventeen different women" (p. 103). None of these women were committed relationships.

It is just as much outside expectation as genes and enviornment that help adolescents develop their identities. And it should be a balance between emotional development, physical development, mental development, and social development. Jose Arcadio's physical development was differnet from his brother's and people subscribed different roles to them. My sister and I were pushed toward different topics while growing up and have come to embrace them as our own. The impact of both expectation and comparison between sibling shouldn't go underestimated in the importance to their development.

Morsels of Literature...

As today's class was kind of a multitude of things, I'm going to have a cornucopia of responses. Bear with me through this.

First...to close up "Small Things": I see Roy's activism coming through in her text. Some activists are like that though. Characters (and people) are able to be flat or die in the name of the cause. I don't remember who said this, but for some, the end justifies the means. Meaning that, simple as Roy's idealistic message is, its power to purge a story to a simple core demands respect. Also, Roy's message needed to be shared. One would think that if people understood that "isms" are bad, then we wouldnt' have any "isms". That also is not the case. Therefore, putting a face to a problem, making it approachable and meaningful for people is a worthy purpose.

We also touched on Magical Realism today. Is Garcia Marquez's book magical realism? I don't know quite yet. I will, however, respond as such. One of the tenants of magical realism (as proposed in class today) is to have an orientation or attachement to history. However, Garcia Marquez has not given one concrete time in all of this book. Yet, it isn't completely fantasty. If I may be so bold, I would like to propose a different perspective. I think all fantasy texts are rooted in realism of some sort. I'm not a big fantasy reader or anything, but in order to have an impact on a reader, there needs to be some form of connection to real life and a world that people understand. Hence, the emotional story lines, the problems and journeys that we often see in literature. However, real life also has some fantastic moments, ones that can't be explained by the marvels of modern science and such. My life has been filled with serendipitious moments that I am unable to explain. Furthermore, these discoveries are at times prompted by fantastic moments and feelings of calm that I am unable to explain. This leads me to the follwoing conclusion:

Perhaps realism isn't the best mirror of life but instead magical realism is. (oh dear...my idealist is coming out loud and proud...) Life has too many unexplained phenomenons to be accurately covered under the term "real life". Those who can't see the magic in the world around them just need to take off their "woe is me" sunglasses and look around them. Magical realism validates all of those wonder-filled moments that realism refuses to acknowledge.