Discuss One Hundred Years of Solitude as a postcolonial text.

The concept of magic as used in the West is really a shabby dismissal of

broader possibilities, similar in scope to the selfish and possessive
Western concept of godhead.
-Gregory Rabassa1
This discussion of magic realism as a narrative mode by Gregory Rabassa,
who also provided the celebrated translation of Marquezs One Hundred
Years of Solitude, calls into question many notions associated with
Marquezs works in general and with One Hundred Years of Solitude in
particular. The central question that emerges is how does one reconcile
the use of the term magic realism and existence of Marquez as an author
of postcolonial fiction? The length to which the two issues are linked
becomes an important question and consequently, the very use of the
term magic realism.
In this paper, I would like to analyse the elements in Marquezs celebrated
novel One Hundred Years of Solitude which make it one of the most vivid
examples of magic realism in order to see how use of magic realism as a
narrative technique is hinged on Marquezs identity as a postcolonial
author. Magic Realism thus will be seen as a way of negotiating with
Western literary hegemony and as a very postcolonial way of narrating
stories.
Before we discuss what makes One Hundred Years of Solitude such a
primary text in the study of magic realism, it would be useful to take a
look at the term magic realism itself. Both magic and realism are
heavily weighted terms and it would be help to see how they function
separately and together. Magic, as Rabassa discusses, is a predominantly
Western construct and seeks to create a binary between the realistic or
rational and the fantastical. This binary, however, as Rabassa points out
is a highly Western/colonizers way of dealing with a reality that might not
be theirs. On the other hand, realism is a similarly Western notion that
emerged as the dominant mode of narration in the 19 th century. The idea
of achieving verisimilitude through realistic narration of a chronologically
specific and thematically integrated plotline which defines realism
emerges only from the 19th century European/British novel. Thus the idea
of magic realism, as it comes up set against the European form of
realism, becomes reductive and only a binary opposition to what European
art represents, rather than being a standalone genre or literary mode.
Another aspect that must be kept in mind while analysing magical realism
in Marquez is that he does not stand at the beginning of the tradition

itself. A common misconception, which I myself faced, while on Marquez is

that he pioneers the entire tradition of magical realist writing itself and
that becomes problematic. As James C. Jupp discusses in a deceptively
simple but informative essay, the tradition of magical realist writing began
much earlier with Miguel Angel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier and Arturo Uslar
Pietri.2 Pietri also wrote a defining article, El Realismo Mgico at around
the same time as Marquez. Similarly, magic realist tendencies in art had
begun emerging long back before the 20 th century, which is usually
considered as the century where it became a central movement. A highly
informative website called Magic Realism- A Time Capsule begins its
timeline for magic realist art from 1450. 3 Interestingly enough, many of
these paintings are from Europe and not just from Latin America or the
Third World. Therefore, when Marquez is analysed as a magic realist text,
we must keep two things in mind. Firstly, magic realism as a term is a
rather skewed, lopsided version allotted to marginal histories- something
that only exists in opposition to the high realism of Europe and England.
Secondly, Marquez does not begin a tradition, although he modifies it to a
great extent.
In the light of the first argument made earlier, Marquez in fact modifies his
use of magic realism as a narrative to a great extent in One Hundred
Years of Solitude. The novel is a chronicle of the Buendia family, and
thereby a chronicle of history itself, through the political intrigue,
genealogy and geography of the narrative structure. He uses magic
realism to transform history as myth. He reconstructs Latin American
History as a mythical flow which is metaphorically represented in
Macondos growth and downfall through the novel. The use of the word
metaphor should be noted. As Marquez stated clearly, Macondo is not a
direct representation of Latin American history- it is a metaphor for Latin
America. Since Macondo exists only as a metaphor and not an allegory of
sorts, the terms and mode of the metaphoric transformation become
extremely important, as shall be discussed later. The metaphoric
transformation happens through a mythic narrative voice that uses magic
realism to speak of a past before the actual, documented colonial past.
Through this narrative technique, Marquez creatively subverts the colonial
legacy which has, so far denied the colonized other access to a concrete,
respectable past predating colonization.
The analysis of how the terms magic and realism function within One
Hundred Years of Solitude would now be useful. Realism in the novel
would relate to the chronological growth of the civilization that Marquez
relates. Like any other realist text, One Hundred Years of Solitude has a
forward moving chronology and it covers a vast historical epoch. However,
Marquez narrates this with two central differences and both these

differences are crucial to our understanding of how he negotiates bothwith the colonial past and with the hierarchy of magic and real which is
a legacy of that very past.
Firstly, Marquez narrates the historical flow through a mythic narrative
voice, as mentioned earlier. Moreover, the history he depicts is not
straightforward; it emerges from the margins of the socio-political
contemporary world order. This history is, according to Edna Aizenberg, an
absent history: it links postcolonial fiction with the desire to think
historically through Third World conditions and exigencies expressed
fictionally. The narrative voice in One Hundred Years of Solitude is vast
and all encompassing- it has been completely drained out of any
personality and closely resembles the omniscient third person narrator of
the 19th century realist novel. However, there is one crucial difference.
Instead of laying claim to understanding and deconstructing everything in
rational or logical terms, the narrative voice only renders an account that
is invariably detached from any judgement or attempt to explain. The
narrative voice in the novel would more closely resemble a community
looking back and narrating its history as a collective exercise rather than
the dry clinical voice of the realist text. Individual stories are rendered
briefly and enigmatically rather than in precise and detailed perception of
events and interiority. Characters are only as much focused as they feed
into the larger vision of the novel. This treatment of the intricate detailing
of the narrative is characteristic of Marquez. Even when the plot is focused
on a set of individual characters, like in Love in the Time of Cholera,
smaller episodes only feed into the larger vision of the novel. The
following comment of Rabassa supplements this argument:
The broadest tale of a people and therefore of an individual, is more
often than not elegiac and apocalyptic. (Rabassa, 7)
The word broadest is important to what was being argued earlier.
For Garcia Marquez, the history of twentieth century Latin America is an
outsized reality, a reality characterised by wars, dictatorships, tyranny
and all its consequent damages. This reality is one that is appropriated by
the West through the colonial experience and is one that needs to be,
according to the author, recaptured in order for man to survive and thrive.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, through its literary subversions, attempts
a promise of reestablishment of the people of Latin America and a new
and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others
how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and

where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at
last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.1
Secondly, the conception of time in Marquez is markedly different from the
realist narrative. Consider the following remarks of Gregory Rabassa:
We are already beyond the superficial and into reality, which is not flat
and unitemporal, but, like Time, is curved and coincidental in a whole
moment that is outside of clock time. This is borne out by the fact that
when we look skyward no two stars that we see are shining in what we
would call the same "time," each being the passage of light from points
that vary in time of origin but coincide in time of arrival here. By flatheaded nineteenth-century norms, this would then be magical, in evident
defiance of restrictive superficiality. In just this way does a false notion of
the real breed a false notion of magic (what is unreal), so the whole
concept, stillborn as it was, is best laid to rest. (Rabassa, 1)
Time in Marquez is circular and not linear. The fate of the community is
decided from the beginning. There are continuous moments of overlaps,
coincidences and recalling of past events. The finite nature of time is
inverted, allowing for the intermingling of past, present and future. There
is a compression of centuries of cause and effect of events in the three
generations of the Buendia family history. Multiple events are recalled at
several points across the novel and resonate throughout. A small example
is when Colonel Aureliano Buendia is facing the firing squad, he recalls the
moment when his father took him to look at the nice brought by
Meliquades. Meliquades is in fact the prime embodiment of the circularity
of time. News of death is circulated at multiple times in the novel but he
lingers till the very end.
To conclude, Marquez takes up the idea of magical realism in its bare, raw
form as a mere counterpoint to Western realism and transforms it into a
genre which stands alone and speaks for itself. . As Bell-Villada points out,
With the aid of the absurd and the fantastic, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has
been truthful to his land, his people, and his art. He consciously uses his
own culture to find a niche within a postcolonial framework. Magic realism
for him therefore does not remain one end of a spectrum but becomes a
way to embrace a whole new reality and give voice to it. This, according to
me, is his way of negotiating his postcolonial position.
Notes
1. Rabassa, Gregory. Beyond Magic Realism: Thoughts on the Art of
Gabriel Garca Marquez (Books Abroad, Vol. 47, No. 3)
1 Garcia Marquez, Gabriel; From Nobel lecture: The Solitude of Latin America

2. Jupp, James C. The Necessity of a Literary Tradition: Gabriel Garca

Marquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude (The English Journal, Vol.
89, No. 3, Our History, Ourselves)
3. www.monograffi.com/magic.htm
4. Bell-Villada, Gene. H.; Garcia Marquez and the Novel;
Latin
American Literary Review, Vol. 13, No. 25, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(Jan. - Jun.,1985), pp. 15-23; http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119382?
origin=JSTOR-pdf
5. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel; from Nobel lecture: The Solitude of Latin
America;
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1982/ma
rquez-lecture.html