Magical Normality

In Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the line between reality and fantasy habitually blurs. Each character is born into a sense of reality, but through the generational bestowal of repetitive names, the personality or physical appearance of the characters transcends into the realm of fantasy through the continual use not only of magic reality, but also of hyperbole in the flaws or strengths of his characters.

The first instance of fantasy in the novel is paramount to the novel, if José Arcadio Buendia never killed Prudencio Aguilar and was then haunted by his ghost, Macondo he would never have ended his life in the previous community to found the town of Macondo. After the parentage of José Arcadio Buendia and Ursula each child takes on a defining weakness and strength, over time the magical element of the Buendia separates into two distinct male lineages, those bestowed with the name Aureliano and those with José Arcadio.

Those that have the name Aureliano are able to see the spirit of Melquiades and are consumed with the deciphering of the parchments left in the ancient alchemist’s lab. They experience a sense of nonlinear time, but in a linear sense. Time within the room itself at points seems to stand still as nothing ages and time does not encroach upon the items left within, but through the continual work and obsession of the Aurelianos time still passes as they age with their methodical and endless work, be it the making of gold fishes or deciphering scrolls. These obsessive personalities developed over time for each of the Aurelianos, being just recluse or quiet in the beginning of life and through the eventual disillusionment with the state of Macondo and the world turn towards a way of self-exile from the rest of society, but the circumstances to which each of them escape the world transcends normality. This is quite the opposite from their brothers who overly indulge themselves throughout their lives.

José Arcadios on the other hand tend to be exaggerated or magical in physical sense. Besides the first José Arcadio, José Arcadio Segundo made his living throughout the novel through a decadent lifestyle. There was a direct correlation between the wealth he obtained through the means of his seemingly impossible rate of his animals’ reproduction. This was directly linked with his frequent copulation with Petra Cotes and over time this wealth and decadence led him to the “tourneys of capacity” which caused him to eventually become not only wealthy, but again physically large in stature.

The females of the Buendia family take on a much different sort of magical component to their lives. Remedios the Beauty has an insatiable allure to men to a point where she becomes a paradox between love and death. She not only inspires awe by the other inhabitants of Macondo, but also causes magic to infuse within them a part of her forever. When a man on the roof watches her bathe herself and then falls through the tiles to his death he no longer bleeds as normal, but instead from the cracks flow a perfumed oil showing that she forever marks those who are cursed by seeing her. Ursula is the last prominent example of the synergy between magic and reality in the novel. Over time she develops heightened senses and a seemingly infinite memory to compensate for her blindness, but also lives for over one hundred years able to watch the transformation of the world around her as she attempts to bridge the fatal flaws that have arisen in the family lineage.

~ by Mr. Cynic on April 3, 2009.