Talk:One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Due to the nature of the novel, it is extremely difficult for readers of the article to tell all the José's and Aureliano's apart. This causes the reader to look back (or even worse) forward, to see if the name is explained there.

A brief description of the historical context would help. A reference to the history of Colombia is definitely not enough here, nor are the links to the Conservatives. Which parts are real, which parts are fictional?

Article is not balanced. There is too much attention on the characters (which does not mean that this information should be discarded, but rather that the rest of the article should be expanded).

Article lacks sources.
Tasks you can do:

Can somebody tell me how to use foreign characters (accent marks, Chinese letters, etc.)? I would be grateful. --Beelzebubs 19:31, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Chinese (and Hebrew, and Arabic, etc.) are a more complicated matter, but if you want to start easy with the accented letters you need for articles like this one, there's several things you can do:
  • Change your keyboard overlay from US English to US International. That'll let your apostrophe do double duty as an acute accent, and other similar neat tricks -- á, ñ, î, à, ë, ã, etc. (Assuming you're on a standard Windows machine.)
  • Cut-and-paste them from other parts of the article / other articles.
  • Learn the ALT+xxxx codes that let you key them in. Eg, ALT+0226 = â.
  • Check out Wikipedia:Special characters and either cut-and-paste the characters from there or learn to type the HTML-entities: so, to write Buendía, you actually type Buendía. But that's kind of laborious, and it makes articles uglier / more complicated for other editors (though probably not as much as Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc).
Whatever you decide, keep up the good work like you've been doing on this article! –Hajor 01:02, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
    • Thánks, Hájor. I will táke that under considerátion.Beelzebubs 01:05, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Historic range of the novel...

In the introduction it is stated that the novel "metaphorically encompassing all of human history", this statement is 100% wrong! The novel does metaphorically encompasses the history of the northern part of South America from the 1700s to the 1900s. It magnificently encompasses Bolívar's War and the Republic of Gran Colombia and gives an artistic image of the people of that time and of their success and more importantly their failure to modernize South America (José Arcadio Buendía laments at the start of the novel the fact that they are cut-off from modern science). To really appreciate the novel one does not need to inflate it, human history is a great and wonderful thing beyond encompassing.

The Themes section is greatly lacking; I personally doubt that The subjectivity of reality and The fluidity of time are even themes of the novel.

Not sure how you can realistically argue those aren't themes but I'm interested in hearing you try. As for further themes, I would love to see a write-up on "forgetfulness" -- from the insomnia plague to the complete re-writing of history (by the end, there never even was a banana company) of most of Macondo's residents. Pariah23 11:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree and believe that both of those themes are valid. The book is also about far more than 100 years of Latin American history.

Does it just refer to 1700's to 1900's, I thought part of might be about La Violencia? --Horses In The Sky 20:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The novel refere literally to the 1700s and the 1900s. But methaporically it does also refer to the whole history of men. This is a very common interpretation, and there are countless points in the novel that support it. For instance, the parallelisms with the bible, the story starts with Macondo's Genesis, "when things were so new that they didnt yet have names", it has its own patriarcs period, deluge, etc, and it ends with an apocalyse. Buendia, the family's surname is the Spanish expression for "good morning", and it's usually related to the dawn of men. The story does go methaphorically from the dawn of men till the fall. And of course, subjetivity of reality is and the fuidity of time are indeed some of the main themes of the novel. The first one is common to every magic realism novel, and to most latinoamerican literature during "the boom", and the second (which is also linked to the first one) is common to most of Marquez's novels.--Rataube 09:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "considered by many"?

I changed, in the introduction, "The book is considered by many to be García Márquez's masterpiece" to "The book is considered García Márquez's masterpiece."

The notion that it is his most important work is, I find, indisputable. --DanielNuyu 05:46, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. The weasel wording often comes from people who imagine that there might be oddballs who disagree, but a small minority of disputants should not deter us from stating what is obvious to everybody else. Stan 16:45, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agreed aswell. Rekov 01:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (File under themes)

Apparently, Gabriel García Márquez wrote himself as a minor character at the end of the novel. When the last Aureliano starts visiting the town after Fernanda's death, he becomes fast friends with several young men. One of them is called Gabriel, and he is said to be a descendant of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, one of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's closest partners during the Civil War. The character of Gabriel goes to live in Paris, and holds some brief correspondence with Aureliano. García Márquez spent time in Paris and parts of Europe, and his grandfather was a colonel himself, Ricardo Márquez. The author doesn't explicitly state if the character of Gabriel's second surname is Márquez. However, the coincidence of the character's name, potential surname and period of stay in Europe seems too poignant to have escaped the author's attention. In fact, much of the background of this latter part of the book ties loosely with García Márquez's life as a young writer. Iguarán, the last name of the character of Úrsula is the last name of García Márquez's grandmother, Tranquilina, wife of Colonel Márquez. García Márquez grew up in their house.

Note that the "Gabriel" in the story is also said to have had a girlfriend named "Mercedes". It seems quite obvious that it's an author cameo. 69.140.12.199 23:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Macondo

There is a short stub about Macondo. It could be merged in this article. What about that? User:Gala.martin

I disagree, Macondo appears in many other works by Marquez, some of them were written before "Cien Años de Soledad".--Rataube 09:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colombia

I have removed the word "Colombia" from this sentence: 'The novel chronicles a family's struggle, and the history of their town, Macondo, Colombia, for one hundred years.' There is never a mention of what country Macondo is in. Macondo is pretty much 'anytown' South America. That's part of the point of the fictional town existing in the first place. Please advise if you think 'Colombia' should be added again and why. ~

[edit] Remidios

Since when is it implied she was poisoned? They say she died with twins crossed in her belly: pregnancy complications. Czolgolz 13:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Jokes & Other Deleted Nonsense

A version of the novel's opening line has been proposed as the title for the next WP:BJAODN page. Please click on this link to express your support or opposition.

[edit] Magical Realism in Latin America

I'm glad to see the work that has gone into starting this page on this great novel. Some friendly feedback: It is problematic to associate Latin American literature in general with magical realism. This is a stereotype fostered by the popularity of García Márquez and Isabel Allende in the United States. It is also historically and aesthetically off-base to compare magical realism with surrealism. Each of them has a different historical context, different effects and different ideological implications. Consider, for example, the following: Is any fiction that challenges realism to be called magical realism? If you read the stories of Borges and Cortázar you see that they are not realistic, but they are quite different from what García Márquez does in 100 Years. This is why their literature is considered 'fantastic' and not 'magical realist.' So there's alot more to do here, to situate this novel historically and aesthetically. Magical realism was a term first used at the beginning of the 20th century by Franz Roh to describe painting, and then taken up, very loosely, in Latin America, to describe certain authors. Apart from García Márquez himself, who theorized his critique of magical realism in his Nobel lecture, his predecessor Alejo Carpentier wrote seminal essays defining Latin American reality as marvelous or magical. Expanding these articles to address these issues would be very helpful.

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