One Hundred Years of Solitude - Book Report/Review Example

For instance, the Macondoans' reactions are not merely inappropriate or out of proportion to the strangeness of the events, they are actually inverted. On the one hand, the gypsies flying carpet and Remedios the Beauty's ascension into heaven are regarded as normal everyday occurrences; on the other hand, the natural phenomenon of ice and the all-too-explicable massacre of demonstrators appear implausible, paranormal, too fantastic to be believed. Thus, in Macondo not only does the fantastic become banal but, by a kind of chiasmus, the banal also becomes fantastic.

Nevertheless, the dialogue between the normal and the paranormal still continues in One Hundred Years of Solitude, although their relative positions have been reversed. The work is particularly relevant to fiction in that it reaches conclusions about the oppressive nature of modern society through direct confrontation with the ideology that formerly had been the inspiration for numerous political visions. Marquez uses satire and acute irony to unveil the totalitarian traditions of his society.

In Garcia Marquez's Macondo, supernatural beings and happenings, including ghosts and apparitions, supernatural plagues of insomnia or amnesia or dead birds, and so on, are all accepted quite matter-of-factly. Garcia Marquez's text has special significance within the context of culture, where dictators have traditionally had unusual amounts of power, at least by North American standards. Marquez portrays culture entertains and enthralls, subtly imposing mass conformity at the expense of any real aesthetic content, meanwhile stimulating its audience to consume not only its own products but those of its advertisers.

Marquez himself consistently argued that his vision of the coming ideal socialist society was not a dream of the kind that he rejects in connection with reality and others. Instead, Marquez attempted to show that the seeds of this society were already beginning to grow within a capitalist society. For Marquez, ideal and democratic society was not a fantasy but an inevitable reality.In sum, One Hundred Years of Solitude is both an allegory and satire on the totalitarian regime portraying harsh realities of life and social traditions dominated in society.

People are limited by political and social laws, values, and false ideals transmitted from one generation to another. The main characters become carriers of totalitarian values and traditions. Marquez depicts specific historical events, but it is also clearly related to the complex relationships that already exist between thought and the social tradition.