One HUndred Years of Solitude Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

One HUndred Years of Solitude - Essay Example Depicting seven generations of people, Marquez critically examines their values nad traditions as the main issues of culture and political life. 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 occur rences; 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. Neverthe less, 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 mod ern 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 totalitarian traditions of his society.