You must post twice by next Thursday, November 19th. The first time you comment, it should be in response to one of the prompts below. The second time you comment it should be in reaction to the post of one of your peers. Please begin your second post with something along the lines of "To add to what student said..."
Option 1: Again, identify connections between what Freud says about human motivation and our dreams and the way Gabriel Garcia Marquez has chosen to write this text and the experiences of the characters? Note any parallels between the two. Give specific examples including passages from the text.
Option 2: One Hundred Years of Solitude is seeped in symbolism, allegory, hyperbole and parable. (These literary terms are defined below.) Why do you think Gabriel Garcia Marquez chooses to write his narrative in this way? Choose an aspect of the novel that makes use of one of the aforementioned literary devices then attempt to give meaning to it.
Symbolism: a word or phrase referring to a concrete object, scene, or action which also has some further significance associated with it
Allegory: a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification. In written narrative, allegory involves a continuous parallel between two or more levels of meaning in the story. An allegory may be conceived as a metaphor that is extended into a structured system.
Hyperbole: Exaggeration for the sake of emphasis
Parable: A brief tale intended to be understood as an allegory illustrating some moral or lesson.
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From Matt: i find it confusing that how death works in this book. theyre proud of the fact that no one died until that one guy died, but he didnt want to die. he was trying to stay alive by melting mercury. also there are ghosts in this book. i think the author had problems handling death and it came out in his work.
ReplyDeleteIt could also symbolize something about having life to enjoy but when you try to live forever lose the meaning of life and die.
ReplyDeleteI think that the author had trouble showing reality in the book. I say this because it's the first book I've read that has magic realism in it. But then again I think it would be difficult to incorperate reality into a story, especially one that deals with someones family history.
ReplyDeleteI believe Gabriel Marquez wrote his narrative with all those literary terms because they help bring the story close to both reality and fantasy. They make the story interesting and easy to follow once you identify what strategy is being used to tell the story. I find that the author uses hyperbole a lot when he talks about the relationships between the characters. He describes Aureliano's love for Remedios with intense exaggeration; he goes on and on about how Aureliano writes love poetry everywhere he goes, like on paper and his body. Rebecca is also portrayed with exaggeration as she swallows mud and chews earthworms in her agony over the absent letter from Pietro Crespi. I believe Mr. Marquez is using hyperbole here because he wants to show how painful and how agonizing the characters' struggles are. A lot of it has to do with characterization I think.
ReplyDeleteI think Matt has a good point about the whole deal with the author having ghosts in the novel. He may have a lot of past regrets that he as not yet settled with or gotten over. He might be trying to show that death is just a beginning to something else. I honestly don't know. But I do find it interesting that Prudencio Aguilar reappears even after Jose Arcadio tries his best to keep him away. Maybe the author is trying to tell us that you can't run away from your ghosts but the only way to attain peace is to face them.
ReplyDeleteI choose hyperbole. I feel that the whole book is written like this. Everything in this book is exaggerated some sort of way and everything that happens is very odd and makes no since because everything is so hyperbole. I think he chooses to write the book in this way so that he can have a new book that is told in a whole different way from “normal books” or those and people enjoy reading.
ReplyDeleteIn response to libby.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. I feel that his style of writing is way out of line and unnecessary. If an elementary school kid were to turn in a paper with this style of writing the teacher would think something is wrong with him or her, not that it should be made into a book that is 400 pages wrong. Another example is that no one writes like this like this ever. There is no strategy to identify to figure out what he’s trying saying. I find myself having to re-read pages over and over just to figure out what he’s saying. If there really is some strategy to figure out what he’s saying please explain?
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ReplyDeleteIn this book Amaranta is trying to sabotage Rebeca and Pietro Crespi's wedding because secretly she is still madly in love with Pietro, even though she agreed that she was fine with Rebeca marrying him. When doing this she asks God to help delay this weeding anyway he can. Soon after she wishes this her brothers wife, Remedios, dies after drinking coffee and being pregnant with twins. After this incident, Amaranta believes that her sister-in-laws death is her fault and she falls into a deep state of guilt. I would pin point this portion of the story as a parable because Amaranta is extremely jealous and because of this she brings hurt to her family and even "assists", a death. The moral of this story is that nothing good can come from jealousy. It also teaches us to almost be careful what you wish for. I believe that Gabriel Garcia Marquez choses too write this story so that not only are we enjoying a more fantastical and adventures book but we are also learning about right and wrong, while hopefully remembering it for years too come.
ReplyDeleteContrary to David, I agree with Libby. It is an extremely interesting book and although it take a little warming up to, I have found myself throughly enjoying this book. I also agree that the author used hyperbole to show the drastic feelings each character had towards one another. I also feel that, that is one of the reasons he chose to wright this story with magical realism because writing it like it happened with actual word for word happenings wouldn't wrap around how the characters were actually feeling but merely give us a window viewing of an event that happened a long time ago, to some family that no one has heard of.
ReplyDeletein response to greg:
ReplyDeletei kinda get what you said. prudencio didnt try to live forever(that we know of) and he lived for a long time after he died as a ghost. and when that one guy died he was buried and quickly forgotten.
I think that this book is very symbolic. There are so many different aspects of the book that can be taken as a different idea. One example that popped in my head from the beginning was how Rebeca decided to eat dirt. This could mean that she loves to eat dirt or it could symbolize that she is eating dirt to symbolize the idea that she is trying to get rid of difficulties that have happened in her life. Such as the death of her parents. There are also many other places of symbolism throughout the novel.
ReplyDeleteRebecca eating dirt is a reference from a german ( i think german, im not sure)folklore/belief according to which a person eating dirt is basically eating up their place of origin/birth/creation (because of the belief that we are made of dirt/earth and after death we become one with the earth/dirt). This becomes a sort of prophecy as Rebeca grow up to marry her own brother (hence eating up the place of origin- home; although rebeca was adopted, but home is still home you know..)
Deletehe writes in this style to make it more confusing harder to read an understand. He might right in this way to make the reader make there own conclusions for different things through out the book. so the book is understood differently for everyperson it is left up to the mind to figure out what it means. When Pietro is denyed marriage from the second girl it says in the book he almost breaks his fingers with desperation trying to break her down. he isnt trying to break his fingers or her. that is used to make the point. the hyperbolye thing. I think it is showing how upset he is after waiting so long and getting no where and being denyed again.
ReplyDeletein response to Kellie i agree the whole book is filled with symbolizem. it does make it more confusing but at the same time it can make it more interesting and weird. which the book is weird but kind of interesting.
ReplyDeleteI agree with David. I feel like I have to read, and read again, and-shocker-yet again. Because the book is written in such a dreamy way I think that is what makes the book so much more confusing. I find the book very interesting, but yet at the same time very very confusing. I hope that the book gets less confusing as it goes on.
ReplyDeleteI think that he wrote this book with so much symbolism, allegory, hyperbole and parable because it makes the story more interesting. When people tell stories it their exact happenings, they tend to get boring. But honestly I think that he uses to much of these things because I sometimes get lost in the exagerations and don't follow the actual story.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to sayy an example....
ReplyDeleteHe exagrates Rebeca alot about how weird she is for eating dirt. Sucking her finger. Eating walls.
I agree with libby in somethings like how and why he uses those litarary elimants. And where he uses them at. But i disagree that it makes it easier to follow the actual story line. For me it is very hard, i get lost in everything else and take everything for being real.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that the author used hyperboles to describe Jose Arcadio when he returned after his time away with the gypsies. He may be a large man but Mr. Marquez makes him appear as a giant, exaggerating the size of every part of his body.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry Kellie but I would have to disagree. I do not think that anything in this book is symbolic at all. Personally, I think the author did one to many lines in his childhood and it is reflected in his writing. However, I am not very good and finding and interpreting symbols but so far, I have found absolutely nothing that I would consider a symbol.
ReplyDelete