100 Years of Solitude

I absolutely loved the ending to 100 Years of Solitude.  The novel itself is so dense, meaning there were many ways in which Marquez could have ended it.  Thus, I love how the ending was nearly impossible to predict because of many ways in which the ending could have gone.  However, I feel that the ending that Marquez chose truly ties together the whole novel.  The whole novel seemed like a circle in which time, events, and characters kept repeating.  The ending is supposed to be the end to this circle and these repetitions.  Near the end of chapter 20, I thought that with Aureliano (the baby) born the cycles and repetitions would continue.  However, as I continued raeading, I was shocked and surprised to find that Aureliano (the baby) was eaten by ants.  But when I soon realized that the manuscripts were actually the history of the Buendia family, it became so much clearer and I liked how Aureliano, the one who was translating the manuscripts, was the last Buendia alive and the one who finally was able to translate the manuscripts.  Not until writing this blog post and actually looking back on the ending did I have a second thought about the fact that Macondo was taken away by the winds.  The idea that Macondo flew away was an absolutely perfect ending which, because of all the bazar things that have happened in this novel, fits in perfectly.      

        

Project: possible introduction

I have expanded on my previous post and came up with a possible introduction for the paper for my project:

Miguel Angel Asturias wrote The President to discuss the widespread influence of a dictator, who corrupts everyone in the society, regardless of class, gender, occupation, or age. In his novel, the dictator’s corruption and desire to retain power lead to actions that turned people against each other. The inhumanities of a dictatorship are presented to the reader at both a conscious and subconscious level. At the surface level, the overall message of the novel is delivered through graphic descriptions of brutality and corruption. At a subconscious level, Asturias imposes his point through certain symbols and instances of delirium. The President is one of the first Latin American novels about dictators. It has been speculated that The President was written about the dictatorship in Guatemala at the time Miguel Angel Asturias was growing up, but why choose to write a fictitious work-a novel-over a historical article? What is the reason for using fiction to describe the horrors of living in a society run by a dictator? Like most authors, Asturias uses certain literary techniques to establish his main point. However, unlike most authors, Asturias is able to present the inhumanities of a society run by a dictator in a less biased way; thus, The President has a more powerful message and impact. In my paper I wish to prove how Asturias is able to portray the dictator as inhumane and why fiction has a greater effect on the reader than historical novels or other literary genres.