SOLITUDE AND THE SCIENCES: PROPHECY, HISTORIOGRAPHIC
METAFICTION, AND MAGIC REALISM IN GARCIA MARQUEZ’S EXPOLRATION OF MACONDO
G. Shanmugapriya,
Assistant Professor,
Pavai Arts and Science College for Women,
Anaipalayam
Abstract:
Historiographic
metafiction is a self-conscious dimension of history. It is fiction that is
metafictional and historical in its echoes of texts and contents of the past.
Garcia Marquez beautifully exploited the past and the present history in an
effective manner. This novel One
Hundred Years of Solitude, which affects the aim of intertexts of
history and fiction takes place on parallel status in the parodic reworking of
the textual past of both the world and the literature. The incident of a baby
born with a pig’s tail and changing the fate of the Buendia family after the
birth of the mysterious baby represents the aspects of magic realism as well as
the genetic decline of the Buendia family in this novel. The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is a
long, episodic, fantastic and violent story of the Buendia family who founded a
town called Macondo, in the South American jungle or out of this world. This
novel trace the rise and fall of Buendia family from its harmonious beginnings
under founder Jose Arcadio Buendia to its increasingly chaotic decline through
six generations of descendants. It was considered a masterpiece of contemporary
Latin American literature, a novel is widely regarded as a seminal example of
magic realism and historiographic metafiction, in which fantastic incidents are
presented in an objective style to obscure distinctions between illusion and
reality with some scientific explorations. This novel shows his astounding
technique of the historical facts through various incidents and wars in the
novel. Historiographic Metafiction works to situate itself within historical
discourse without surrendering its autonomy as fiction. Magic realism is a
miraculous technique which combines the real and the imaginary to create a
fantastical, yet believable story. In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez also portrays
magic realism as a tool to draw his imagination and innovation to the reader.
He represents the Colombian culture, which strongly influences the culture of
the people living in the mystical village of Macondo. He uses this technique
specifically for two purposes: the first one is to introduce a Colombian
culture, which the story revolves around, and the other one is to force us to
question the absurdity of our everyday life.
Keywords:
Historiography, Metafiction, Magic Realism, Genetics, Science
Historiographic
Metafiction is quintessentially a postmodern art form. In historiography,
history was a series of past realities which concretely existed not only out of
imagination but also out of language. Historiographic metafiction serves as one
of the textual signals of the postmodern realization. It represents a
challenging of the related conventional forms of fiction and history through
its acknowledgment of their inescapable textuality. Historiographic Metafiction
like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude employs
parody not only to restore history and memory in the face of the distortions of
the ‘history of forgetting.’
The novel begins as a flashback of Colonel Aureliano Buendia
who recollects the years of founding of the village Macondo. In early days of
gypsies form the settlement’s only link with the outside world by bringing such
wonders as the magnet and magnifying glass and a flying carpet. Colonel Aureliano
Buendia looking back on the day then his father took him to discover ice. While
discovering the village of Macondo, a band of gypsies frequently brings
technological marvels to the dreamy, isolated village. Jose Arcadio Buendia,
the curious founder of the town, is obsessed with magical implements. He
admitted himself in scientific study with the help of Melquiades, the leader of
the gypsies. Jose Arcadio Buendia begins to explore alchemy, the pseudo-science
of making gold out of other metals. He is driven by a desire for progress and
by an intense search for knowledge that forces him into solitude. He withdraws
from human contact, becoming unkempt, antisocial, and interested only in his
pursuit of knowledge.
Jose Arcadio Buendia is not always a solitary scientist.
On the contrary, he is the leader who oversaw the building of the village of
Macondo, an idyllic place dedicated to hard work and order, filled with young
people and yet unvisited by death. In his quest for knowledge and progress,
Jose Arcadio Buendia’s obsession shifts to a desire to establish contact with
civilization. He decides that Macondo is surrounded by water and inaccessible
to the rest of the world. So, he plans to move Macondo to a more accessible
place, he is stopped by his wife, who refuses to leave. After that he turns his
attention to his children: Jose Arcadio, who has inherited his father’s great
strength, and Aureliano, who seems even as a child enigmatic and withdrawn. And
Aureliano was the first human being to be born in Macondo.
On seeing the ice of gypsies, Jose Arcadio Buendia
remembers his dream of Macondo as a city built with mirror walls, which he
interprets to mean ice. He immerses himself into his scientific study
accompanied with his son Aureliano. The village grows along with Buendia
family. Jose Arcadio Buendia played a key role in the expansion of the family
and the village. Then the gypsy Melquiades passes away, this is the first death
in the town Macondo. Jose Aurelisano Buendia feels the visions of the man he
killed early in his life and wracked with sorrow over the solitude of death and
tied with the chestnut tree. And he was dead after years of living outside tied
with a chestnut tree. The rain of yellow flowers from the tree marked his
death.
The rainfall does not stop for almost five years. Jose
Arcadio Segundo was inaccurately in a restful quiet with the memories of his
earlier days. He begins to care for the children of Amaranta Ursula and her
illegitimate son Aureliano II, who escaped from the room finally where Fernanda
hides him. Ursula was bedridden and grew older and less talkative. She became
like a child and played with the children. The children learn more stories from
her and about their ancestors. The rain destroys most of the part of Buendia family.
Petra cotes also die in floods. Fernanda occupies herself contacting the
telepathic doctors for the sake of herself to protect herself from the uterus
disease. She is also torturing her husband who loses his temper and breaks
every valuable thing in the house. And he had a job of finding the fortune in
gold coins which his mother hid somewhere in the backyard of the house. When
the rain ends, Macondo has suffered a sharp decline. The banana plantations
washed away, and the town is receding backward in time.
Garcia Marquez takes the role Ursula is out of bed and
tries to habilitate the Buendia house. She only discovers Jose Arcadio Segundo
who was in the old room trying to understand the prophecies of the gypsy
Melquiades. After that Petra Cotes and all animals were dead. Because of his
age, he never spends more time with the children in the house. The illegitimate
son of Meme Aureliano is attracted by everyone in the Buendia house especially
old, solitary Aureliano. Ursula became very old and more than one hundred
twenty years continue to turn back into her past. Rebeca Aureliano’s
widow died in this time. The unpleasant heat waves affected the people on the
town, and they thought that they were attacked by plague. The total town has
lost its feeling of reality and fills up with nostalgia of its prosperity. Due
to poverty Aureliano Segundo raised himself for getting money for sending
Amaranta Ursula who studies in Europe. Later he becomes very weak and he is
living his last days. He finally understands the prophecies of the gypsy and
makes Aureliano II to get knowledge about it. He completes his responsibility
and dies at the same time when his twin brother Jose Arcadio Segundo died with
his eyes open. Before his death Jose Arcadio Segundo was speaking to Aureliano
Segundo in Melquiades’s room and without realizing it.
Aurliano II remains in Melquiades old room and visited
occasionally by the ghost of the gypsy himself who gives clues to read his
prophecies. He became a solitary man. It turns out that he has not studying his
higher education but he is trapped in the old house which bears his memories
and delusions of beauty. When he discovers the gold under her grandmother
Ursula's bed, he shared it with his adolescent children of the town. In
his loneliness he became friend with Aurliano II who is making himself to
pursuit of knowledge. The two Buendia receive a visit from the last remaining
son of Colonel AurelianoBuendia, Aureliano Amador. He developed relationship
with Jose Arcadio II and Aureliano II and cut off when the four children, whom
Jose Arcadio II celebrate the party. He kills him and steals his gold.
Amaranta Ursula returns to Macondo from Europe and
married Gaston before she returns to Macondo. Followed by her, he returns to
Macondo. Then he realizes her love for her home town is a nostalgic dream. She
wants to refresh the house and the town. But Macondo’s downfall is
irreversible. As Aureliano II wanders the brief town but no one can remember
any member of the Buendia family in the village. Following the family weakness
towards the abusive love, Aureliano II falls in love with Amaranta Ursula. He
finds partial comfort with his love and his new friendship with the wise
Catalonian bookseller and his four scholars he meets in the book shop. They were
visiting many bars and whorehouses. He takes a black prostitute named
Nigromanta as his lover. And Gaston felt very bored in Macondo. He becomes
preoccupied with his dream of establishing an airmail service in Latin America.
Aureliano takes this situation possible for him admit his love for Amaranta
Ursula. She also produces her love for him and both of them become lovers. Her
husband does not return when he knows about the affair of his wife. The affair
continued with them happily.
In the midst of the solitude of Macondo, the Buendia
house falls to be destroyed by the couple’s uncontrolled love and by the red
ants which swarm everywhere. Ursula Iguaran got the old fear about the dangers
of incest love and their baby with the pig’s tail as per the fate of their
family matriarch. It was the great fear of Ursula at first in the novel. After
giving birth to the boy with the pig’s tail and died with the continuous
bleeding. The boy was named as Aureliano III. And his father seeks comfort in
the arms of Nigromanta and in drink and forgets about the newborn baby. Then he
found the corpse of the baby which was eaten by the ant. After understanding
the prophecies of Melquiades, he realizes that they were the description of the
entire history of Buendia family from the time of founding of Macondo. As he
reads, he finds that the text is the mirror of his own life, he describes his
act of reading as he reads. And around him, an apocalyptic wind swirls, ripping
the town from its foundations, erasing it from it memory.
At the beginning of One Hundred Years of Solitude,
Garcia Marquez describes Jose Arcadio’s blind pursuit of knowledge in Macondo,
after improving the technical aspects of the nearly ideal village community;
Jose Arcadio is led on several illusory search for experience, including the
search for gold using a pair of magnets supplied by Melquiades. These include
such marvels as a giant magnifying glass, a trunk filled with ice, flying
carpets, and an alchemical laboratory. After using daguerreotype in a pointless
attempt to prove the existence of God, Jose Arcadio is driven into an insane
rage, forcing his terrified family to tie him to a chestnut tree where he
remains even after his death, chattering in Latin against all evidence of God’s
existence. The next section Garcia moves the novel into when Jose Arcadio’s
son, AurelianoBuendia reacts against his country’s remote conservative
Government and its gradual imposition of dictatorial laws on the village.
Through the historical conflict occurred in the nineteenth
century between Colombia’s working-class Liberal party and the upper-class
Conservative party. Colonel AurelianoBuendia leads his fellow Liberals into a
countless series of vaguely defined and the bloody revolutions when he fathered
seventeen illegitimate sons who bears the name of Aureliano. He finally accepts
his defeat after losing many battles. His seventeen sons were killed within one
assassination of the Banana company strike. In the final section of this novel One
Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles the extinction of the Buendia
bloodline. AurelianoBabilonia an illegitimate member of this family who is
unaware of his relation to the Buendias’. He lives his days in the purely
instinctual pursuit of carnal bliss with his aunt, Amaranta Ursula who gave
birth to a baby with the fated pig’s tail. Following this incident, he founds
the history of Buendia family in its entirety, all illusions are destroyed. One
Hundred Years of Solitude turns in on itself, returning to the notion of
Past, Present and Future occurring in a single instant of time. Macondo is
revealed through the parchments to be a mere fictional creation; as
AurelianoBabilonia, surrogate for the reader, finishes the last sentence of
Melquiades’ manuscript, he deciphers the manner of his own death and a
whirlwind sweep down upon Macondo, returning to the town to dust.
The historical dimension existed in this novel, though
the things are more complicated, for Macondo and its inhabitants were never
truly innocent. History is compromised from the very start of the novel
we have seen the prehistoric elements and continue to be subtle distortions of
time which culminate in Aureliano’s and our discovery that wishes Melquiades
and foreseen what would happen in Macondo and had written it down, in Sanskrit,
on a sheaf of parchment. Garcia Marquez also shows that he doesn’t want merely
to register the past by his admirably constant disregard of precise ages and
dates. Situations throughout the novel are leavened with more or less direct
allusions to Biblical and other ‘timeless’ myths. Colonel Aureliano’s sons are
mysteriously assassinated as if by an order of Herod, later illegitimate
Aureliano is found in the bulrushes like Moses. Other events are counteracting
temporally by a series of plagues: insomnia, a dead bird raining from the sky,
etc.
Garcia Marquez presents his novel One Hundred Years of
Solitude with new ideas and his new system of thought. According to
this perspective, history and fiction are signs of only arbitrary connections
with their significance; they are ideological whose character and personages we
can find almost no significance in real life and history. The contradictoriness
of historiographic metafiction makes into a mode of writing which
simultaneously exhausting and formative, because as a form of metafiction.
Through presenting the history of the war between the Conservatives and the
Liberals show the historical representation of the novel. The Banana company
strike and the death of the three thousand workers make a great impact on the
background of this novel. This incident based on such historical events that
occurred across Colombia’s Banana zone. The title represents the hundred years
of solitude in Macondo which never repeated once again in the world. In this
phase Colonel AurelianoBuendia grabbing the power through solitude. The episode
of the banana strike and military repression in One Hundred Years of
Solitude constitutes the highest point in Garcia Marquez’s extensive
chronicle of Macondo. It is a vivid and dramatic scene, packed with
sociopolitical suspense, complete with bloody horror, and followed by uncanny
official silence and a fantastical rain.
Garcia Marquez focuses on the prophecy-telling in his
novel. In the beginning of the novel all the people of Macondo were affected by
the disease of insomnia and amnesia and they never recall the past things
situated around them. So, Garcia Marquez uses the character Pilar Ternera to
tell the past things through cards. At the same time, the Buendia family
members attempt to understand the prophecy of Melquiades, the leader of
gypsies. But at last AurelianoBabilonia only know the fact behind the prophecy
which tells the original story of Buendia family. The prophecy telling is to
make curiosity of the reader. The destruction of the family reveals the
incestuous love of the two Buendia family members. At last the entire town was
swallowed by the mysterious wind which sweeps away all memory.
The simple wisdom of Garcia Marquez originates in his
acknowledged for Macondo the coexistence of such realities as love and sex, of
eating and merry making, of aging and dying and other human processes and
practices, which keep taking place, if not with total independence from the
Banana Company, at least with rules and dynamics of their own. The narrator of OneHundred Years of Solitude is of the
omniscient kind, but the actual bounds of such omniscience lie precisely in the
electrified fence surrounding and protecting the gringos’ separate reality.
Garcia Marquez alludes to the classical myth outlined in
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and establishes the novels predominant theme of
guilt and inescapable fate. And it is true that Garcia Marquez contrives
brilliantly to attribute to the broadly characteristic. The hundred lonely
years recounted in the novel would begin more or less with political
independence won by the states of Latin America in the nineteenth century and
bring us to the modern world. To attempt to synthesize so much historical
experience within a single novel is clearly an ambitious projects and Garcia
Marquez attributes great effort to fulfill it.
Works Cited
Alexander, Marguerite, Flights from Realism:
themes and strategies in postmodernist British and American fiction, Great
Britain: 1990. Print.
Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of
Solitude, London: Penguin Books, 2014. Print.
Taghizadeh,Ali, and MohammaJavad Ebrahimi.
“Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy as “historiographic metafiction.” Theory and
Practice in Language Studies, vol.5.