Gabriel García Márquez

La Casa Matusita is an urban legend that is known to all people in lima-Peru. This haunted yellow house holds various types of mysteries. Many people prefer to avoid this house, especially during the night for pretty good reasons too. There is not only one, but two versions to how this urban legend goes. One tells of a man who found his wife in bed with another man. After killing both his wife and her lover with a knife, he killed his children and then turned the blade on himself. The other…

While events in these three books echo the history of their respective countries, events are not the only occurrence from which inspiration is drawn. The main characters in stories also represent their countries in post-colonial and civil war ages. The Buendia family in 100 Years of Solitude represents different parts of Columbia as the family cycles through life and death. All members of the Buendia family are solitary in some way, which is a representation of the solitude of Latin America.…

I believe that the message of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” was to not fear the unknown. The two main points that support this in the story, are how the town’s people treat the angel lesser than human and the symbolism of the chicken coop. The chicken coop symbolizes a cage that society puts people who are different in because when we don’t understand something, we fear it. At the end of the story, in paragraphs ten and eleven, the angel’s “job” is done and the son of Pelayo somewhat…

includes many features, which may be described as magical realism. Marquez uses magical realism to combine reality and fictional so that the difference between the two erases. Although the large man is thought to be an angel, because of his weird looks and awkward nature the townspeople treat him poorly. This shows people are incapable of looking past something's cover and into what it really is. Through the use of magical realism, Marquez shows us the absurdity of people's reactions and…

The Interactive Oral helped change my understanding of Chronicle of a Death Foretold because of cultural and contextual concepts that went otherwise unnoticed while reading this novel by Marquez. Colombia has different cultural atmosphere created by customs and traditions that, as Americans, we cannot easily understand without researching the subject. In fact, one cultural concept that particularly changed my view of the novel once researched, was the gender roles portrayed in the work. I…

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God by Juliana Barbossa is a deeply written biography of the chaos and trauma that occurred in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Juliana is a Brazilian-native but traveled frequently to Iraq, Malta, Libya, Spain, France, and the United States. She returned to her home city, Rio de Janeiro after over two entire decades. She is an award winning author who received her bachelor's degrees in Spanish Literature and Journalism from The University of Texas and master's…

Magic is the belief in supernaturalism, the belief that there is something beyond the ordinary. Magic is often portrayed as power and knowledge, and thus awarded to those who are worthy. In “The Cliff” by Charles Baxter, magic is portrayed as tradition. In the short story, a young boy and an old man, not distinguishable by name, drive to an unidentified spot along the coastline of California where the old man would teach the boy magic. More specifically, how to fly. Flying would give the boy a…

During the interactive oral I feel my understanding of the cultural and contextual elements of the work helped me develop a better understanding of why the murder of Santiago Nasar occurred. The discussion talked over: why the brothers murdering Santiago was socially acceptable in this rural area, as well as how certain characteristics or actions were normals of their society. An example being machismo being a huge aspect of Colombia’s culture. Jina Malone and I connected together how the…

Over a span of 100 years, the Buendía family recycled and reused the names of the original family members, José Arcadio, Aureliano, Amaranta, and Úrsula, and send the following generations of the family to drown under waves and waves of predetermined doom. The lives of the new name-bearers carry strains of the originals, as if their names are made up of the talents, characteristics, abilities, tragedies, and traits of their predecessors that manifest themselves in their new host. The characters…

Humans are greedy and selfish by nature. In the novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez follows the various events that surround the murder of the main character, Santiago Nasar. The division of social roles is a key feature that is ingeniously integrated into the passage; specifically, when Bayardo San Roman attempts to persuade Xius, a widower, to sell his house in order to attain Angela Vicario’s hand in marriage. Within this gripping story, filled with…