Term Paper on "Compare and Contrast of Gabriel Garcia Marquez Books"

Term Paper 4 pages (1684 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Gabriel Garica Marquez books

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in the year 1928 in a small town called Aractaca, in Columbia. Columbia had won its independence from Spain in 1810, and this means that Columbia was one of the oldest known democracies in the world at the time. The Spanish, the English, as well as a host of others played an important part in the unrest and strife that Columbia had to go through and which also resulted in the formation of two political parties: the Liberals and the Conservatives. These two parties and their activities have influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his writings and also play a major role as setting or background for his fiction. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez: themodernword.com/)

In addition, the so-called 'War of a Thousand Days', and also the 'Banana Massacre' that occurred in 1902 and 1928 respectively influenced his work in the same way as the 'Violence' that occurred in the year 1948, a period of unbridled violence unleashed by the assassination of the leader Gaitan. The family members of Gabriel Garcia Marquez also played no small role in shaping the tone and essence of his work, the main members being his grandfather Colonel Marquez, a liberal, and also a great storyteller, his grandmother who also excelled in storytelling, but of the superstitious and ghost kind. Gabriel Garcia Marquez started writing at the age of eighteen, and one of his very first works, his 'First Story', was influenced by the 'Metamorphosis' by Kafka. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez: themodernword.com/)

The book 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as the author himself says, after seeing a 'vision' as his grandmother would put it. The tale has a lot of fiction, and also some truth in it, and was written over a period of fifteen months of steady work. The truth in the story is that it is based on the author's very own and personal childhood experiences in his home with his grandparents in Aracataca. Some of the experiences were about the ghost and spirits that used to haunt his grandmother, and how his grandfather took him to experience 'ice' for the first time in an ice factory, and also how his grandmother became blind over a period of time and how his childhood home became destroyed by red ants and termites because it could no longer be maintained well. (About 100 years of Solitude)

The 'banana massacre' that happened in 1928 is also reflected in this book, since it had played a major influencing role in the author's life experiences. 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' also reflects the political opinions of Gabriel Garcia Marquez that had been forming at that time, and also reveals the troubles and tribulations that any single individual faces when he is growing up in a developing country. The author stated in his conversation with an author friend, Carlos Fuentes that the primary duty of any author is to 'write well', that is, the writing must not be completely polemical or the reader would lose interest in it. Therefore, he stated, the writing must be interesting as well as factual wherever necessary. It is the fact however, that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was influenced to a great extent by the political and the economic history of the place that he was born in, Columbia.

In this book, Marquez combines his personal history with the history of his nation; in an originally aesthetically appealing style that has served to exert a long lasting influence on other writers over the years. The book was recognized as one of the best in Latin Literature of its time, and this book managed to not only become a bestseller but also a worldwide phenomenon, especially for other writers who were colored. One critic, Regina James has this to say about Hundred Years of Solitude: "Solitude represented the marginal and the primitive...many writers recognized their own ambivalent and difficult relationships with a traditional culture." (About 100 years of Solitude) This quote sums up the book and the feelings that it not only revealed but also managed to generate among fellow citizens and in other authors of the time. (About 100 years of Solitude) This quotation from the book describes the feelings that the author had at the time that he was writing the book: as Colonel Aureleano Buendia looks at the woman who had been beaten to death because she had been bitten by a rabid dog, he loses his temper and hollers "One of these days I'm going to arm my boys so we can get rid of these *****ty gringos" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez: (www.levity.com)

Maruja Pachon de Villamizar was a friend of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She had been kidnapped from her home in Columbia by a group of terrorists and extremists. When Maruja and Alberto Villamizar approached the author in the year 1993 to request him to write a book on the ordeal that had been undergone by Maruja during the abduction, Gabriel Marquez decided to take up the challenge. When he started his research, however, he discovered that there had been nine other abductions of the same kind at the same time, in Columbia. This was when he decided that this particular kidnapping could not be treated as one single episode and separated from the others. Therefore, he decided, he would research all the ten abductions that had taken place, and then write his story. This is the background of the book 'News of a Kidnapping'. (News of a Kidnapping, an Introduction)

Herein, Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes in detail the ordeal of the ten kidnappings and the captivity of these ten individuals. He also managed to include the trauma suffered by the parents and the caretakers of all the ten people, and their varied reactions to the event, and also the different efforts that were undertaken by them to free their children form the captors. The incident was, however, placed in the context of Colombia's longstanding and permanent war with terrorism as well as drug trafficking. What made the book so very important was that it made the United States of America sit up and pay attention to what was a problem that affected them. This was because of the fact that the problem of drugs in Colombia was directly or indirectly related or linked to the drug problem in America, and there was no denying this truth.

The actual fact, as stated by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his book did not reveal the truth of who had ordered the kidnappings. It was Pablo Escobar who had ordered the ten victims to be abducted, to counter the threat of extradition to the United States if he did not comply with the rules about drugs within his own country. The author, on the other hand, set the book on Colombian soil, and did not include other countries like the U.S.A. In the drug wars and other issues that were described in great details within the pages of the book. However, the world becomes a totally 'surreal' one as the author describes it, though not to the Colombians who are in fact living such lives filled with threat, on a daily basis. (News of a Kidnapping)

The narrative in the book bounces back and forth at a fast pace between the cramped cells and miserable living conditions of the prisoners being held captive by their abductor, and the negotiations being held by the worried families of the captives with the abductor, Escobar. For example, every night, the television news would be about the friends and the families of the victims trying to send messages to the captives, and of one or the other celebrity offering to beg for the release of the prisoners. However, there is a lack of suspense in the… READ MORE

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