García Márquez Essays

Garcà ­a Mrquez Essays Garcà ­a Mrquez Essay Garcà ­a Mrquez Essay Essay Topic: Chronicle Of a Death foretold Born in 1927, Marquez spent his earlier childhood with his grandparents in Aracataca village in North Columbia. Both of his grandparents very much influenced his upbringing. The major influence of his thoughts that later reflected in his writings and stories initiated here by his grandmother, a storyteller. He learnt from her, that storytelling and word of mouth, as opposed to written memory, is the place where weaving of the social fabric takes place. (King-193). This notion, later, became the most alluring feature of his writings. He was very motivated by the way â€Å"she treated extraordinary as something perfectly natural.†(reference 3) The underlying source of Garcia Mdrquezs literary inspiration was his grandmother, who lived in her own world of superstition and magic. It was from her captivating style of storytelling that he became fascinated and preoccupied with his interpretation of Magical Realism At the age of eight, his parents took him with them and later after attending school for some time, he was sent to Bogota on scholarship for his studies by the government. His writing career started in Bogota when he wrote his first novella Leaf Storm, published in 1955. Although he never completed his education, Columbia University awarded him honorary doctorate degree in writing. Gabriel Garcia Marquez started his early writing career through journalism while studying at the National University of Colombia. In 1948 and 1949, he wrote for El Universal. Then, from 1950-1952, he wrote whimsical columns in El Heraldo in Barranquilla. In December 1957, Garcà ­a Mrquez accepted a position in Caracas in the magazine Momento. During his time in Paris and Mexico, he wrote No One Writes to the Colonel and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez focused on marvelous, so he was often misunderstood in his writings by the critics as fantasy was not so common at that time. Marquez treats the question of a rigid separation between realism and magic, which he insists does not exist. Since what is ordinary to some seems marvelous to others, fantasy should not be emphasized as a special entity; it is part of a much broader concern. He was more concerned in bringing a change in society and rules (Rave 38). Garcia Marquez’s entrancing style of interpretation of magical realism, inspired by his grandmother, was always in relation to reality. His magical-realistic approach, which provides a very appealing dimension of myth and imagination to his writings, despite his insistence that every single line†¦ in all of my books†¦ has a starting point in reality† ( Minta 2.) Marquez’s novels are a reflection of events, giving them a realistic touch. Leaf Storm, his first, relates back in time to a funeral; One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects on its own production; The Autumn of the Patriarch begins with the death of a dictator-protagonist; Chronicle of a Death Foretold, whose title indicates certainty of death. His second novel, Love in the Times of Cholera written in 1985, does not fit in the pattern of the above writings. It concerns various aspects of memory. (King 193) His novels also contains flash-backs of events. Being a Columbian, the settings of most of his novels are small villages of Columbia. The magical setting of Macondo is the most notable among his works. In 1982 he became only the fourth Latin American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In his acceptance speech in Stockholm he remarked that the role of the Latin American writer is to continue to assert, in spite of despair, that human beings are capable of creating a different kind of futurewhere love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where races condemned . . . will have a second opportunity on earth. (Minta 64) :