Ray Gerard D.

Angeles
August 27, 2014
Emergent Literature

Names and Cycles: 100 years of Solitude by G.G. Marquez

I am not a huge fan of South American post colonial writers. Of course, I laud them for
the importance and the complexity of their works; I praise them for the substance of their content
and their presentation and representation of the point they want to put across. Their style of
writing, presentation of imagery and story sequencing is at the same level as all other great
writers around the world. Their artistry doesnt fall short. However, what stops me from liking
these works is how weird it comes to me as a reader when I read it.
By now I have accepted the fact that it is and will be hard to read post colonial works that
doesnt include me in its target demographic. For one, it assumes that the reader should have
prior knowledge of what was happening at the time, other than that it assumes that the reader
should also know the language and should understand the cultural traditions and norms that are
shown in the piece. It assumes that you know and believe the reality that it presents. I somehow
feel more detached to the work because of this and in turn, I cannot entirely grasp what it is
trying to say. At most, I can only see glimpses of the whole picture.
100 years of solitude is a fairly hard book to read. Its plot is very complex to the point
that it loses me sometimes and I have to read back in order to understand it. Just like any other
post colonial work I have come across so far, it requires some background knowledge about a
particular culture for the reader to effectively read it. The book is also shrouded in magical
realism; reality with fantastic features to the west, but its claimed simply as the reality according
to the writers culture.

Several things occurred to me as I read this story. I noticed that they used and reused the
names within the family a lot. Outsiders would have distinct names while the members of the
family would have similar names. There are times when the names are exactly the same, with
suffixes attached to them, other times it would be a different combination of the names from the
family.
I think the importance of this phenomenon is linked with the cyclical nature of the story.
It is shown in the novel that events from the past are being mirrored in the present and in the
future. The interesting thing about this story is that apart from the cycle of events, there is also a
linear path that is drawn across it. It is the part where time distinctly and actually ticks. This is
represented by the progression of technology that happens as the story moves on. Apart from that,
a character from within the family seems to go through the story in this linear path and that is the
family matriarch who has seen the 100 years that the family went through. It is also important to
notice that there seems to be an end to the cyclical timeline marked by the downfall of the family
of the town. This idea is debatable since this end could be an end to the cycle or it may be a
part of the cycle itself.
There are things written in this story that I find too controversial and I dont really want
to talk about those things. Overall, it is a very heavy read, but one that should be read
nonetheless. I wish I have more background knowledge that would enable me to understand it
more and to appreciate it more.