Garcia Marquez example essay topic

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's literary techniques differ between books of fiction and non-fiction: His works of fiction incorporate "magical realism" while his works of non-fiction are much more objective and seem to incorporate the skills used by journalists. The books I will be analyzing are: "News of a Kidnapping" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude."News of a Kidnapping" is a book of non-fiction by Gabriel Marquez concerning Columbian national events beginning in the 1980's. During this time, the government of Colombia signed a treaty with the United States allowing for the extradition of Colombian criminals. This really angered the drug traffickers of Me dell " in. Drug traffickers like Pablo Escobar had been exporting billions of dollars' worth of cocaine. They weren't likely to be arrested at home, but if extradited and tried in America, they would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The author's literary style in "News of a Kidnapping" is objective and recalls his early career as a journalist. Specifically, it is obvious that he let the hostages tell their own stories without impressing upon them the stamp of the Garcia Marquez imagination. Perhaps the most glaring weakness of the book is its failure to put these events in a perspective that would render them more comprehensible to readers unfamiliar with Colombia's tortured history. Garcia Marquez was obviously writing for his compatriots, and his book doesn't even provide background information, a simple chronology, or even an index.

The nation's powerful cocaine-trafficking cartels built an industry generating billions of dollars in income and spreading the rot of corruption throughout Colombian society. The narcotics peddlers resisted government efforts to eliminate them by murdering public officials, political candidates, judges, journalists, and innocent bystanders. Garcia Marquez makes only fleeting references to this historical context. Basically, readers looking for a more comprehensive treatment should look elsewhere. The aftermath of the kidnappings demonstrates their relative insignificance in the broader scheme of things. Pablo Escobar did in fact eventually order the release of eight of the hostages (one was executed and another killed in a shootout when the police stumbled upon the neighborhood where she was being held).

Escobar then gave himself up and was confined in a specially constructed prison which had many of the characteristics of a country club and from which he eventually made an escape through some well-placed bribes. The police eventually tracked him down and killed him. Yet the cocaine trade continues to flourish, and recent reports of payments made by the drug traffickers to Colombian legislators demonstrate the deep roots of lawlessness in the country. Garcia Marquez presents a somewhat muted portrait of Escobar, whose larger-than-life qualities seem to benefit Marquez's literature. One wonders, for example, what flights of fantasy he might have constructed from the following passage he tossed off in News of a Kidnapping: "Politicians, businesspeople, journalists, even ordinary freeloaders, came to the perpetual party... where Pablo Escobar kept a zoo with giraffes and hippos brought over from Africa, and where the entrance displayed, as if it were a national monument, the small plane used to export the first shipment of cocaine". Indeed, the part of the narrative that comes closest to the wizardry for which Garcia Marquez is best known describes Escobar's bizarre surrender which was apparently provoked by an appeal from a saintly eighty-two-year-old cleric.

The priest took it upon himself to act as mediator between Escobar and the government, and made personal contact with the trafficker, who thereupon released the hostages and presented himself to the authorities. "News of a Kidnapping" displays occasional deft touches, but on the whole it is a minor work by a major talent. A fictitious novel that Gabriel Marquez wrote that includes a great deal of figurative language is "One Hundred Years of Solitude."One Hundred Years of Solitude" tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macon do through the history of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia is the main character and his family members include his sons, Jose Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano Jose, Aureliano Segundo, and Jose Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women -- the two Ursula, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar -- who live in a very patriarchal society. The novel is comedic and deeply tragic at the same time.

Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost. Gabriel Marquez uses "magical realism" in "One Hundred Years of Solitude". This figurative method of writing may include some realistic aspects, but those aspects are twisted into a supernatural outcome that sometimes defy the laws of physics: A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendia house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano Jose, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Ursula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. "Holy Mother of God!" Ursula shouted. Though this narrative contains magical elements that defy conventional realism, it is realistic in its approach (it does not shy away from depictions of violence and sex; it is concerned with, and directly addresses, complex political and social issues in a matter-of-fact kind of way). Thus, in the novel we have Remedios the Beauty floating up to heaven rather than dying and Buendia's death mourned by a rain of yellow flowers from the sky.

The magic and the realism that together compose the novel, however, are perfectly reconcilable: they are, in fact, both necessary in order to convey Marquez's particular conception of reality in fictitious novels. I have analyzed these two novels and realize that Marquez limits his usage of figurative language mostly to his fictitious novels while he tends to apply his skills as a journalist when writing non-fiction. In conclusion, Marquez's literary wizardry in his works of fiction are relatively absent in his non-fiction narratives.