Pieces As The Reader example essay topic

Both set in the midst of South American culture, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Garcia Marquez and 'Ficciones' by Jorge Luis Borges, attempt to illustrate the nature that is humanity. While on the whole both stories are presented differently, similar factors were used to emit a similar feeling from the reader. With focus on the last few chapters on 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and on one short story in Ficciones, "The Secret Miracle", a more concise explanation can illustrate the different approaches the authors may have made in using the death of two central characters in either novel to conclude the book / short story. Chapter 18-20 in One Hundred concludes the novel to the very last happenings in the town of Macondo and to the death and downfall of the Buen dia family, the town's founding family. The last of the family line, Aureliano II finally fulfills his life-long pursuit of deciphering the parchments that was left by the gypsy, Melquiades, after he finds his child being eaten by the ants.

In The Secret, the last few days of Jaromir Hladik is recounted after he is sentenced to death for charges no one really knew. As he spends his last few days, he asks God to grant him just one wish before he dies; and that is to give him just enough time to finish his last, and what he considers would be his greatest novel. The sense of imminent death is present in both these pieces, as the reader knew right from the beginning that these two characters were going to die. However, parallels can also be seen in the irony that comes with their deaths. Almost at the very instant they fulfill both their goals, they die. This sense of irony put forth by both authors emphasize the ongoing theme that time is almost irrelevant in both novels".

(Aureliano II) saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man's time and space: The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last being eaten by the ants... Melquiades had not put events in the order of a man's conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant". In the final pages of One Hundred, as Aureliano II is deciphering the parchments, he discovers that time in a sense has collapsed so that the entire history of his family and the town occurs in a simultaneous instant. While the book is written chronologically, there have been hints of overlapping stored throughout the book. AS if time is also occurring in circles and in spirals as you read it in linear form.

Garcia illustrates this by constantly mentioning the ghost of past characters; which, together with the foreshadowing and description of the present happenings, bring the past the present and the future together. In The Secret, Borges plays with time in such a way that the reader does not fully understand just how long the piece takes place by. While throughout the short story mentioning dates uses definite time, it is in the very last instant, as Hladik is writing his novel, that time is played with. It is said that Hladik asks for an entire year from God in order to finish his work, however, no one really knew whether it was in fact a whole year that the time has stopped, because the time HAS in fact stopped. There was no way of measuring. A the end of the story, the reader is told that in fact, only a minute of conventional time has passed.

This gives a sense of "time is what you make it to be" that Borges is trying to put forth. The use of symbols is abundant in both pieces in helping the reader understand the incidents that are happening in the novel / short story. In the final prophetic scene of One Hundred, mirrors were once again mentioned (Macondo is decried as being a "city of mirrors" throughout the story). This is interesting because it is said that as Aureliano read about himself reading about himself and feels "as if he were looking into a speaking mirror". This indirectly ties in to the idea of infinity that is also presented in The Secret wherein Hladik writes a story within the story that the reader is reading within a book. This loop often lends to the idea of labyrinths, a theme that is prolific in a lot of Borges' work.

It lends the element of pieces looping back upon them and upon reality, almost to undermine reason and put forth a sense of exaggeration. A technique that helps the reader not only question whether what is happening in the novel is possible but also question existence itself. Labyrinths are said to symbolize a long a difficult path, which is not far from the journeys that these two characters in each piece has taken, only ending in tragedy. Other symbols that were used in One Hundred during these last few chapters were the tornado that engulfs he town of Macondo, perhaps symbolizing the spiral ity of time; also the ants, not far from the bee that is used by Borges to symbolize death and professional advancement (to Hladik as a writer) in The Secret. An omniscient power (God in The Secret and Melquiades in One Hundred) is presented in both pieces by the authors, which, can be interpreted as introduction to the idea that things are predetermined; that what happens to us is beyond our control. Both Marquez and Borges attaches supernatural power to act as the pre-determiner of the pieces on the whole.

God is asked for by Hladik to grant wishes, which as one would recall is what Melquiades also did in the beginning of the novel, granting Jose Arcadia whims. This gives both pieces a pessimistic view that man has no free will and that all actions are predetermined, however, it also emphasizes the dark nature of human existence. While this is not so much indicated in The Secret, an introduction to the character's religion, .".. his blood was Jewish", briefly focuses on the incident of the holocaust and in a way lends to the dark nature of the story, especially since he was not even sure of the reasons to why he was arrested except of maybe his religion. One prevalent aspect in both novels is the use of magic realism. Although realism and magic seem to be at first opposites, they can, however be combined and both are necessary in order to convey Borges' and Marquez's conception of the world. Magic realism conveys the idea that reality is incorporated with superstition, religion and supernatural beings.

Many Latin American authors share this approach and in a way help shapes the piece. The act of reading is interpretation. With the input of several imaginative factors, it helps raise questions to the readers' mind. With this understanding that reading is subjective to a reader's interpretation, stories / novels can be created with tight structures with numerous meanings. And this leads to question what is real and what is not, forcing the reader to look at their own life.

Not only do all of these affect the final outcome of the pieces, it can also affect the way we, as readers, view our own lives. Both authors keep with the themes that they are familiar with in order to create two separate worlds with similar aspects. While it is difficult to not to look at literary pieces with the notion that they all have one predetermined meaning, it is not difficult to see the factors that make up whatever one interprets the meaning to be. One walks away from both these pieces with a sense of awe, perhaps because of the intricate worlds that these authors have created through irony, foreshadow, imagery, etc.

But one really has to savor the ingenuity of the presentations of both these pieces and to ponder the questions they raise, which ultimately is what a novel / short story should achieve.