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Essay / The Concepts of Destiny and Purpose in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Fate is found to be a common concept in ancient and modern works. From Oedipus Rex to Walt Disney's Brave, the power of fate is highly recognized within our culture; whether this is accepted or not is another story. Through the use of memory, repetition, and the concept of destiny, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is able to tell the story of the creation and destruction of the town of Macondo as it struggles through trials of nature historical, biblical and fantastic. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a magical realism novel in which the inhabitants of Macondo follow paths already traveled and arrive at the same conclusions, implying that their destiny has been fixed since the beginning of the city's creation. Aureliano even reads a prophecy about the city's destruction, and over time the people and places play their assigned roles and disappear, drifting into the sky or being taken away by a ghost. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The aim of One Hundred Years of Solitude is to show that the future may already be predetermined, but will always remain a mystery to those who experience it. he. The world can “exist in a state of flux; they attribute purpose and meaning to certain lives while simultaneously draining them from other lives” (Isip 133). This allows history and memory to be manipulated to serve the objectives of each character. Repetitiveness is present throughout the novel and madness results. “I was thinking the same thing, but suddenly I realized that it was still Monday, like yesterday. Look at the sky, look at the walls, look at the begonias. Today is also Monday” (Garcia Marquez 77). This scene is slightly realistic because if you thought that every day was the same, you would likely think you were losing your mind. This shows that time is not always what it seems and can easily slip away from you. The idea that the future can be predetermined continues to be demonstrated because "One Hundred Years of Solitude has a circular structure - a closed totality - linking the end to the beginning and vice versa" (Stavans 274). Even the characters realize that time has repeated itself and the novel continues to link a character to that of previous generations. This creates the illusion that everything is linked by more than blood and that each destiny has been determined by previous experience. Another goal of One Hundred Years of Solitude is to show that Macondo was built through hard work. Garcia Marquez writes: "The primitive building of the founders was filled with tools and materials, or with workers exhausted by sweat... exasperated by the bag of bones which followed them everywhere with its dull noise" (Garcia Marquez 55).The beginning of the city was much more positive and pure than the way it ends, which is in a massive storm, completing the cycle of man's return to nature. Repentance continues to play a major role as Garcia Marquez moves away from major historical events when he constructs One Hundred Years of Solitude. Seaman states that "the perspective on the glories and follies of humanity and the perpetual 'truthfulness of nature' are newly gripping and freshly relevant" (Seaman 39). The perspective gives insight into the struggles and highlights of the city's existence and shows its realism. Over time there were many destructions of towns due to the works of nature and many towns and villages were also built just like Macondo. Garcia Marquez even makes direct references like "on the eve of the elections, Don Apolinar Moscote himself read a decree that prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages andthe gathering of more than three people who were not of the same family” (Garcia Marquez 95). Here he is referring to how in the 1920s and 30s there was Prohibition, which also banned the sale of alcohol. This scene also shows the strict control over the city, which exists as an unhealthy and rigid control that prohibits a common way people use to let go of bad memories. Memory proves to be very powerful because "history and memory are only useful to those who understand the unreliability of the terms 'history' and 'memory' (which... are interchangeable because both are just simple constructions)” (Isip 139). The only choices for a character are to be the victim of a past cycle or to be the one who creates the cycle. This means that one can never remain a spectator of the past. For example, the banana plantation revolt which ends in a massacre that no one in the town seems to know about. Here the massacre begins as what is described as surreal. It's as if the rioters had experienced this before, which is ironic because the event actually happened. In addition to referencing historical events, Garcia Marquez also references the Bible. "Western familiarity with the Bible would explain why it has been the focus of research into the mythological sources for the novel, even though One Hundred Years is devoid of a Noah-like figure and boat building, and no figure of Mount Ararat in the 'background where such a boat might land' (Corwin 65). This implies that the reason Macondo may not have been saved is because there was no Noah-like character who could save some of the locals like Noah did. The novel's conclusion may have allowed the city to survive, or at least be rebuilt, just as Noah rebuilt what had been wiped out. There is also a time when the city returned to a time similar to the beginning of the creation of the world, where Adam and Eve had to name all objects. It was at that moment that the town was struck by amnesia and everything received a new name in the town of Macondo. A sense of purity is manifested as everything is to be renamed and the world seems to have returned to the time it was created with Adam and Eve. Fortunately, everyone manages to recover the memory of the objects around them. This is particularly fortunate because we do not know to what extent the city could have regressed. Even the primary labeling of God might one day have become no longer understood if the city had, for example, lost the ability to read as it regressed. As Stavans puts it: “The Buendias are defined by the biblical curse of incest from the beginning of the story” (Stavans 273). This shows that the curse is known as a generational curse. The names of each character even repeat themselves, making the father literally a son. Just like in the Bible, there is always punishment for sin, which manifests itself when Macondo is destroyed. Memory proves to be one of the most powerful themes of this novel, because "neither history nor memory provides an absolute and reliable truth about the past and the future, but are, on the contrary, constructions of the individual” (Isip 133). Even if previous experiences had been recorded, there is no guarantee that the advice would be clear or even followed. There is no guarantee that the past will not repeat itself, but it is likely that it will happen again without looking back. In the modern era, when history repeats itself, it seems much easier. Today's use of technology makes it easy to record the past and then broadcast it around the world. In an isolated town like Macondo, where the residents are mostly related and don't come from very..