Exaggerations of Cycles in One Hundred Years of Solitude

In the beginning, there was the word. The word, in this case, was “spin”.

Traditionally, the phrase “spinning a yarn” is associated with the oral customs of story telling in which the storyteller takes an incident and exaggerates the details in order to induce wonder in their listeners and put their own “spin”, if you will, on the events. In doing so, the storyteller is able to weave an elaborate tapestry of images that may not necessarily be true to real life, but never the less manages to produce an accurate, if not heightened, representation of their first-hand emotion and awe. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez takes this traditionally oral practice of story spinning and exaggeration and, very effectively, translates it into textual form.

Along with storytelling, the word “spin” can also provoke images of circular patterns, or cycles. While reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, the element that struck me as most prominent in the novel was Marquez’s reoccurring use of cycles. The entire text, it seems, is composed of a complex layering of cyclical journeys- both of the individual characters and Macondo as a whole. The founding of Macondo is a prime example of how destruction begets creation and eventually sinks back down into chaos. The founding occurs following the death Prudencio Aguilar. Jose Arcadio Buendia, who had entered into an incestuous marriage with his first cousin, Ursula, murdered him after Prudencio made a pride-damaging comment on Ursula’s refusal to consummate the marriage for fear of having a disfigured child. The reign of the city ends one hundred years later with Aureliano Babilonia, the product of generations of incest born with a pig’s tail (the realization of Ursula’s fear), who eventually dies of neglect, eaten by ants.

Another significant use of cycles is evident in recycling of names. Generation after generation in the Buendia family, names are handed down like heirlooms and, with them, so are the traits of their predecessors. The Jose Ardacdios of the family are characterized by their strength and their progressive, often self-destructive, thinking, while the Aurelianos are distinguished by their solitary natures and discerning insight.

Solitude is but another cyclical theme of the book- a feeling that, based on the writings of Octavio Paz, is defined as a “nostalgic longing for the body from which we were cast out…a longing for a place.” The definition Paz gives for solitude could be interpreted as a longing to return to the womb and, in fact, is often demonstrated throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude as being just that.

Ursula Buendia is the matriarch of the family, and the house she helped to create for her family becomes the great allegory of the female body, where the inner workshop represents the womb. This workshop becomes the place where generations of Buendia men lose themselves in their individual encounter with solitude, and where the line itself comes to an end as Aureliano Segundo translates the final pages of Melquíades manuscript. The most remarkable example of the men who recede to the womb of the Buendia house is Colonel Aureliano, as he offers a particularly unique point of view of the male’s role in the novel.

Aureliano had cried in his mother’s womb, and was born with his eyes open. From his unusually passionate beginning, the Colonel goes on to lead the life most devoid of passion, love, and emotion. Not coincidentally, Colonel Aureliano is also the quintessential archetype of machismo in Latin America. It is not until after he has fathered 17 children with 17 different women and led the Liberal part in a revolution that the Colonel is able to find an inner-peace. And he does this, not through continuing these practices or settling down, but through the creation and re-creation of little gold fish, melting them down as soon as they are done and making them again- the process itself a cycle. Though Roger F. Williams, in his article “Progress and Innocence”, describes the Colonel’s recession into the workshop to make and re-make little gold fishes as the end of a linear journey or the final stage of a saga, I think it is more accurately described as a disconnect from the outside world, repeating the process of creation over and over again like a mantra.

While each cycle surely has an individual importance of its own, the combined significance of all of the cycles together is to represent how stories, especially in the oral tradition, are told and the patterns of how our lives are lived. If it weren’t for their exaggeration, in sheer number if not in content, then there is a great chance that the reader would not notice the significance of the cycles. One of the ideas of spinning, of producing cycles, is that it is a natural outcome of the process of storytelling and living.

Picture books and intertextualiy

It's been on my mind for a while about the role of images in (modern) literature. No, not children's books with illustrations, but books like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, You Shall Know Our Velocity, and Breakfast of Champions (the former two being better examples than the third). These are adult books who use images just like they would imagery- only they're eliminating the middle-man, so to speak, and cutting right to the visual side of the brain. No misinterpretations can be made there. This method has a really interesting affect on the way a reader perceives the meaning of the text. Not only does it provide them with the actual images, making it easier for the author to convey what they're talking about, but it creates a whole new sort of sub-text by combining two mediums of expression.
Now, the reason I had the word "modern" captured between two parenthesis at the top there is because this is a fairly recent development. This is not a method seen prior to the late 20th century (at least). In fact, I'm sure the authors of before would have scorned this use of "pictures" in serious works of fiction as "juvenile" or "amateur", maybe even going as far as saying it was "uncreative". In reading and analyzing Atonement in class- I became aware of another new(-ish) development which fits alongside image-usage into this interesting category of sub-text and understanding: intertextuality. Intertextuality is a really interesting concept- it subtly implies (underlines, injects into) so much more meaning to a character, or even the whole work itself, just through the mention of a name or title. It's a way of threading together two pieces of literature to create a new significance- an acknowledgement of a connection between different people, characters, and events. It's very reminiscent of Borges' belief that all works are based on a single plot "which runs through every imaginable permutation". (after re-reading Ficciones I realized that he provided an explanation in his Prologue for the nature of his stories. He said- straight out- "To go on developing an idea for five hundred pages whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary." Slap of a palm to a forehead, Laura!)
This led me to question- is the establishment of new literary techniques (namely, the use of images and intertext) merely a product of time? After all of the books that have been written, all of the different ways in which events, people, characters, etc. have been described and used- is this what we've arrived at? No, I have no answers to the questions, and this is as far as I've come in developing my thoughts- but it's something I would really like to look more into.

Writing about Writing

From my experience, it seems that the more disorganized a person is, the more structure they need in order to function and get things done. This is most certainly true of me in my writing. Any time I start a piece, I must first have a clear mental flow chart of where the piece is going (that is, at least if I don’t want it to end up unfinished and abandoned, as they so often do). With particular regards to class essays and assignments, the flow chart must be even more detailed and well thought out to prevent my mind from wandering or just rambling. Once this is established however, the rest usually comes easily. I just let all of my thoughts flow out into the little boxes I have established for them and, viola, literary masterpiece.
Not really. After this first verbal spew, I go back and re-read what I have written a good fifty times. My word document trembles at the threat of my trigger-happy backspace bar. You see, I’m what’s known as a detail hound. Once I’ve established some sort of order for the essay, I begin obsessing not over what I’ve said in my essay (I’ve already determined that much) but how I’ve said it. Particular word choices and word order are constantly in question. That’s where the majority of my time is spent in writing. As a result though, I sometimes have a hard time seeing the big picture of how my essay reads (though not the big picture of the subject matter itself.) This is where I need help- I have to ask a third party to read the essay and point out for me any big pieces left unexplained.
When writing my exploratory essay for The Sound and the Fury, I found it fairly easy to follow my usual procedure, possibly even more so since I wasn’t constrained to the usual five-paragraph thesis driven regulation. My real troubles with the essay came in the revision. As I stated before, in order for me to get anything done, I have to have a more or less set plan in my mind, so when it came to revising, my immediate reaction is “Ok, I need to re-write this whole thing in order to account for the things I have either left or am taking out”. I had a hard time making the connection between what the comments on my essay meant, and the way I was going to apply them to my paper. In the case of some comments, I felt it was best to leave them out because to explain myself properly, I would have had to either go off on a complete tangent or insert a sort of disclaimer, which didn’t exactly flow with the rest of my paper. (Specifically, when I mentioned that my family was “typically Hispanic” and was asked to explain what made it uniquely Hispanic. To provide a clear understanding of the differences between the Hispanic culture and, say, the Italian culture, would have required a possibly (and most likely, knowing me) lengthy digression. I tried saying “typically (but not uniquely) Hispanic” family, but that didn’t sound right. So I just left it out altogether.) But other changes I did make in the essay led me to down a different path of thought than I had previously seen, causing me to remove and replace whole ideas within my paper. What I got out of the comments left to me was confirmation that, in getting caught up within my own thoughts and the writing process itself, I sometimes have difficulty explaining myself clearly and/or thoroughly to an outside reader. Through the process of writing an exploratory essay over the Sound and the Fury, it has made me more aware of the thought process that goes into understanding a concept or text. It has sort of forced me to be constantly aware of the development of a thesis, and refine its progression. My goal for my next piece is to shorten the gap between my understanding of the subject and the reader’s understanding of my thoughts through being more concise in my explanations, while not losing subtlety or my individual point of view. People (students, aspiring writers- I’m not sure what to deem the collective I’m referring to) have this tendency to fall into their “writer’s” voice when they narrate, using nice literary elements and good vocab. words just like they were taught. But what one has to remember is that there’s nothing wrong with using your own voice. In fact, learning using your own voice effectively and adapting it to the literary elements (rather than just pulling them out as necessary tools) is what differentiates between a good writer and a mediocre one. This is my over-all goal I would like to achieve in my future writing: to be able to express myself clearly without giving in to the typical narrative of “good” writing. The most important thing I learned while working on this essay is that there are still so many ways of expression I have to explore, and that I have a lot to improve on.

Atoning for my lack of blogs

I'll start off by saying that I think I passed an unfair judgement on McEwan when I said earlier that I thought he was more of a novelist than a writer.
As I was tinkering with one of my many, many, (many, ad nauseum) unfinished short stories for a writing portfolio, I was also toying with the idea of asking for some advice on where to go with the story, how it was sounding so far, etc. After a brief period of hesitation, I began to think about the way Briony described the sensation, the feeling of apprehension, she got as she was working on her stories. "Self exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character's weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have?" So much like Briony, I knew that no matter how much I had to struggle with my story, I would not risk that sort of self exposure. (Not, at least, until the story was finished).
The fact that I resonated so strongly to this passage led me to thinking that it wasn't really Briony's feeling I was relating to, but McEwan's. (Oh yeah...Briony isn't even real.) I realized that this was a sort of "confession", if you will, from McEwan, through use of Briony, about his own writing process. A "please don't judge me too harshly", perhaps. But that's exactly what I did. So now, this is me revoking my judgement (though keeping my suspicions...). Sorry, Mr. McEwan.

Anyway, like all realizations, this only led my mind down another path to be unsure of. Or rather, this one led me back to a path, because this is something I frequently think about while reading. (ESPECIALLY when I was reading You Shall Know Our Velocity!, which I'm sure I'll get around to talking about...) Actually, I'll just start off with YSKOV as an example.
Every time Dave Eggars (the author) introduced a new character- the French woman they swim with, Raymond, who is a man they meet in Senegal- they seemed to exist solely to deliver a message that perhaps Eggars, or his main character Will, could not deliver themselves. (Or at least to provide them an opportunity to do so) Maybe they were a real person, who really spoke those words. I don't know. But that's exactly my point. How much of this is coming from the author him/herself? Are they just breaking themselves into little pieces and then giving those pieces names, roles, characterizations? Sure, the situation the characters are in might be based on fact, but was the dialog really external, or more of an internal representation of how the author would have perceived the situation if all of it's participants really were only two-dimensional;-- figments of his own imagination? Or maybe how things should have gone? As a reader, I constantly ask myself these questions, along with many others.
But Atonement offered an even more challenging example. After completing the book, I was left not with one author's verisimilitude to question, but two! The reliability was twice removed from this story, and I'm left with two psyches to analyze. I could give Ian McEwan a hard time again and say something like "Maybe that was simply McEwan removing himself once more from the story", but that's just cruel, and I've never read anything else he's written, so I have no real basis for saying that anyway.

FINALLY, I have arrived at Briony and her narrative, which is in reality almost the entire book. It turns out all of those questions I've asked myself are really going to come in handy when analyzing the text, namely Robbie and Cecilia. (I say "turns out" as if I'm surprised) All of our knowns about Briony, the keys to figuring her out, so to speak, are given to us at the introduction and conclusion of the novel. The introduction allows us to view her personality before the event- the way her mind understood and dealt with the world around her- and the conclusion shows us, after all this time has passed, what remains important to her. The rest in between is all guesswork, but at least we have these two things to work off of.

This is an incredibly long post, and I've got to finish my second draft of S&F. Stay tuned for the (equally long-winded, I'm sure) conclusion.

Brief thoughts on The Smoker, Atonement, and Borges.

The Smoker...well, as I stated in class, I found the characters to be a bit OVER developed. It was almost as if there was too much continuity; a little inconsistency would have made the characters seem more well-rounded. And I think that applies to all of the characters, major and minor. (For instance- when Rhonda Phelps blurts out "He's a Machiavellian bastard,"- how pretentious does that seem? I mean, yes. I GOT it that she was exceptionally bright, but honestly.)

(Side note: Am I being too informal with this? I'll stop, just in case.)

Also, the fact that Nicole was almost twenty was just too (to use your term, Chia) convenient. As if the author wanted to write something controversial and different, but just couldn't force himself to go all the way. Because of that one detail, the story lost some of its credibility and meaning to me. It would have been much more effective if she had been 17 or 18, or if he had been 47 instead of 31. I was a little suprised when the idea of the story being a dream sequence was brought up; it never occurred to me while reading it, but I think its a very interesting proposal. The absurdness of the whole situation, the fact that you could detect a not-so-hidden desire for Nicole from the beginning, even Paulette's repetitiveness, all could go in support of that theory. Though, personally, if anything I think it's more based on what the author may have desired at one point in his life, rather than the character.
In regards to the title, which seemed sort of out-of-place, the connection I came up with was that when Nicole's family selected Douglas to marry her, he felt the same sort of honor and privilege he had felt when he was picked by the Smokers to box as an adolescent. Maybe he wasn't even aware of the connection, (although, I don't know why else he would have brouth the story of the Friday Night Smokers up) but there was a definite corrolation between the two events, the two feelings. (And, additionally, I though the choice by Schickler to make the name of the school St. Agnes was interesting, seeing as she's the patron saint of engaged couples.)

And now we come to Atonement. I enjoyed the story tremendously, and it was easy to lose myself in the book- a very quick read. Still, I wouldn't exactly add Ian McEwan to my list of favorite authors. He's more of a novelist than a story teller. As in, I got the impression that he created stories and contexts in order to write a novel, as opposed to someone who writes a novel in order to create stories and contexts. If that made any sense.

More on Atonement later.
(Brevity has never been a strong point of mine. Nor has formality.)

For my Lit X paper, I have started reading Ficciones by Jorge Louis Borges. And I'll admit straight out- I'm more than confused. I understand the words he's saying, I'm enjoying what he's telling me, but I'm not GETTING it. For example, the first story in Ficciones is called "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". Now, from what I understand, it is a story (if it can accurately be called a story, because it reads like non-fiction, except for the fact that the book he's discussing isn't real) about a man (who I assume is Borges himself) who comes across an encyclopedia of a completely fictional place. A whole world, in fact. A completely fantastic world that was created by a league of specialists- the biggest organized literary construction known to man. Now, the story never goes into the fictional world, it's just Borges explaining what he read in the encyclopedia.
His other stories are very similar. It's him (for I don't know what else to call the narrator) telling the reader about the extensive works of mysterious literature he's come across. Just plot summaries, really.
Not that the stories (within the story) themselves don't have their fair share of interesting, mystical, and even endearing qualities. Tlon, for instance, has such idiosyncrasies as having a school that "has it that the history of the universe, which contains the history of our lives and the most tenuous details of them, is the handwriting produced by a minor god in order to communicate with a demon." Undeniably, this detail has significant metaphorical meaning. I'm just having trouble processing the delivery.
Another aspect of the imaginary world which I particularly enjoyed was the different dialects in the southern and northern hemispheres of the planet. In the south, they speak only in verbs and adverbs. So "the moon rose over the sea" would be expressed as "upward beyond the constant flow there was moondling" And in the northern hemisphere, they speak in adjectives.
"One does not say moon; one says airy-clear over dark-round or orange-faint-of-sky"
The literary brilliance of such ideas are irrefutably poetic, interesting, and meaningful, but I would much prefer to read the stories that he's talking about rather than his description of an encyclopedic article of the fiction.
I guess that's the significance of Borges- to create fantastic worlds (with surprising brevity, which I myself can't seem to grasp the concept of) within the heavy constraints of realism.

One quotation about the literature or Tlon especially intrigued me- "They consider metaphysics a branch of fantastic literature."
So, in turn, does that make Borges' fantastic literature (for that's his genre) a branch of metaphysics? Or does Borges himself consider it to be?

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

I'll start with the main character, because that seems like the logical thing to do.
(Deconstruction: WHY does that seem like the logical thing to do?
Just playing.
It's because that's where I want to start.)
I didn't feel frustraited or disapointed with Dina's actions, though I know a lot of people in class did, especially in regard to Heidi. I thought she was just the type of person who NEEDED failure in order for things to have significance. Or not even for them to have significance, but just in order to feel/recognize it. Her consistent resistance to human interaction and companionship was like a compulsion, a tick that needed to be satisfied. For example, when Heidi was looking for comfort after her mother's death, Dina said "Fine...And she's going to be dead for a long time". Though she realized it was not the correct thing to say, that it even "sounded stupid", she finished by revealing to us that it felt good to say it. "As though I had my own locks to click shut".
I don't think it was Dina's goal to make her life more lonely and difficult; she was just subconsciously making sure that life lived up to her expectations, or lack thereof. Only after her relationship with Heidi ended did she reflect on what it could have been, and I think for her that reflection- the unknown possibility- was much more safe and satisfying than the real thing.

(Looks like I'm also ending with the main character.)

I'm very aware of the fact that I'm well overdue for a blog,

and now that we've got the Sound and Fury essay to work on, I can avoid it no longer (which is exactly what I've been doing: avoiding this thing).
So here goes.
I guess considering I don't live with my immediate family anymore, I should have a fairly different outlook on what the whole thing means than students who still live with their parents. But I don't think I do.
Because my family (and when I say family, I mean my mother's side) is extremely close, verbal, and intrusive- of the traditional Hispanic variety- when I read about the Compsons, whose individual members were so isolated from the rest, I had to view it as a completely different entity. In a way, I went into the book having already suspended my personal views of what defines a family. Now, after the book has been read and I've had weeks to mull over what was said in class, one of the many possible conclusions that I've come to is that The Sound and the Fury isn't so much about a family, but a group of individuals in the context of a family. Family, the surname "Compson", was only an excuse for these people being linked together. They seemed to be more connected by old traditions and dysfunctions rather than by feelings, or, as the family line decomposed, even blood. So what does that mean for family in general? I don't know. It's all relative, I guess. (Oh, god. I in no way intended that as a pun. Sorry.)

There's one thing I want to add about Quentin that I never got a chance to say out loud in class, before I change blogs and topics. Concerning Quentin's obsession with time, I had the impression that it wasn't so much based on Quentin's inability to "see himself going on" or because he was stuck in the past. Rather, I saw it as a morbid obsession with the passing of time- he knew his time was limited, and almost masochistically, could not help watching it literally slip away. The smashing of the clocks, I thought, was an attempt to deny what he already knew was inevitable- his death.

That's it.