I just finished One Hundred years of Solitude by Nobel prize winner author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I normally dont read novels but after reading Gora by Tagore, I found that novels with historical and philosophical narratives can be very helpful in better understanding of society and human behaviour . Gabriel García Márquez has created a village, Macondo , a place where everything love, mysticism, war, eccentricities, failed adventures and all possible positive and negative behaviours of humanity are depicted. Macondo is never sleepy and it always shocks you with unpredictable human eccentricities and illogical phenomena of nature and humans. But it never looses the touch with naked reality. Most admired and steadfast leading lady Ursula, who loses the count of her age (114-122), surprises you with her stamina, intuition, practical endurance, boldness and optimism. She nurtures selflessly five generations of eccentric Buendias and never let anybody in village know about her old age blindness becoz of strong intuitive faculties . Author depicts smallest things ranging from chastity belt to the research on bananas and firing squads in such details like he must have experienced every incident on ground. Futility of war, realities of love and marriage, mysticism of gypsies, unexplained natural phenomenon and tragedies of evolving civilisations all are shown with absolute honesty. No forced idealism in characters , everyone shown with strengths and weaknesses. Indian connection in the form Sanskrit language is a surprise finding. A character finds a parchment manuscript in which the history of his family had been recorded in Sanskrit language one hundred years ahead of time by an old gypsy. The writer had tried to explain 7 generations of Buendia family in a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant. Every character has to deal with solitude , voluntary or forced. Heavy and complicated book and difficult to finish without perseverance.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 04:01:51 +0000
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