LITERATURE: 100 Years – Some Final Thoughts

I feel as if I am letting myself down in not producing an overall picture of this novel.  It has been with me (more so than I with it) for a month or more, and one that I had delved deeply into.  The ending was so dramatic, so skillfully built in arc that I would almost draw a curve that  rose and rose and didn’t fall gradually but smashed instead and dropped in an explosion onto page four hundred forty-eight. 

Concurrently with this reading, my reality has been in varied states of conflict, and so the story of this solitude was fully realized by one who saw it not as jail or coffin, but a holding room I’d thought I had abandoned.  This coloring of the meaning is a selfish taking of the text to heart instead of clearminded analysis of story, and to pretend otherwise would be difficult if not distorted. 

One thing that I would note is that with the use of surrealism, Marquez has exorcised the horror of situations that are more graphic than McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in detail.  Yet, if we come to accept the unreality as part of the whole, it becomes acceptable, near emotionless in response.  Perhaps, we become encased in a protective solitude of our own. After all, we didn’t cringe in reading of the wicked stepmother as she pinched the chubby cheeks of Hansel and Gretel in preparing them for dinner. 

Barthes would be proud of my involvement.  But sharing what is just personal reflection is not of any value.  So I leave it now, close the book and move along.  I know I’ll pick it up again in better days.