100 Years Of Solitude Satire

Use of Satire in 100 Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits

A major preoccupation with contemporary South American novelists,

as seen with Gabriel Marquez's "100 years of solitude" and Isabelle

Allende's "The house of the spirits", is the traditional and long lasting

conflict between the Liberals and the conservatives. Although a common

preoccupation with Marquez, Allende, and various other Latin American

novelists the manner in which this preoccupation is expressed varies

considerably depending on the author. In "100 years of solitude", Marquez

looks to satire in all it's forms, to express this preoccupation. This is

contrasted with Allende's "The House

To see how Garcia and Allende treat political issues we must first

examine why they chose to examine them. When Marquez wrote his first works

Colombia suffered the second greatest American fratricidal war of the

twentieth century, as a result of the assassination of the popular Liberal

leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, in 1948. His novels examine in his words "...

motives for that violence." The importance of politics in the Novel is

reflected in the choice of title 100 years of solitude which correspond to

the 100 years between the formation of Colombia, in 1830 to 1930 when

Conservative homogeny ended. Allende on the other hand was the niece

Hyperbole is well

used in the novel in the form of 'Magical realism'. Marquez believed that '

Magical Realism' "...provides a magnifying glass so readers can understand

reality better..." (as quoted in Playboy interview). We first see this used

in the opening pages of the novel where Marquez describes the world as "...so

recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was

necessary to point." This parallels the political naivety of the newly

formed Colombian republic. Macondo is a garden of Eden "...so peaceful that

none of us has died, even of a natural death." In this Garden Ursula

Iguaran is the Eve and Jose Arcadio Buendia is Adam.

Macondo's innocence is ended with the arrival Don Apolinar Moscote,

the first magistrate sent by the Government. He orders them "...to paint the

front blue and not white as they had wanted." The absurdity of this demand

demonstrates Marquez satirising the use of colours to represent political

parties in Colombia and South America. In Colombia Blue represents