Prospectus: Work to Accomplish Fall 2004

Charlie Martyn

Background

I came to study literature by way of philosophy and have been especially interested in philosophical questions involving language and art. I think that as a result of this background I have been drawn to works of literature that explicitly deal with language- and art-related subjects, such as Tom Stoppard’s plays and the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. It was by way of Borges that I became interested in another Latin American author, Gabriel García Márquez, and specifically his book One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I am fascinated by stories such as Borges’ The Library of Babel, which takes place inside a universe that consists entirely of a library whose books contain every possible combination of a set of letters. But my interest in these stories always conflicts with the fact that in order to make the reader think about a certain philosophical problem, the author has presented it in a way that takes the reader out of the story itself, whether by setting it in an artificial universe, having the characters presented with the idea that they exist in a work of fiction, or any number of other methods.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude García Márquez deals with questions of memory, fate, and time in the course of a compelling story that does contain fantastic elements, but they are presented in such a way that the reader does not have to question them. Moreover, a unique take on issues such as fate arises out of his incorporation of these moments of fantasy into the plot. This is what interests me most in García Márquez’s novel and what prompted me to choose it as the focus of my senior seminar project. An important example of this in One Hundred Years of Solitude is when the final character named Aureliano discovers that he exists within a book, but this discovery has two important differences from other stories with this theme. First, it occurs at the very end of the novel so the reader is not torn from the plot. Because of this, the issue would only be in the reader’s mind in subsequent readings. Also, the book that concerns Aureliano is not necessarily the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, but one contained within the world of this story.

Current Project

I want to create an account of García Márquez’s treatment of time, fate, and memory in this novel. Because the lives of its characters are revealed in the last pages to exist inside the imagination of another character, Melquíades, any such analysis will revolve around his foreknowledge and what it implies for the people of Macondo. Macondo itself is used as an allegory for the history of Latin America, so this connection will be another area to explore in addressing my central questions. Finally, events from García Márquez’s life are used to a great extent throughout the story and inevitably will come into play as they relate to the focus of this project.

Plan for This Semester

The end result of this research will be a paper that I will present to my senior seminar class. I have found some critical analyses of One Hundred Years of Solitude and will use them to inform my own interpretation. I also plan to read García Márquez’s memoirs; among other things, this will help pinpoint aspects of his own life that were used in his novel. A few people, including my advisor on this project, Dr. Walter Hesford, have recommended that I read García Márquez’s 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Beyond this, other possibilities include reading other García Márquez novels and those by authors who influenced him, such as Kafka and Faulkner. As far as other research, I’m sure that Dr. Hesford, who has taught courses on this book, will be a further source of guidance.

Tentative Bibliography

Bell-Villada, Gene H., ed. Gabriel García Márquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude”:

A Casebook. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.

García Márquez, Gabriel. Living to Tell the Tale. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

García Márquez, Gabriel. “The Solitude of Latin America.” Frängsmyr, Tore and Allén,

Sture, eds. Nobel Lectures, Literature 1981-1990 Singapore: World Scientific

Publishing Co., 1993. Nobelprize.org. February 19, 2004. The Nobel Foundation.

September 19, 2004 http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture-e.html.

Janes, Regina. “One Hundred Years of Solitude”: Modes of Reading. Boston: Twayne

Publishers, 1991.

Mellen, Joan. Literary Masterpieces, Volume 5: “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group, 2000.