Hi Students,
As the essay deadline quickly approaches, I want to encourage you to use the blog for brainstorming and sharing ideas. If you are having trouble with a certain essay topic, excited about the patterns you're discovering as you write, confounded as to where you should begin or how you should end, comment here. Then, respond to your fellow students' comments.
See you at the Trip Orientation tomorrow at 9 a.m.
All my best,
Nina
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
"Solitude" in the novel
Ethan Hoffman’s notes on the theme of solitude should add to your developing view of Macondo and of Marquez’ use of history. I quote Ethan promiscuously.
Ethan writes, "Having come near to the end of the novel, it seems the theme of solitude is really more of a backdrop to a narrative whose most apparent importance is to address an exposure to modernity. I feel one can gain a more nuanced outlook on the value of Macondo's overarching and general isolation and solitude by the Buenidas' reaction to that solitude's undoing, and that one can deduce this solitude’s characteristics by framing it within the context of its antithesis, as embodied in such events or recurring elements as the gypsy band, the war, the banana company...
"In any event to answer the questions Michael poses, I would say that without a doubt every character experiences solitude, as it is an innate part of their environment, an environment from which the Buenidas and others descend from, much like Adam and Eve’s Fall from ignorance, innocence and more literally Eden. I would in turn argue that an analysis of what it is that costs Macondo its paradise can lead to be a much more fruitful and clear way of exploring the pervading themes of the novel.If nothing else, for me at least addressing this more endemic and wide spread solitude is a good jumping off point towards exploring the individuals more varied confrontation with solitude, such as Jose Arcadio Buenida’s (the elderly, in case it gets a bit confusing) insanity, or Amaranta’s loneliness."
August 26, 2008 12:57 AM
Michael writes: "Except to point out that this is a lovely and excellent piece of student writing and applied thought, I will leave this comment to stand as an insightful swipe at the questions of “solitude” posed earlier on this blog."
Thanks Ethan.
Yours
Michael D.
Ethan writes, "Having come near to the end of the novel, it seems the theme of solitude is really more of a backdrop to a narrative whose most apparent importance is to address an exposure to modernity. I feel one can gain a more nuanced outlook on the value of Macondo's overarching and general isolation and solitude by the Buenidas' reaction to that solitude's undoing, and that one can deduce this solitude’s characteristics by framing it within the context of its antithesis, as embodied in such events or recurring elements as the gypsy band, the war, the banana company...
"In any event to answer the questions Michael poses, I would say that without a doubt every character experiences solitude, as it is an innate part of their environment, an environment from which the Buenidas and others descend from, much like Adam and Eve’s Fall from ignorance, innocence and more literally Eden. I would in turn argue that an analysis of what it is that costs Macondo its paradise can lead to be a much more fruitful and clear way of exploring the pervading themes of the novel.If nothing else, for me at least addressing this more endemic and wide spread solitude is a good jumping off point towards exploring the individuals more varied confrontation with solitude, such as Jose Arcadio Buenida’s (the elderly, in case it gets a bit confusing) insanity, or Amaranta’s loneliness."
August 26, 2008 12:57 AM
Michael writes: "Except to point out that this is a lovely and excellent piece of student writing and applied thought, I will leave this comment to stand as an insightful swipe at the questions of “solitude” posed earlier on this blog."
Thanks Ethan.
Yours
Michael D.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
One Political Theme in the Novel
Oren R writes: I also have a question: is the novel in fact one huge metaphor for the exploitation of South American resources?
This is a serious question about the novel which requires a great deal of thought from its readers. There is much about the historical and amply documented exploitation of South and Central American resources in Márquez’ novel: both human resources as well as material resources. In particular the novel refers to the depredations of the United Fruit Company in Columbia. It would, however, be a mistake to think that this is Márquez’ only interest in writing One Hundred Years. An interpretation that focused only on this issue would be limited in a way that Márquez himself warns us against (see previous postings). So the problem becomes, what is the role of this exploitation, and how does it sit among the many other issues in this complex novel?
One way of dealing with this issue is by looking at the novel’s status as an example of postcolonial fiction. The postcolonial novel tends to focus on the effects of having been a colony on the minds and experiences of the people of a colonized nation. It is generally not a political tract, but a work of art that functions by allusion, imagery, and sometimes even allegory to examine the human cost of colonialism. But most postcolonial fiction tends to work with the colonial past in oblique ways that mobilize all of the resources of the art of fiction in order primarily to create a work of art which functions artistically despite the terrible details of the colonized past.
If you think of how densely the layers of colonization accumulate in Columbia, you will realize how complex this picture becomes. First there is the colonization by Spain, referred to very obliquely in the story of the origins of Fernanda del Carpio (who first appears on page 200 of our edition of One Hundred Years). Fernanda’s home city, and her “royal” background, is transparently a satirical representation of the most ‘antique’ layer of Columbia’s colonial past: notice that her appearance alone precipitates a massacre of Macondo’s citizens as well as the numerous ways she influences and ‘inflects’ the Buendía family once she joins up with them. Then there is the overthrow of the Spanish colonial masters by the Bolivarian Revolution which swept South America’s Spanish colonies. Next there follows the exploitation of the native population by the heirs of the Spanish who manage to take control of the government out of which grew one of the longest wars in history between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ elements within Colombian society.
This struggle, with many interruptions and interpolations of hostilities between Columbia and its neighbors is mixed in with the efforts of the United States to interfere in many ways with Columbia’s situation which start with the suborning of rebels in Panama, once a part of Columbia, to rebel and separate from the ‘mother country,’ through the years of supporting United Fruit Company (now rebranded as Chiquita Banana Co.) which resulted in bloody and violent repressions, repeatedly all the way up to the present day, of efforts of Columbians to control their own national destiny (see the links on Columbian History to the right of this page). This exploitation by Chiquita Banana, portrayed in the novel in the story of the banana wars, continues to this day according to many supporters of trades unions worldwide, who claim that hundreds of union organizers and workers have been murdered to support the hold of the US fruit companies to this day.
This complex and layered history, to get back to Oren’s question, is not directly portrayed in One Hundred Years, but it is definitely present and poetically portrayed. Think of how TS Eliot portrayed the destruction of European culture at the end of the First World War in The Wasteland. (If you haven’t read The Wasteland yet, read it; no educated person should be unfamiliar with it.) The danger is to treat the history as the key to understanding the novel. It is no such thing. Think about this, what does an artist do with his or her art? Do they turn their work into journalism? The direct and most honest answer is, No.
To shift ground a little, take a major work of literary art such as Homer’s Iliad. Is it about the causes of the Trojan War? Does its value derive from its relationship to the Trojan War? The answer to both of these questions would be no. In fact, the poem is entirely independent of the Trojan War and gives us much more than a metaphor for a particular war. It is a work of art, with rhythms, images, characters, conflicts, and beauty all its own. The Iliad talks about all wars everywhere and the impact of wars upon human beings in all their complexities: how war affects friendships, marriages, families, kingdoms, the victors and the defeated as well as the survivors of wars, and a host of other issues. It is valuable as a work of art partly because it is generalizable: touching on universal issues common to all of humanity. The interpreter’s task then becomes not to trace the relationship to an actual war, but to work out just what the poem says about these universal things. So a good paper on Homer’s Iliad might focus on “The Theme of Loss in the Iliad,” or “Familial Bonds in the Iliad,” or “Friendship in Homer’s War Poem” or any number of things that don’t directly have to do with the actual Trojan War, in part because the poem is more about its own universal and generalizable contents than it is about an actual war.
This is true also of Picasso’s Guernica, which was inspired by a specific air raid, but which achieves greatness as a work of art, not just because of its beauty, but also because of the universality of its portrayal of human suffering and loss in time of war. The most difficult thing for beginning students of literature is to draw a line between literature and reality and to understand the relationship between the two. Specifics of history may inspire a work of art. Historical events may even heavily inflect works of art, adding the atmosphere and charge of real events to the artworks’ impact. But works of art are not documentaries: if artworks don’t function on their own, they fail as artworks. When you look at One Hundred Years look at such things as its universality, its portrayal of truths about such universal things as human suffering, love, death, loss, the impact of exploitation, technology, the experience of time and isolation and more.
This is a serious question about the novel which requires a great deal of thought from its readers. There is much about the historical and amply documented exploitation of South and Central American resources in Márquez’ novel: both human resources as well as material resources. In particular the novel refers to the depredations of the United Fruit Company in Columbia. It would, however, be a mistake to think that this is Márquez’ only interest in writing One Hundred Years. An interpretation that focused only on this issue would be limited in a way that Márquez himself warns us against (see previous postings). So the problem becomes, what is the role of this exploitation, and how does it sit among the many other issues in this complex novel?
One way of dealing with this issue is by looking at the novel’s status as an example of postcolonial fiction. The postcolonial novel tends to focus on the effects of having been a colony on the minds and experiences of the people of a colonized nation. It is generally not a political tract, but a work of art that functions by allusion, imagery, and sometimes even allegory to examine the human cost of colonialism. But most postcolonial fiction tends to work with the colonial past in oblique ways that mobilize all of the resources of the art of fiction in order primarily to create a work of art which functions artistically despite the terrible details of the colonized past.
If you think of how densely the layers of colonization accumulate in Columbia, you will realize how complex this picture becomes. First there is the colonization by Spain, referred to very obliquely in the story of the origins of Fernanda del Carpio (who first appears on page 200 of our edition of One Hundred Years). Fernanda’s home city, and her “royal” background, is transparently a satirical representation of the most ‘antique’ layer of Columbia’s colonial past: notice that her appearance alone precipitates a massacre of Macondo’s citizens as well as the numerous ways she influences and ‘inflects’ the Buendía family once she joins up with them. Then there is the overthrow of the Spanish colonial masters by the Bolivarian Revolution which swept South America’s Spanish colonies. Next there follows the exploitation of the native population by the heirs of the Spanish who manage to take control of the government out of which grew one of the longest wars in history between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ elements within Colombian society.
This struggle, with many interruptions and interpolations of hostilities between Columbia and its neighbors is mixed in with the efforts of the United States to interfere in many ways with Columbia’s situation which start with the suborning of rebels in Panama, once a part of Columbia, to rebel and separate from the ‘mother country,’ through the years of supporting United Fruit Company (now rebranded as Chiquita Banana Co.) which resulted in bloody and violent repressions, repeatedly all the way up to the present day, of efforts of Columbians to control their own national destiny (see the links on Columbian History to the right of this page). This exploitation by Chiquita Banana, portrayed in the novel in the story of the banana wars, continues to this day according to many supporters of trades unions worldwide, who claim that hundreds of union organizers and workers have been murdered to support the hold of the US fruit companies to this day.
This complex and layered history, to get back to Oren’s question, is not directly portrayed in One Hundred Years, but it is definitely present and poetically portrayed. Think of how TS Eliot portrayed the destruction of European culture at the end of the First World War in The Wasteland. (If you haven’t read The Wasteland yet, read it; no educated person should be unfamiliar with it.) The danger is to treat the history as the key to understanding the novel. It is no such thing. Think about this, what does an artist do with his or her art? Do they turn their work into journalism? The direct and most honest answer is, No.
To shift ground a little, take a major work of literary art such as Homer’s Iliad. Is it about the causes of the Trojan War? Does its value derive from its relationship to the Trojan War? The answer to both of these questions would be no. In fact, the poem is entirely independent of the Trojan War and gives us much more than a metaphor for a particular war. It is a work of art, with rhythms, images, characters, conflicts, and beauty all its own. The Iliad talks about all wars everywhere and the impact of wars upon human beings in all their complexities: how war affects friendships, marriages, families, kingdoms, the victors and the defeated as well as the survivors of wars, and a host of other issues. It is valuable as a work of art partly because it is generalizable: touching on universal issues common to all of humanity. The interpreter’s task then becomes not to trace the relationship to an actual war, but to work out just what the poem says about these universal things. So a good paper on Homer’s Iliad might focus on “The Theme of Loss in the Iliad,” or “Familial Bonds in the Iliad,” or “Friendship in Homer’s War Poem” or any number of things that don’t directly have to do with the actual Trojan War, in part because the poem is more about its own universal and generalizable contents than it is about an actual war.
This is true also of Picasso’s Guernica, which was inspired by a specific air raid, but which achieves greatness as a work of art, not just because of its beauty, but also because of the universality of its portrayal of human suffering and loss in time of war. The most difficult thing for beginning students of literature is to draw a line between literature and reality and to understand the relationship between the two. Specifics of history may inspire a work of art. Historical events may even heavily inflect works of art, adding the atmosphere and charge of real events to the artworks’ impact. But works of art are not documentaries: if artworks don’t function on their own, they fail as artworks. When you look at One Hundred Years look at such things as its universality, its portrayal of truths about such universal things as human suffering, love, death, loss, the impact of exploitation, technology, the experience of time and isolation and more.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Interpretation or Evaluation? (Things to do with Literature)
I guess the biggest temptation students face when they are assigned the task of interpreting a work of literature is to fall into the evaluative mode. The fact is that evaluation is one of the ways of writing about works of art; it is most often used in journalistic criticism of literature, film, architecture, museum exhibits and the visual arts in general to give readers a quick read of at least one writer’s opinion of the work or works of art being evaluated. This sort of evaluation is not what students at the college or high school levels are being asked to perform.
Evaluation is useful to provide a record of how people are receiving a work of art: what the short term and contemporary views of a work when it is first being introduced, or when it is being revived, or when a new translation is introduced and published. It provides, as I say, a record of personal responses to a work of art. Evaluation is not nearly as useful however in reading literary works for classes; that is works that have been assigned for study in college and high school courses.
Works that are assigned for scholarly study by college and high-school teachers are being studied for other reasons. Usually it should be taken for granted that works assigned by educators are considered worth studying by those who are assigning them. Books like Márquez’ novel have almost always already been vetted by numerous reviewers and even prize committees (I refer our students to the Nobel Prize committee’s introductory speech, which is just such an evaluative essay: see the link to the right of this page). If this is so, then a student who has been assigned to read a book is wasting his or her time to say that the work is good, or bad, or pretentious, or poorly constructed, or beautiful, or flawed. Such evaluation does not contribute to the interpretive dialogue between the book and people who are being asked to think about the book.
Instead a student in college or high school should assume that the book is worth studying, and set herself the task of really dissecting the text to find out such things as how it works, how it is constructed, how it depicts a world, and what the author is saying about that world. Students should look at things like the things I have already listed in my earlier postings: things like plot, conflict, patterns, images, repetitions, rhythm, or structure or some combination of these things. My point is that when you are assigned to study a work of art, your task is to dedicate yourself to understanding the work and to the task of arriving at an original thesis about the work which will lead to a good piece of critical writing about the work.
One way of picturing the task is to compare it to a biology assignment. No one faced with the task, for example, of dissecting a plant in a botany course, would have completed the assignment by saying: it is an ugly flower, or it is a pretentious flower, or it’s really pretty. That would be to fail to grasp the function of the assignment which involves sharpening scientific skills such as understanding the structure of the organism, the functions and interrelationships of its parts, and the relationships of the parts to the whole, as well as the way the plant functions in a world of other plants. Students who understand the nature of the assignment would also try to sharpen their analytical skills, their ability to reason in the face of the unknown as well as their skills in dissections, in the handling of the tools of the botanist.
I have written much below about what we hope students will do with One Hundred Years of Solitude. I and our other teachers are hoping for a sincere grapple with the task of dissecting this piece of literature and coming up with something complex and thoughtful to say about it.
Evaluation is useful to provide a record of how people are receiving a work of art: what the short term and contemporary views of a work when it is first being introduced, or when it is being revived, or when a new translation is introduced and published. It provides, as I say, a record of personal responses to a work of art. Evaluation is not nearly as useful however in reading literary works for classes; that is works that have been assigned for study in college and high school courses.
Works that are assigned for scholarly study by college and high-school teachers are being studied for other reasons. Usually it should be taken for granted that works assigned by educators are considered worth studying by those who are assigning them. Books like Márquez’ novel have almost always already been vetted by numerous reviewers and even prize committees (I refer our students to the Nobel Prize committee’s introductory speech, which is just such an evaluative essay: see the link to the right of this page). If this is so, then a student who has been assigned to read a book is wasting his or her time to say that the work is good, or bad, or pretentious, or poorly constructed, or beautiful, or flawed. Such evaluation does not contribute to the interpretive dialogue between the book and people who are being asked to think about the book.
Instead a student in college or high school should assume that the book is worth studying, and set herself the task of really dissecting the text to find out such things as how it works, how it is constructed, how it depicts a world, and what the author is saying about that world. Students should look at things like the things I have already listed in my earlier postings: things like plot, conflict, patterns, images, repetitions, rhythm, or structure or some combination of these things. My point is that when you are assigned to study a work of art, your task is to dedicate yourself to understanding the work and to the task of arriving at an original thesis about the work which will lead to a good piece of critical writing about the work.
One way of picturing the task is to compare it to a biology assignment. No one faced with the task, for example, of dissecting a plant in a botany course, would have completed the assignment by saying: it is an ugly flower, or it is a pretentious flower, or it’s really pretty. That would be to fail to grasp the function of the assignment which involves sharpening scientific skills such as understanding the structure of the organism, the functions and interrelationships of its parts, and the relationships of the parts to the whole, as well as the way the plant functions in a world of other plants. Students who understand the nature of the assignment would also try to sharpen their analytical skills, their ability to reason in the face of the unknown as well as their skills in dissections, in the handling of the tools of the botanist.
I have written much below about what we hope students will do with One Hundred Years of Solitude. I and our other teachers are hoping for a sincere grapple with the task of dissecting this piece of literature and coming up with something complex and thoughtful to say about it.
Monday, August 18, 2008
What does "Solitude" mean in this novel?
OMG! What does he mean by “solitude”?
It is getting to be late in the summer and very few people have posted any replies or questions to the Blog. Max’s posting is one way to go, turning up a useful resource for all of us to use. A few others have done this as an examination of the blog’s contents will show. Another way to contribute is to post questions or theories.
In the hope of stimulating interesting questions or theories, I want to pose another challenge:
Ø Márquez uses the word “solitude” in his novel’s title. How often do examples of solitude come up in One Hundred Years of Solitude? Who experiences solitude? Does this question, “Who experiences solitude?” help to define possible interpretations of Márquez’ novel?
Ø Sometimes in this novel solitude has to do with age, but what other conditions lead to solitude and what other characters experience solitude?
Any students who have anything to say about solitude (questions or theories) should post here.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Helpful Tips
Hi Everyone,
I want to make sure that you all see Max Gilbane's helpful tips. (You can find them in their original form as comments on the post titled "Working with Difficult Literature.")
Max gave us a link to a family tree. It includes more characters and is not as patriarchal as the diagram in our edition of the novel. Check it out at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Buendia.gif
Here is his second tip:
If you are trying to make accents on your computer like in the name Márquez there are a few hotkeys that let you do this. For a mac, hold down Option+e for ´, option+` for `, and then once the little accents come up you can type out the letter and it will accent ít. On a PC, if you are using MS Word go up to the Insert menu, then select "Symbol" and there you go...
Thank you, Max! I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the camping trip.
All my best,
Nina
I want to make sure that you all see Max Gilbane's helpful tips. (You can find them in their original form as comments on the post titled "Working with Difficult Literature.")
Max gave us a link to a family tree. It includes more characters and is not as patriarchal as the diagram in our edition of the novel. Check it out at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Buendia.gif
Here is his second tip:
If you are trying to make accents on your computer like in the name Márquez there are a few hotkeys that let you do this. For a mac, hold down Option+e for ´, option+` for `, and then once the little accents come up you can type out the letter and it will accent ít. On a PC, if you are using MS Word go up to the Insert menu, then select "Symbol" and there you go...
Thank you, Max! I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the camping trip.
All my best,
Nina
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Working with Difficult Literature
Reading Márquez’ novel reminds me of the title of Yeats’ poem, “The Fascination of What’s Difficult.” Difficult literature has always been one of my specialties, I love things like the intricacies of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and Ulysses and Nabokov’s Pale Fire. But difficulty can also deter people from reading many fine works of literature. So I thought I’d post a few tips, beyond what is already on the web site and this blog, to try to help our student readers.
Ø If you haven’t started reading the novel, you need to start as soon as possible. It is a difficult read and will require time to absorb.
Ø Don’t worry if you don’t get everything at first. The novel’s patterns start to emerge gradually. I don’t feel that I understood the sequence of narratives until the tenth segment; and even then, I’m not quite sure what Marquez is getting at, but I think I’m beginning to see. (I too am reading it for the first time this summer.)
Ø Trust the author. He has produced a book which is highly significant to him and to many of his readers.
Ø Take notes. Try to hook things together. If you are doing the assignment right, your book should already have many annotations, but notes on the side are also useful and helpful.
Ø Keep a log of the characters, in your notes or in the blank pages at the novel’s end. Record page numbers for characters’ first appearances, opinions about other characters, birth stories, deaths, escapes from death, killings, transformations, ascensions to heaven, or whatever might be significant. These notes will pay off when you start to write about the book.
Ø Flesh out your understanding of the background. Make use of the set of links to web sites on the history of
Ø Read what some of the critics have said about One Hundred Years of Solitude. Once you read and digest ideas that other writers have produced about a difficult work, you will probably be inspired to start developing your own ideas.
Ø Read what the author has said about his own work.
Ø If you are a novice at interpreting literature, go to the OWL at Purdue (a link to that site is provided on this blog) for advice on how to write an interpretive paper.
Ø Above all, talk to your friends, ask questions, and try to formulate answers about the book. If you are too shy to post on this blog, please email me at mjditmore@comcast.net and I will do what I can to help. And above all, as Andre Miripolsky urges, Fear no Art!
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