Spring 2019 Essay Suggestions for One Hundred Years of Solitude

200 Points: (No rewrites)

Basic Requirements:

• 4-6 Pages (PAPERS LESS THAN 4 PAGES WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED)
• Times New Roman (12 Font Size)
• MLA
• Confident (Essay must be full, cogent, and focused)
• Balanced (Voice, textual evidence, and analytical commentary)
• Mechanically & Grammatically Clean
• Your Best Work!
• It goes without saying: PLAGIARISM RESULTS IN AN F GRADE

1. What is the purpose of solitude in the novel? In answering this question, you must consider the kinds of solitude that occur (for example, solitude of pride, grief, power, love, or death), the circumstances that produce these kinds of solitude, and with whom they are associated.
2. What are the purposes and effects of the story’s fantastic and magical elements? How does the fantastic operate in the characters’ everyday lives and personalities? How is the magical interwoven with elements drawn from history, myth, and politics?
3. Why does García Márquez make repeated use of the “Many years later” formula? In what ways does this establish a continuity among past, present, and future? What expectations does it provoke? How do linear time and cyclical time function in the novel?
4. To what extent is Macondo’s founding, long isolation, and increasing links with the outside world an exodus from guilt and corruption to new life and innocence and, then, a reverse journey from innocence to decadence?
5. What varieties of love occur in the novel? Does any kind of love transcend or transform the ravages of everyday life, politics and warfare, history, and time itself?
6. What is the importance of the various inventions, gadgets, and technological wonders introduced into Macondo over the years? Is the sequence in which they are introduced significant?
7. What is Melquiades’ role and that of his innovations, explorations, and parchments? What is the significance of the “fact” that Melquiades “really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude”?
8. What types of women (from Ursula and Pilar to Meme and Amaranta Ursula) and what types of men (from Jose Arcadio to Aureliano Babilonia) are distinguishable? What characteristics do the men share? What characteristics do the women share?
9. What dreams, prophecies, and premonitions occur in the novel? With which specific characters and events are they associated, and what is their purpose?
10. On the first page we are told that “The world was so recent that many things lacked names.” What is the importance of names and of naming (of people, things, and events) in the novel?
11. How do geography and topography–mountains, swamps, river, sea, etc.–affect Macondo’s history, its citizens’ lives, and the novel’s progression?
12. One Hundred Years of Solitudehas been viewed as a kind of allegorical history of Colombia or, by extension, of post-colonial Latin America. The novel has also been viewed in broader mythic terms and is replete with mythical and Biblical allusions as the original patriarch, Jose Arcadio, leads his people to Macondo–an ironic version of the “promised land.” How would you characterize the “mad scientist,” Jose Arcadio? How do you think García Márquez intends for us to view his obsession with inventions? Is García Márquez celebrating or satirizing scientific curiosity? How would you characterize Jose Arcadio’s relationship to the prophetic Melquiades?
13. Ursula is perhaps the most powerful character in the novel–the matriarch who holds the family together, who endures despite incredible adversity. To what extent do you think the character of Ursula is an embodiment of the stereotypes of a patriarchal culture? To what extent do you think she represents a challenge to those stereotypes?
14. An attraction to incestuous relationships seems to be the ancestral curse of the Buendia family–beginning with the marriage of two cousins–Jose Arcadio and Ursula–and ending with the sexual relationship between Aureliano and his aunt Amaranta Ursula. The great fear of the Buendia family is that sexual intercourse between close relatives will result in a grotesquely deformed child with “the tail of a pig.” What significance can readers attach to this theme? What thematic point is García Márquez trying to make?
15. A major theme of the novel is how we reconstruct the past and the potentially tragic consequences of losing touch with our past. One of the first variations on this theme occurs with the description of the surreal “insomnia plague.” What thematic point[s] do you think García Márquez is developing here? What are the implications of memory loss?
16. The “insomnia plague’ is ultimately cured by the mysterious Melquiades who has returned from death because “he could not bear the solitude.” Disentangling the ambivalent attitudes towards solitude is one of the major challenges for the reader of One Hundred Years of Solitude. How should we view the predilection for solitude which characterized the Aureliano strand of the Buendia family? As a curse? As a mark of insight into the nature of reality?
17. In contrast to the romantic obsessiveness which characterizes the Aureliano strain of the family, Jose Arcadio represents (and evokes in others) another kind of passion–raw sexuality. Prostitutes compete to see who will pay him the most for his services. How do you think García Márquez intends us to view Jose Arcadio’s exuberant sexuality? To what extent do you think García Márquez intends us to view Jose Arcadio as a parody of machismo?
18. García Márquez explores the ambiguous motivations of political leaders and the moral ambiguities involved in political endeavors. He is aware that reactionary forces can have decent individuals in their ranks and that morally dubious people can serve worthy causes. He also explores the issue of the morality of violent means in pursuit of an ostensibly worthy cause. To what extent can we determine García Márquez’s attitudes towards the use of violence in a worthy cause?
19. Although many of the characters are exaggerated and bizarre, García Márquez, nonetheless, endows them with complexity, with psychological nuances. Jose Arcadio, for example, despite his liberal rhetoric and ideology, turns into an authoritarian monster; yet García Márquez provides us with an explanation for his brutality. How does García Márquez account for Jose Arcadio’s cruelty and lust for power?
20. As the war progresses, we witness the deterioration of Colonel Aureliano Buendia. Ursula begins to see her son as “an intruder,” as “a man capable of anything.” She now views him as a kind of moral monster. She tells him: “It’s the same as if you had been born with the tail of a pig.” How does one account for the deterioration of Aureliano Buendia? What psychological and/or political insights do you think García Márquez intends to convey as he traces the changes in Aureliano?
21. What point[s] do you think García Márquez is making about human sexuality?
22. One of the most bizarre female characters is Remedios the Beauty–viewed as mentally retarded by most of her relatives and as “preternaturally lucid” by Colonel Aureliano Buendia. She is both a parody of the femme fatale figure and, with her assumption into heaven, a parody of the Virgin Mary. How do you think García Márquez intends us to view her? How do you think the portrait of Remedios fits into thematic structure of the novel?
23. Although García Márquez deals with political/historical issues–such as the massacre of the strikers–to what extent do you think that One Hundred Years of Solitudeis ultimately a political novel?
24. A flood of almost biblical proportions engulfs Macondo wreaking havoc on the town, yet in the wake of incredible destruction, the one-hundred-year-old Ursula begins to try to restore her house. Similarly, Petra Cotes starts again to rebuild Aureliano Segundo’s wealth after the devastation of the rains by raffling off her one remaining animal. What sense of human life and human resources do you think ultimately emerges from One Hundred Years of Solitude–a sense of waste, devastation, and defeat or the resourcefulness and determination to survive exemplified by characters such as Ursula and Petra Cotes?
25. Faulkner + Márquez=One Hundred Years of Solitude. Prove it.
26.  As an opportunity to validate your own reading and critical engagement of this novel, consider the findings or contemporary connections you’ve been able to make. Write an argumentative essay that derives from your own critical attention to a particular aspect (or aspects) of the novel.