Gabriel Garcia Marquez Essay, Research Paper
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a novelist, short
story writer, journalist, critic, and screenwriter, has
had international recognition for many years. He is
included among the group of South American
writers who rose to prominence during the 1960s, a
time often referred to as the ?boom? of Latin
American Literature. In his short stories and
novels, Leaf Storm, One Hundred Years of
Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and The
Autumn of the Patriarch, he utilizes his
background, and personal experiences, which
makes his novels so popular.
Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca,
Colombia, on March 6, 1928. He lived with his
grandparents for the first eight years of his life. The
storytelling of his grandmother and the myths and
superstitions of the townspeople all played major
roles in shaping his imagination. He enrolled in the
University of Bogota in 1947 to study law, but
when it was shut down in 1948 he transferred to the
University of Cartagna, working as a journalist for
the newspaper El Universal. Devoting himself to
journalism, he ended his law studies in 1950 and
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moved to Barranquilla to work for the daily paper
El Heraldo. He then began to write short stories
that were published in regional periodicals, and
soon after became acquainted with the works of
authors such as Franz Kafa, William Faulker,
Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.
Living with his grandparents had a big
effect on his later years and in his novels, especially
the house in which they lived. Marquez remembers
his grandparents? house as a dwelling place of the
dead, rather than the living. In that house there was
an empty room where his aunt Petra and uncle
Lazarus had died. He said ? My grandparents
would sit me down, at six in the evening, in a
corner, and say to me ?Don?t move from here,
because, if you do, Aunt Petra, who is in her room
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( Minta 34 ) . In the same manner, his first novel,
Leaf Storm, featured a little boy as a character that
through the whole novel sat in a small chair.
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold, deals with an
episode from Garcia Marquez past, and deals with
the murder of a friend in Sucre in 1958
( Gabriel 23) . It tells about the ?codes that men
impose on women, and women on themselves; the
curious notions of honor that can dominate an
isolated community; the irresistible impulse toward
violence; and the psychology of mass complicity?
( Marquez 1) .
Garcia Marquez style of writing is
what some call ?magical? ( Gabriel 3 19 ). His
works are usually attributed to his imaginative
blending of history, politics, social realism, and
fantasy. He often makes use of techniques of magic
realism in his works with descriptive events and
reality which, he implies, ? define human
existence? ( Gabriel 3 1 ). One example of that is
in One Hundred Years of Solitude a baby is born
with a ?pigs tail? ( Gabriel 1 69 ). His usual
enthusiastic critical response is mostly because of
this.
In conclusion, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, makes a big impression in
peoples thoughts. He is a novelist who uses personal trials and tribulations
and mixes them with fantasy to make everyone of his books more interesting.
For these reasons the critics praise him and he remains popular.
Bibliography
?Gabriel Garcia Marquez.? Encyclopedia of World
Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.
?Gabriel Garcia Marquez .? The Groiler Library of
International Biographies. New York: The Philip
Leif Group Inc, 1996.
?Gabriel Garcia Marquez.? Discovering Authors
Modules. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Chronicle of A Death
Foretold. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1982.
Minta, Stephen. Garcia Marquez: Writer of
Columbia. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.