Magic and Fantasy in One Hundred Years of Solitude On the 17th of April 2014 one of Colombia’s best known author Gabriel García Márquez passed away, at the respectable age of 87. In the South American continent García Márquez is affectionately known as ‘the Gabo’ or ‘the Gabito’, what is more he was the first Columbian, and only the fourth Latin American, to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Notably, García Márquez was a screenwriter, short-story writer, journalist, and novelist who showed no shyness in his criticism of foreign and Columbian politics. However, the author claimed most of his notoriety with his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude; “a revolutionary novel that provides a looking glass into the thoughts and beliefs
Notably, the town of Macondo plays a significant role throughout the story; “José Arcadio Buendía dreamed that night that right there a noisy city with houses having mirror walls rose up” (Márquez 24). In the magnificent town of Macondo the inhabitants are confronted with supernatural and fantastical encounters, however they hardly respond to bizarre happenings, making it easier for the reader to accept their daily reality. Indeed, in her article Geetha states: “Márquez is rendered with a forte for blending the everyday with the miraculous”, thus the people living in Macondo treat the supernatural and magical as normal (345). In what follows here, some examples of the ‘fantastical’ are highlighted from One Hundred Years of Solitude to emphasize the absurdity of the events. García Márquez’s use of syntax allows you as a reader to accept these improbabilities, additionally it shapes another significant aspect of One Hundred Years of Solitude, namely the regular intervals in time: “The plot erratically follows the six ensuing generations of the Buendias, all condemned to fundamental solitude” (Solomon 194). It is Irvin Solomon who even claims that; “García Márquez weaves mystical tales of the Buendia family that at times make