Nailah Calhoun

October 26, 2014

Ms. Bacon
English 11/12

How do we determine reality?

Reality is defined as the state of things as they

actually exist. In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel
Garca Mrquez, there are many things that seem surreal or
outlandish to us, but accepted as reality in the context of
this novel. He takes the extraordinary and makes is common
place, similarly making the extraordinary seem fantastical.
For example, in the beginning of the book, gypsies come by
the village and bring magnets and ice, and they are regarded
as great, magical things to Aureliano Buenda. In our own
reality, ice and magnets are normal, everyday things that
most give no second thought to. Perhaps it is the fact that
this is before magnets or ice are invented, or if it is
simply because the characters call them magic that they are.
rsula is going blind and aging rapidly; she comments on the
passing of time and how it goes so quickly. The alteration
of the perception of time is a common aspect of magic
realism that we have learned. So was rsula speaking of

Mrquezs writing time so quickly, or is it just reality for

her? Its harder to tell what is reality when it is just an
observation. But I believe that because it is an observation
she made, it is her reality.
The voice narrating this book is undetermined, so there
is no reason to assume the fact that it could be biased
toward one certain character or side. Therefore, we have no
choice but to accept what happens in the story as truth.
Perhaps reality is something that may not be defined,
or, is completely dependent on what we accept. Children born
of incestuous relationships, in our reality, are in danger
of having many health risks and birth defects, where a child
born in the book is born with a pigs tail. Our science
proves this to be impossible, but in their world, this is as
normal as they come. Why? Simply because. The fact that
certain things that occur are fantastical and surreal by our
standards in no way means that they are any less real.
Reality is completely dependent on the interpreter,
because everyone experiences the world differently. For the
banana workers, they define reality by poor working
conditions. But for the government, their reality is that
these workers were wrong and needed to get back to work. My
reality at that moment is that this is all happening in the
pages of a .pdf file on my sisters laptop. Mrquezs

reality is that he is the creator of this world so similar

to his hometown. The fact that they are all seperate in no
way means that they are any less real. Perhaps, the
realities of the characters are fictional, yes, but Mrquez
still wrote it that way, so we must accept it.
In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the story is told
through a specific narrators eyes. His experiences make his
reality, however his biases warp his seemingly objective
telling of Santiago Nasars death. In standing in that
newspaper reporter role, he must retell reality as it
stands from a collective standpoint, from all possible
angles. This differs greatly from One Hundred Years of
Solitude where we skip bias altogether and have an objective
viewpoint from the start. The narrator in CDF is certainly
telling what is real, but its from his own perspective,
therefore putting what is the objective reality further into
the unknown. What really happened_ Can we trust the
narrator? Its uncertain. In OHYAS, its clearer to
interpret the realities of the Buendas and other
townspeople, even if they are vastly different from