Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Ebook56 pages41 minutes

A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

By Gale and Cengage

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 21, 2015
ISBN9781535830249
A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Read more from Gale

Related to A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Related ebooks

Teaching Methods & Materials For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    A Study Guide for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gale

    3

    One Hundred Years of Solitude

    Gabriel García Márquez

    1967

    Introduction

    In the mid-1960s, journalist and fiction writer Gabriel José García Márquez was little known outside his native Colombia, having never sold more than seven hundred copies of a book. Everything changed, however, after he had a sudden insight while driving his family through Mexico. In an instant, he saw that the key to the imaginary village of Macondo he had been creating in short vignettes was the storytelling technique of his grand-mother—absolute brick-faced description of extraordinary events. He turned the car around and drove straight home, where he proceeded directly to a back room. There he wrote while his wife, Mercedes Barcha, sold, mortgaged, and stretched credit to keep the family going. Gradually the entire neighborhood was involved in helping to bring forth what has since been recognized as a masterpiece. After eighteen months, a hefty tome of thirteenn hundred pages was sent to the publishers. The result was Cien años de soledad, later translated into English as One Hundred Years of Solitude. The first printings sold out before they could be shelved. Today, the novel has been translated into more than thirty languages and there are a number of pirated editions. The exceptional achievement of One Hundred Years of Solitude was highlighted in the citation awarding García Márquez the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

    Often compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County in its scope and quality, García Márquez's Macondo is revealed in several of the author's short stories and novels. The most central of these is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which relates the history of several generations of the Buendía family, the founders of this imaginary Colombian town. Interwoven with their personal struggles are events that recall the political, social, and economic turmoil of a hundred years of Latin American history. In addition to establishing the reputation of its author, One Hundred Years of Solitude was a key work in the Boom of Latin American literature of the 1960s. The worldwide acclaim bestowed upon the novel led to a discovery by readers and critics of other Latin American practitioners of magical realism. This genre combines realistic portrayals of political and social conflicts with descriptions of mystical, even supernatural events. García Márquez is known as one of its foremost practitioners, although he claims that everything in his fiction has a basis in reality. Nevertheless, it is his inventive portrayals of his homeland which have made him one of the most acclaimed writers in the modem world.

    Author Biography

    In 1928, the year when more than one hundred local strikers were massacred, García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia. His first years were spent with a large extended family in his grandfather's house in Aracataca. This environment contributed greatly to his future career as a writer. His grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, took him to the circus, told him stories, and admonished him against listening to the tales of women. His grandmother, Tranquilina Iguarán de Márquez, told him fantastically superstitious stories with such a deadpan style that he was more often scared than not. It was this style that the author used to such great success in his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. After his grandfather died, García Márquez went to live in Sucre, Colombia, with his parents, telegraph operator Gabriel Eligio García (a Conservative frowned on by the family) and Luisa Santiaga Márquez de García.

    He won a scholarship to the Liceo Nacional de Zipaquirá, a high school near Bogotá. He then entered the National University in the capital city of Bogotá to study law. After liberal political leader Jorge

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1