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

will come or . . . ` I always stayed sitting?

( 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.