Re: Epileptic 3

Re: Epileptic 2

This book is amazing. There is so much under the text, so much left unsaid - yet somehow it all still manages to emerge and present itself to the reader. The metaphors run deep and remain present, as motifs, throughout the text. For instance, David refers to his "armor." He portrays himself wearing a full suit of Mongolian-style armor (he was obsessed with Genghis Khan as a child), however, his armor isn't physical, it's mental. He protects himself from the pain that his family and his brother face with the epilepsy. He blocks it out.
At first his feelings toward his brother were unclear. I couldn't tell if he felt sorry for him, embarrassed by him, nothing at all... As the story develops, I'm noticing that he seems to feel a little of everything toward him. At times he is embarrassed and at times he is angry. He is even jealous of his brother at points. The story, although focusing on his brother and his illness, seems to be more about David. I would still classify this book as an autobiography, despite the apparent focus being shifted from the writer to his brother.

Re: Epileptic 1

This is a graphic novel written by David B., an acclaimed graphic novelist from Paris. It is autobiographical in a sense, but it has a focus on his brother, more than himself, and the severe case of epilepsy that his brother suffered from.

Right now they are children, and his brother has just begun his bout with epilepsy that will soon consume his life. It's incredible to me how expressive and emotional David B. can make his drawings feel. The amount of emotion packed into them, considering their simplistic, 2-D nature, is astounding. He can move you with a few well placed words and well illustrated metaphors. His writing is rampant with visual metaphors - strange images that stand for a characteristic about a person or a thing. For instance, he draws one man as a cat, because that is what the man seemed like to him. He draws his brother's disease as a terrifying dragon that is emerging from his brother's body.

Re: One Hundred Years of Solitude 5

The Eden-like presence of the town is now completely corrupted. there is no more magic, no more mystery. Macondo has become a city of the world - and terrible things are happening as a result. People are dying, Aureliano Buendia, the new patriarch of the Buendia clan (his father is completely deranged) has left the town to join in the Liberal resistance that is spreading through the country. He doesn't seem to be very passionate about the cause - his reasons for joining the Liberals rather than the Conservatives are slight - yet he proves to be a powerful and infamous military leader.

Personally, I am finding this part of the book less attractive. The wonder of the beginning and the fabled timelessness of it is lost. I feel like the term "magical realism" no longer applies. There is a still a sense of merging the past and the present, a sense of the cyclicality of time, but it doesn't feel so legendary, so folksy, anymore. Now it feels like some kind of South American epic, a hispanic Farewell to Arms.

Re: One Hundred Years of Solitude 4

An interesting note. I've noticed some themes arrayed in the text. Things are standing out. One of great importance seems to be the gradual decline of Macondo. the town itself is solid, ever-present, but it is slowly becoming everything that it stood against. The town was perfect, uncorrupted, idyllic. However, a new poison has entered it's veins: Politics. Around voting season the Magistrate, who was until then a mere figurehead in the town, imported armed guards to come to Macondo and distribute the voting ballots and enforce the vote in the town. There were two options when voting. Either you voted blue for Conservatives, or red for Liberals. The town, although completely oblivious to and uninterested in the dealings of the political struggle that was taking place around them, still managed to end up with about the same number of red and blue ballots. Pacity prevailed. However, the Magistrate secretly replaced some of the red ballots with blue ones in order to further his cause. Aureliano, the new leader of the town after his father went mad, saw the Magistrate do this and soon political unrest spread throughout the town.

This shows the inevitability of the evils of the world. There is no escaping them. They will find you even in the remotest part of a swamp.

Re: One Hundred Years of Solitude 3

This book is starting to get really confusing. All these new people are being added to the Buendia clan, and they all have the same names. Jose Arcadio Buendia, Jose Arcadio,and Arcadio are all different people, and they are all members of different generations. It's hard to remember who is whos son, and who is what age.

I think the author is doing this on purpose. It adds a sort of timelessness to the story. The town in which these people live is still relatively cut off from the world. There has been no death yet, and for a while they were suffering from an insomnia plague that kept the town awake all day and night for months. All of these factors, along with the seemingly interminable Buendia clan, add to a notion of timelessness, of perpetuality.

However, as they become more and more connected with the outside world, the virtual immortality and peace of the town becomes corrupted. A Magistrate is appointed to the town by the Outside Powers, foreign trade routes are opened, and a priest eventually makes residence in the town in the hopes of baptizing the residents. As these foreign influences take place an underlying change is apparent. The citizens flock to the church, driven by the "divinity" of the priest who claims the ability to levitate by drinking chocolate. The magistrate appoints armed guards to safeguard him and the town, and tries to order all the houses in the town painted blue for the national independence day.

In reaction to these changes, Melquiades, who was living with the Buendias, dies. Also, Jose Arcadio Buendia goes mad, and is eventually tied to a tree in the back yard because of this.

Re: One Hundred Years of Solitude 2

Jose Arcadio Buendia, the protagonist mentioned in the previous post, is driven mad by his fascination with alchemy. He is encouraged by Melquiades, the gypsy that gave him the alchemy set. Eventually his fascination with technology drives him to seek a route through the jungle to connect Macondo, the town that he founded and now currently resides in, to the civilized world. Until the arrival of the gypsies Macondo has existed in isolation, in solitude. He travels north, determining this direction as the only route that would lead anywhere. To the east lay an impenetrable mountain chain, to the south and west were vast swamplands. He set off with a team of men to find 'civilization.' their efforts were futile and Buendia returns convinced that Macondo was surrounded by water on all sides. He decides to move the town. His wife didn't go for it and made him stay.

What I like about this part of the book is the free-spirited, enterprising characteristic of Jose Arcadio Buendia. It reinforces the Magical Realism of the novel and provides for an entertaining plot.

Re: One Hundred Years of Solitude 1

What drew me to this book was the first line. I place a lot of judgment on books based on their first line. This first line is especially prolific.

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Beundia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

it pulls the reader in immediately, and with one sentence evokes a sense of wonder that remains throughout the text. this is apparent in the beginning chapter when the Colonels father, the first protagonist of the book, delves into the study of alchemy. Already the fictitious aspect of of the novel is apparent. The text begins to read like a folktale, with phrases like "when the world was young," and referring to the fact that many things were still unnamed. I did some background research on the book and found that this novel coined the genre of "Magical Realism." this is very apparent.