A Marxist Reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude - Research Paper Example

A Marxist Reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude Introduction In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jose Arcadio Buendia—the head of the ghostlike town of Macondo—declares he could not ever appreciate the logic of a political competition wherein opponents approve the rules. Self-control often implies being defeated before one has even started to fight. This narrative by Gabriel Garcia Marquez presents a unique ‘magical’ medium to understanding things, to view reality. This narrative encourages one to think that the strategy of Marxists must be, after the strong-willed radical son of Jose Buendia—Colonel Aureliano Buendia-- “to sneak about through narrow trails of permanent subversion” (Saldivar 35). Leftist forces have to create their own paths to sneak through; paths that transform Marxism into something optimistic and practical—transform it into something experimental and ingenious, perhaps covert, originally rippling within the cracks of bourgeois social order. This paper carries out a Marxist analysis of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is the contention of this paper that class interests, class struggles, and class consciousness formed the groundwork of the narrative. Marxism in One Hundred Years of Solitude The class theory of Karl Marx focuses on the idea that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Stuart 75). As stated in this idea, from the time human society arose from its primeval and somewhat homogeneous state it has stayed essentially divided between classes who conflict in their quest for their own goals and interests. Class interests and the power competition and conflict that they engender are to Marx the core determining factor of historical and social mechanism. Aureliano Buendia is a character cherished by the Leftist ideology—fighting 32 wars for the advancement of the liberal revolution, he was defeated in all of them (Marquez 48). And still being defeated in these political wars never hindered his ambitious existential pursuit, his ambitious existential battle, which Aureliano conquered each time against his right-wing adversaries. In taking part in struggle, he built a new subjective theme, a new revolutionary essence for himself. It is now usual in postmodern Latin American literature to discover an ideological and historical perspective in the works of Garcia Marquez (Bloom 73). He frequently portrays his own interpretation of One Hundred Years of Solitude in relation to the novel’s actual context—Colombian history—declaring that (Saldivar 34): It would be difficult for the reader to understand the thirty-two civil wars of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, the baseness of the fights waged between conservatives and liberals, fights that served little purpose, because the country today would still need the same vindication that liberals demanded a hundred years ago, you see, and the three thousand dead men of the plaza of Macondo that no one remembers having fallen dead by the soldiers’ machine guns, none of this means anything to whoever ignores or has not lived the history of Colombia. Garcia Marquez is an unconventional Marxist author, and his narrative One Hundred Years of Solitude is never a traditional Marxist work. Nevertheless, this does not imply that the work has no revolutionary allusions and significance. It is exactly here that his popular cultural, meta-fictional, philosophical view of the process of creating fiction, and his ideological interpretation of dependency, enslavement, and colony in the Americas are most evidently supported, for in the narrative the reader examine both a popular and post-contemporary work (Saldivar 34-35). One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the history of the city of Macondo and the Buendias, the founding family. After murdering his neighbor who mocked his character, Jose Arcadio Buendia, Ursula, and several colleagues left their old town and head off in pursuit of a new place to live in, relocating ultimately in a remote area in the wetlands. For a while Macondo exists in a state of primitive incorruptibility and purity, its sole interaction with the outside world emanating through the infrequent stopovers of a group of gypsies, headed by Melquiades, who made known to the occupants remarkable inventions like the magnet, ice, and false teeth and stimulate in Jose Arcadio the hunger for scientific endeavors and the aspiration to witness the city enjoying the uses of technological development. Eventually, growth does occur in Macondo as it steadily surfaces from its remoteness and seclusion, yet, even though it produces affluence, it does not transform the city into the Utopia visualized by its founder. The central government dispatched a magistrate to take control over the area, and, as it is entangled into the domain of national politics, the city becomes enmeshed in a chain of violent civil wars. The formation of a railway connection brought about the money-making exploitation of the natural resources of the area by the North American Banana Company, and all of a sudden Macondo becomes a flourishing city; resentful of their poor working situations and low wages, the workers carried out a protest and are killed by government soldiers; afterward, heavy rains ruin the plantations, the Banana Company pulls put, and Macondo becomes a phantom city. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a narrative that demonstrates a conflict or contention between different points of view, class interests, and historical struggles, as envisioned by Marx himself. In presenting a literary portrayal of his childhood experiences and reality, Garcia Marquez has also formed in the imaginary town of Macondo a small-scale version of Marxist history characterized by class struggle. Indeed, the narrative of Macondo mirrors the overall design of the history of Latin America. It is built by immigrants escaping a native land persecuted by the threat of bloodshed and is filled with dreams of Utopia, being formed on the area where Jose Arcadio has a dream of a glowing, radiant town of homes adorned with mirrors. Nevertheless, by the concluding part, the town of mirrors has turned into a town of delusions. Macondo hence embodies the vision of a new world that the American society appeared to guarantee and that was brutally confirmed deceptive by the ensuing path of history. One Hundred Years of Solitude, basically, is an explanatory rewriting of the region’s history. The tradition of the elite or the ruling class of controlling or maneuvering history is revealed in the later section of the story, when the authorities cover up the slaughter of the protesting banana laborers and the capture and disappearance of all possible dissidents, declaring that Macondo is a tranquil and satisfied place where social unity thrives. Eventually, the budding Aureliano, raised by his uncle to believe that Macondo was oppressed, exploited, and abused by the imperialist motives of the Banana Company, learns that the school history textbooks depict the company as a patron which promoted development, growth, and affluence. The novel, just like Marx, tries to demystify or shed light on the widely accepted myths by providing another historical reading. To some extent, it is a widely accepted notion of a local community subjugated by foreign powers. Also, though, it is the perspective of the bourgeoisie, since the Buendias’ point of view is the prevailing one, the local elite, and their account of history is demoralized or challenged by the paradoxical separation of the narrator from it. Although in rigidly sequential terms the episodes of the story approximately span a hundred years from the moment after Independence to roughly the 1930s, the early stage of the history of Macondo suggests the colonial period of Latin America, when societies existed detached from one another and the governors or viceroyalties had not much interaction or communication with the remote cities (Swanson 39). The detachment of Latin America from intellectual growth in Europe is entertainingly shown when the investigations of Jose Arcadio led him to the discovery about the actual shape of the world, and that colonial underdevelopment is revealed in his sharp knowledge of the primitiveness of Macondo with regard to the outside world. The narrative hence paradoxically discredits Spain’s assertion to have bestowed to the Americas the gains or advantages of European civilization (Bloom 75). The beginning of the republican period is identified by the entrance of Don Apolinar Moscote to take control over the city as the central government’s delegate. Invalidating the traditional knowledge that has conventionally linked the political disorder of the 19th century to the ‘primitive’ rural area, whose lack of control, anarchy, and primitiveness allegedly hampered the attempts of the ‘civilized cities’ (Bloom 71) to push the region toward development and harmony, the narrative distinguishes government involvement in local matters as the root of Macondo’s problems. Before that it had consistently been an organized and peaceful community, and, anything but promoting and sustaining peace and order, the newly appointed magistrate instantly encourages turmoil by announcing that every house is to be painted blue, the symbol of the dominant Conservative party, a decree suggestive of the despotic and indifferent motives of the central government. Furthermore, if Don Apolinar brings parliamentary democracy to Macondo, he then familiarizes the city to the distrustful control of democratic bodies, the first elections being engineered to guarantee the triumph of the government party. For much of the narrative, Macondo is plagued by the civil conflicts between Conservatives and Liberals that were a characteristic of the 19th century in Colombia and other countries in Latin America. The pointlessness of that conflict is expressed by the increasing disenchantment of Colonial Aureliano Buendia, the defender of the Liberal interest. A major root of his disillusionment is the ideological extremism characterized by the dissenter Dr. Alirio Noguera, who concocts a plot for discharging Conservatism through an organized countrywide crusade of assassination (Marquez 88). Although such extremism forces parties on both sides to disregard their shared humanity, Aureliano forms a bond with General Moncada thru the ideological gap, and there even came a time when the two of them regard the likelihood of abandoning their own parties and teaming up to build a humanitarian government that would merge the best attributes of the conflicting ideologies. But he eventually has Moncada killed, because Aureliano himself became influenced by the same extremism and is willing to give up even his loved ones to attain his political goals, and prior to his demise his old friend cautions him that his severe animosity against his political adversaries has brutalized and deadened him. The paradox is that, in spite of their ideological disparities, both parties are ruled by the same ruling class, and in actual fact the difference between them eventually becomes indistinct, similar to the homes of Macondo when they assumed an uncertain color as an outcome of being consistently repainted based on which party is reigning. The Liberals perpetrate similar crimes as the Conservatives. Arcadio Buendia, while in power, acts like a tyrant, and the agreement that he made with Jose Arcadio the second, in which he formalized and legally authorized Jose Arcadio’s rights to lands that he has grabbed, demonstrates and strengthens the conventional structure of oligarchic rule and, meaningfully, is eventually approved by the Conservatives. Colonel Aureliano, dedicated to a goal of revolutionary change, finds himself not just defending the Conservatives but in disagreement with his own group (Saldivar 36). The Liberal property-owners respond to the danger to their properties by joining underground coalitions with the Conservatives, monetary support is pulled out, and later the party policymaker discard every revolutionary policy from their campaign so as to widen their support base. Here, Aureliano suddenly realizes that they have been struggling not for reform but for control, authority, power, for ownership of a powerful position and the booties that accompany it, and, disenchanted, he terminates the war and pulls out from political affairs. Eventually a negotiation is made in which the two parties distribute control and authority among themselves, a move that brings back order and harmony but that reinforces the inequality between classes. Conservatives and Liberals are hence revealed as absolutely embodying similar class interests. In the meantime, “The workers, who had been content to wait until then, went into the woods with no other weapons but their working machetes and they began to sabotage the sabotage” (Bloom 181). The banana company’s occupation of Macondo, the protest by the plantation laborers, and the military massacre and cruelty that the author embeds in the novel are directly derived from occurrences in rural Colombia in the early 20th century. The most ruthless political event in the narrative about Latin American life has been boldly described by Garcia Marquez with remarkable refinement and form. The author portrays the class struggle, demonstrating how the elite can manipulate and oppress, and how this ruling class can alter history. Even the founders of Macondo, who possessed absolute power at the opening of the narrative, discover themselves defenseless and weak in the presence of dominant forces from outside their society. Conclusions Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is definitely open to Marxist interpretations, with its accounts of how the elite or bourgeoisie uses their power to manipulate the writing of history in their favor. Class interests prevailed throughout the novel, with the Conservatives and Liberals symbolizing the struggle among classes. The party conflict reveals the interests of the ruling class, that is, to seize power. On the other hand, the working class or the proletariat, which is represented by the plantation workers, is harshly oppressed by the owners of the means of production—the Banana Company. But, just like how Marx envisioned it, the working class rose to their feet, came together, and tried to fight for their rights. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a classic representation of Marx’s class struggle. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Penguin Books Limited, 2014. Print. Saldivar, Jose. The Dialectics of our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History. New York: Duke University Press, 1991. Print. Stuart, Robert. Marxism at Work: Ideology, Class and French Socialism During the Third Republic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print. Swanson, Philip. The Cambridge Companion to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Read More