One Hundred Years of Indifference

As one of the most heralded and influential pieces of Latin American literature to date, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's epic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude has become an extremely important magical realist work in the literary canon. The novel spans the rise and fall of the remote and reclusive town of Macondo, as well as the progression of several generations of the legendary Buendia family, leading from their origin in patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia, to their demise at the hands of Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula almost a century later. Throughout the novel and time in Macondo, Marquez, from an authorial point of view, adopts a characteristic element of magical realism, exhibiting authorial indifference and reticence in order to establish the supernatural components of Macondo and its inhabitants without undermining their existence. This brilliant use of reticence creates somewhat of an ordinary, mundane perspective of magic from both the narrator and the characters themselves. To them, these occurrences of the supernatural and otherworldly experiences are part of their everyday routines. For example, the levitation and disappearance of Remedios the Beauty into the sky is narrated calmly, observed almost with a note of indifference and nonchalance. The narrator states, "Remedios the Beauty began to rise... waving goodbye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment..." (Marquez 255). She is hardly even noticed by her family, or by other members of the community, as they "accepted the miracle" as she suddenly begins to float in the air and gradually vanish from sight, until she is all but gone (Marquez 255). Even her grandmother, Ursula, "was sufficently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of the light" (Marquez 255).

Furthermore, this authorial reticence is displayed in patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia's quest for the philosopher's stone, responsible for the transformation of lead into gold and eternal life. An element of magic itself, the philosopher's stone, and Jose Arcadio Buendia's search, is viewed plainly by the narrator, as if it happens frequently and is rather uneventful. Lastly, the reappearance of Melaquiades, who "really had been through death, but had returned beacuse he could not bear the solitude" is also treated rather modestly by both the narrator and the Buendia family (Marquez 54). They easily welcome the apparently dead man into their home without any hesitation, "dusting off old friendships" and acting as if the resurrection of this gypsy is an ordinary occurrence.

Marquez creates this authorial reticence and indifference in order to further point out and signify the
occurrence of these supernatural and magical events. Ironically, the use of this authorial technique and the equivalent character's responses throughout the novel alert the reader at a heightened intensity of when these enchanted events occur. Because of this setup, the reader is more likely to notice among the mundane lives of the residents of Macondo that such an event is happening, and thus be able to clearly discern between magic and reality. One Hundred Years of Solitude, a revolutionary novel filled with both the supernatural and the all too real, exhibits the characteristic components of magical realism, including authorial reticence and indifference. This application of reticence by Marquez allows for the reader to produce their own understanding of the magic in Macondo and create their own reasons for why such events would occur, changing the field of narration and including the reader in a firsthand experience of a lifetime.