Preview

What Are The Allusions In One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
707 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Are The Allusions In One Hundred Years Of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude closely mimics passages and parables found throughout The Bible, beginning with the city of Macondo itself. An allusion to the Garden of Eden, Macondo is a lush and vibrant world wherein citizens live very long and subject their morals to the natural law. This and other occurrences resonate parallel to stories and characters found in the Old Testament. Religion itself is regarded with skepticism, illustrated through the arrival of the Priest Father Nicanor Reyna in One Hundred Years of Solitude. These references and characters both serve to validate the novel’s epic relevance and exemplify Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s view on the impact of organized religion on indigenous society.
The novel begins with a very distinct
…show more content…
In chapter five, Father Nicanor Reyna arrives and begins to build an elaborate church. “Thinking that no land needed the seed of God so much, he decided to say on for another week to Christianize both circumcised and gentile, legalize concubinage, and give the sacraments to the dying. But no one paid attention to him. They would answer him that they had been many years without a priest, arranging the business of their souls directly with God, and that they had lost the evil of original sin. (81)” Before the priest’s arrival, shame is unknown in Macondo—like Adam and Eve before the fall, the citizens are “subject to the natural law” sexually and worship God without a church. Father Nicanor’s arrival disturbs the untouched innocence that the town maintains. Further, Father Nicanor can decipher that Jose Arcadio Buendia does not speak jargon, as the town assumed, but perfect Latin. “Father Nicanor took advantage of the circumstance of being the only person who had been able to communicate with him to try and inject the faith into his twisted mind.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Thesis: The author posits that the derivative of a tragically unsuccessful colonization effort results with an epic ten-year odyssey of survival, assimilation, and revelation as the first Old World outsiders to athwart and live in the interior of North America. The culmination of the experiences of Cabeza de Vaca, man of influence, stranded in unexplored lands, encountering and existing with countless Native American tribes as guest, slave, trader, and healer engenders an atypical ideal of humane colonization and coexistence.…

    • 606 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference” (Reinhold Niebuhr). In the novel Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya, a young boy name Antonio Marez has faith to go through his childhood life to perceive in learning new aspects and independence in Catholicism in which he goes in the real world in order to create and establish new ideas and acknowledge himself into adulthood. Through the use of religious symbolism that connects to different cultural beliefs, the author, Rudolfo Anaya seeks to explain how New Mexico’s cultures can combine with each other to create a new culture with combined religious beliefs using knowledge. Antonio discovers more about the Lunas and how it relates to him and the world he is living in while also appreciating the Virgin of Guadalupe and the religious beliefs he has for the Catholic Church. Not only that, but also becoming a true believer and having struggles going through understanding religion as the golden carp appears. Anaya does this in order to compare and contrast New Mexico with Antonio’s rite of passage into adulthood and with the growth of others during World War II. The golden carp and the Virgin of Guadalupe are two different cultures, while the moon is the one that explain who Antonio really is.…

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    James H. Sweet Summary

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Domingo’s forced migration from the Bight of Benin to the America’s, via the middle passage, his brief stay on a plantation in Pernambuco, Brazil; and his experiences in Rio de Janeiro until his final exile in Portugal, all originated and culminated due to his suggested experience as a Vudon priest and suspicions of dark magic or witchcraft. Through this work Sweet proves that like religion, culture, and belief is not static, it’s dynamic, and vibrant and changes over time. It is also clear that co-mingling of Traditional African Religion and Catholicism provided advantages for Domingo’s lifestyle. Moreover, by adapting Catholicism into the beliefs of his vudon beliefs and practices, Domingos manipulated his owner’s and clients, by revealing psychological, political and societal ills and creating a spiritual sense of fear. For example, his use of Gbo to delay a slave ship, and his possession and alleged cure of Leonor de Oliveira, was this evidence of healing practices and cures or an illusion Álvarez created to protest the social and political angst of his new…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the introduction, Thompson explains that the young men who entered the seminaries in Europe were particularly dedicated, “and were for the most part drawn from the aristocracy.” (Thompson xlv) Thus, “the slackening of religious fervor and the mundane attitudes observable in a by no means negligible proportion of the friars and priests in Mexico and Guatemala came as a shock, and in the end was probably, as he notes, one of the factors in his desertion of his old faith.” (Thompson xlvi) Taking into account the emotions of confusion that Gage obviously experienced even during his first moments in Spanish America, it appears that Gage’s questioning and problems with the Catholic doctrine are inevitable, and each event similar to this one compounds his feelings of religious…

    • 3166 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book "In the Time of the Butterflies" is written by Julia Alvarez. This text talks about how religion affects society. One main theme in the novel is to inform the reader how a dictatorship terrorizes the people of the Dominican Republic, but still shows religion is so important to the people of the country that the church can help fight the revolution.…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This book is considered an American Classic due to its longevity in popular literature. It also provides the important historical background on the Catholic Church and its impact on the American Southwest. Willa emphasizes, through her writings, the hardships of the people involved in making this part of America what it is today. It points out the influence of the earliest Spanish missionaries of the 16th century through the latter part of the 19th century involving French missionaries and exposes the corruptness as well as the dedication of the missionaries of the church. The book's main setting is in the 19th century, during the settlement of New Mexico and Colorado and recalls the journeys that a priest undertook and the hardships overcame in order to meet his and the churches goal of bringing the Catholic faith to Mexicans and native Indians. Through his travels and the spiritual work in the beautiful, yet…

    • 1096 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    which is insularity in a Mexican barrio, reconsiders the reassurances of religious belief, and finds…

    • 1438 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Interior of America

    • 372 Words
    • 1 Page

    Álvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca's epic tales in Adventures in the Unknown Interior ofAmerica is one of the earliest recorded stories of exploration of the Americas. His story begins on April 14, 1528 and continues in great detail for eight long years. His narrative includes his personal experience as well as descriptions of the land he traveled and the native americans that he encountered. The detailed events that are present throughout Cabeza De Vaca's adventure transform him into a man completely different than the one we were introduced to at the beginning of the exploration. The superior mindset that Cabeza De Vaca felt over the natives, the challenges that would threaten his faith and religion, and the view he had of his fellow christians would change him tremendously as an individual.…

    • 372 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Cabeza de Vaca

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America the author Cabeza De Vaca describes the hardships and challenges faced of exploring an unknown region of the America’s. It goes into detail of many encounters with the Native peoples, and describes the problems he faced with many of his own people such as his men dying from disease and the battles with the Natives. He talks about the complications faced with his commanders and even the ships in which they sailed to the America’s. Throughout the book, Cabeza De Vaca goes through many challenges that changed him as an individual.…

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The narrative of Olaudah Equiano is truly a magnificent one. Not only does the reader get to see the world through Equiano's own personal experiences, we get to read a major autobiography that combined the form of a slave narrative with that of a spiritual conversion autobiography. Religion may be viewed as at the heart of the matter in Equiano's long, remarkable journey. Through Equiano's own experiences, the reader uncovers just how massive a role religion played in the part of his Narrative and in that of his own life. More specifically, we learn of how his religious conversion meant a type of freedom as momentous as his own independence from slavery. As one reads his tale, one learns just how dedicated he his to that of his Christian faith; from his constant narration of the scriptures to the way that Equiano feels a growing sense of empowerment from the biblical texts for the oppressed community. However, at the same time, one may question Equiano's own Christian piety. Did Equiano really seek to tell the tale of his soul's spiritual journey, did he really believe God would set him free or was he simply using religion as a ways of manipulating British and American readers to accept him as a credible narrator. Regardless of which of these facts is true, religion is quite possibly the defining feature of his life story.…

    • 1805 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Bless Me Ultima Essay

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In his book, “Bless Me, Ultima”, author Rudolfo Anaya documents through a fictional novel, the life experiences of a child, Antonio, who is deeply conflicted by his cultural and religious identity, he describes the struggles, the tragedies, and the dilemmas that this young boy has to endure and witness throughout his life. The book takes place in different cities throughout New Mexico. Divided into 22 different chapters the author records the predicaments that Antonio experiments as he struggles to find his moral independence. Rudolfo Anaya supports his text with very detailed stories that bring the characters to life for the reader. For the purpose of this book review, the reader will discuss how a conflicted boy in search for his true identity…

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Penn Warren, in his novel All The King’s Men, examines the modern man’s quest to live a simple existence—a life, void of sin, in which man endeavors to discover truth. Jack Burden, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, is thrust onto the political scene when his managing editor instructs him to travel up to Mason City to “see who the hell that fellow Stark is who thinks he is Jesus Christ” (51). The comparison between Willie Stark, the governor of Louisiana, and Jesus Christ emerges as an important association because, even though Jack knows of Willie’s corruption and sin, he reveres Willie as a father figure; Jack’s search for the truth, the identity of his father, is one of the main crises in the novel. While Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men is certainly a political commentary, religion plays an interesting role in the novel: Warren employs biblical and religious references to emphasize the convictions of certain characters and to explore the value of truth.…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In conclusion, I believe this book contains many spiritual struggles as well as mental struggles in contrary to the more trivial literature about this era. Other books uphold the structure of the more appalling behavior of the time. The Quest of the Holy Grail invites…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this story, Brillantes confronts the most important questions of our lives as Christians: Does God exist? If so, what is the nature of God? I remember Tim telling me that Brillantes succeeds in telling a compelling story because he never preaches or subverts. That he allows the reader to experience, rather than solve, the problem of God’s presence or absence.…

    • 367 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The first part of the story, which consists mostly of descriptive paragraphs, introduces the setting and characters. The story starts with an account of the preparations for the Bishop’s arrival, and Mr. Conrado Arabia, the chairman of the local Catholic Action Committee, is introduced. Lines in the story reveal that Mr. Arabia is one with the townsfolk in their desire to have Father Simplicio Ruivivar transferred. Through Mr. Arabia’s and the townsfolk’s accounts, we get a picture of who Father Ruivivar is to them – an old parish priest who, according to the townspeople, should be transferred “to a small, out-of-the-way town” because “he is not strong enough anymore to carry on the growing complexities of his job.”…

    • 1339 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays