Magic Realism Literary Genre

Magic realism, indeed, is a genre distinctly associated with the Third World. It has not, so far, taken root to any substantial degree among writers in the United States or other Western countries. The reason, we may suggest, is that magic realism is at least in part a fictional response to the political conditions of disruption and alienation that prevail in the Third World. In the following essay, this response to Third World political realities and magic will be examined through a comparative study of two major works in the genre, Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude--the work which, perhaps more than any other, served to establish and define the genre--and Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

Before proceeding with this comparative examination, it may be useful to attempt to define magic realism, and to offer a tentative suggestion of why this genre should have emerged as a response to the political conditions of the Third World. After our examination of the works in question, we may then retur

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s set in a reality that resolutely refuses to make sense. Surreal, yes--but would the account of any actual massacre survivor be any less surreal? It is, on sober reflection, perhaps impossible for anyone who has not experienced one to imagine how such a thing as mass slaughter can occur, or what a massacre can be like. Yet they occur, and the Third World has seen a good many in recent years. Hence magic realism, the attempt to render an account of the incomprehensible, when the incomprehensible is a looming fact of life. We have attempted to give some hint of the flavor of magic realism, and in the process of doing so we have been drawn almost inevitably to the political, though parallel events in the two novels. One Hundred Years of Solitude and Midnight's Children, indeed, have much in common besides their membership in the genre of magic realism an the coincidence of an eyewitness survivor's account of a massacre in each book. Each book might be loosely characterized as a multigeneration family saga, though focused in both cases on a single principal character. At various times in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the tale follows a number of different members of a family (a genealogical table is provided at the beginni
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Approximate Word count = 2380
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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