primitive, isolated village and is soon connected to the outside world (integrated into history, so to speak). Merchants arrive, institutions are set up, and eventually modernity comes in the form of railroads, the telegraph, and air mail. Then the outsiders (Westerners) arrive and corruption takes place.
The war between the Conservatives and the Liberals soon after independence from Spain resembles the actual war of the mid- to late-19th century. Even the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendia is historically based. The colonel could be said to represent the history of liberals - full of heroic ideals and acts, but consistently plagued by defeat. The banana company incident is historically based on a similar strike and massacre with workers of the United Fruit Company (Williams 82-85). Not only is the novel historically based, but the author is Colombian, so the cultural background from which he is writing is Latin American. Thus, the working mind frame on which he bases his novel is that of Latin American culture. The novel embodies so much of Latin America that to understand the people of the book brings us closer to understanding Latin American culture.
Knowing the cultural context of the novel allows one to investigate the role of fantasy from the very beginning. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice" (Marquez 11). With this opening sentence, Garcia Marquez immediately involves the reader in three aspects of time: the assumed present, the future of "many years later," and the past of "that distant afternoon." The mixture of these makes definition of a time framework impossible. Time throughout the story assumes a magical quality that cannot be explained in rational terms.
This magical quality extends from the beginning to every part of the novel. But the fantastic can seem so commonplace to...