Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a novelist, short story writer, journalist, critic, and screenwriter, has had international recognition for many years. He is included among the group of South American writers who rose to prominence during the 1960 s, a time often referred to as the boom of Latin American Literature. In his short stories and novels, Leaf Storm, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and The Autumn of the Patriarch, he utilizes his background, and personal experiences, which makes his novels so popular. Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, on March 6, 1928. He lived with his grandparents for the first eight years of his life. The storytelling of his grandmother and the myths and superstitions of the townspeople all played major roles in shaping his imagination.
He enrolled in the University of Bogota in 1947 to study law, but when it was shut down in 1948 he transferred to the University of Cartagena, working as a journalist for the newspaper El Universal. Devoting himself to journalism, he ended his law studies in 1950 and 2 moved to Barranquilla to work for the daily paper El Herald. He then began to write short stories that were published in regional periodicals, and soon after became acquainted with the works of authors such as Franz Kaf a, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. Living with his grandparents had a big effect on his later years and in his novels, especially the house in which they lived. Marquez remembers his grandparents house as a dwelling place of the dead, rather than the living.
The Essay on The Short Story
A short story is, by definition an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary). Short stories contain certain elements, which consist of the following: plot, characters, theme and setting (Axelrod and Cooper The St. Martins ...
In that house there was an empty room where his aunt Petra and uncle Lazarus had died. He said My grandparents would sit me down, at six in the evening, in a corner, and say to me Dont move from here, because, if you do, Aunt Petra, who is in her room will come or… ‘ I always stayed sitting (Minta 34).
In the same manner, his first novel, Leaf Storm, featured a little boy as a character that through the whole novel sat in a small chair.
3 Chronicle of a Death Foretold, deals with an episode from Garcia Marquez past, and deals with the murder of a friend in Sucre in 1958 (Gabriel 23).
It tells about the codes that men impose on women, and women on themselves; the curious notions of honor that can dominate an isolated community; the irresistible impulse toward violence; and the psychology of mass complicity (Marquez 1).
Garcia Marquez style of writing is what some call magical (Gabriel 3 19).
His works are usually attributed to his imaginative blending of history, politics, social realism, and fantasy. He often makes use of techniques of magic realism in his works with descriptive events and reality which, he implies, define human existence (Gabriel 3 1).
One example of that is in One Hundred Years of Solitude a baby is born with a pigs tail (Gabriel 1 69).
His usual enthusiastic critical response is mostly because of this. In conclusion, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, makes a big impression in peoples thoughts. He is a novelist who uses personal trials and tribulations and mixes them with fantasy to make everyone of his books more interesting. For these reasons the critics praise him and he remains popular.
Bibliography Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Growler Library of International Biographies. New York: The Philip Leif Group Inc, 1996.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Discovering Authors Modules. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia.
Chronicle of A Death Foretold. New York: Alfred A. Kn off, 1982. Minta, Stephen.
Garcia Marquez: Writer of Columbia. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.
