Common Theme Paper Between: One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of Spirits
It is only when it is too late that man realizes that what he truly wants is what he has had all along. Through a great loss or failure in the pursuit of further happiness, man may realize he never wanted more than harmony and tranquility, but by then it is impossible to go back. Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Marquez both demonstrate this tendency of man to blindly continue forward without appreciating that which he already has, until encountering vast turmoil and destruction. Through the main characters of One Hundred Years of Solitude that exhibit this trait, Marquez shows that if humanity does not realize the worth of what it has, it inevitably will lose its most valuable assets. Many of the characters in The House of Spirits also fail to realize the value of things in their life and take them for granted. It seems that to prevent the loss of virtue by man and his own suicidal destruction, he must know what it is that he considers valuable and then appreciate and guard it.
Jose Arcadio Buendía was the founder of the Eden-like community of Macondo. Like the ice that did not melt in the summer heat when brought to Macondo, Macondo had been free of change. Its people did not suffer from the troubles of the outside world, but that required that they did not know of the outside world. When Jose Arcadio Buendía learned of the knowledge and innovations being created in nearby towns and around the world, he felt like the city of Macondo was lacking something. He was like a newborn child introduced to the vast world where he would be forced to make mistakes and triumphs in his pursuit of knowledge. Jose Arcadio said “Incredible things are happening in the world…Right there across the river there are all kinds of magical instruments while we keep on living like donkeys (Marquez 17).” He felt that they were living “like donkeys” because they did not have all the inventions and knowledge that matched those around them. He did not notice the things that they did have, which included peace, harmony, amiable relations, freedom, and innocence.
The Term Paper on Jose Arcadio Buendia Buendias World
... that Jose Arcadio will learn how to become a man with gypsies.at least, Jose Arcadio has the chance to get out from Macondo and meet civilization. Jose Arcadio ... Buendias stayed in Macondo and keep living a 'tree Structured' lifestyle. Without realizing the benefits of the opportunities that outer world would serve ...
Jose Arcadio was quick to gain knowledge and bring the product of such knowledge to the town of Macondo. Like Adam who picked from the tree of knowledge without knowing the potential consequences of such actions, Jose Arcadio was unable to perceive the negative effects of what he did. Ironically, it was the knowledge that Jose Arcadio thought would bring the city closer to happiness that destroyed the calm serenity that enveloped Macondo before its introduction. Once the floodgates had been open, Jose Arcadio was unable to stop the changes that Macondo was to undergo. With each new addition to Macondo, there were both positive and negative results. One of the knowledge carriers, the “innocent” yellow train, was said to bring “so many pleasant and unpleasant moments, so many changes, calamities, and feelings of nostalgia to Macondo (Marquez 210).” By introducing knowledge to the town in an attempt to improve it, Jose Arcadio had destroyed what he cherished so much, and what had been the reason for the establishment of Macondo, it’s peace and harmony.
Marquez begins to show change in Macondo very subtly, but dire images compound into the depiction of Macondo as a society corrupt by its unquenchable thirst for knowledge and productivity, causing their true values to be forgotten. He demonstrates this, for example, through the magical realism of the sleep sickness that affects the town and does not allow its people to relax or do anything more than work, and thus, work and any of its positive results lose their value. The value of innocence and stability of Macondo, were not realized until they had been completely lost. The “feelings of nostalgia” for Macondo’s past were too late to stop the change towards Macondo’s inevitable downfall because of its peoples’ lack of appreciation for what they had.
The Term Paper on Jose Arcadio Ursula Buendia Aureliano
The innate tendency to commit incest is one of the main ongoing themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude. There seems to be no way of avoiding it from generation to generation of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran flee their native town and found the Utopian town of Macondo in hopes of escaping from their incestuous destiny and the karma of having murdered someone. Like the ...
Esteban Trueba, another main character, exhibited the same lack of appreciation for that which he loved most. In order to become a wealthy man, “for Rosa’s sake,” he went to work in the silver and gold mines. He worked diligently, and just as Aureliano in One Hundred Years of Solitude, became stuck in his pursuit of obtaining as much wealth as possible. Upon her death, he realized that he could have been spending time with her and realized that he had taken her for granted the whole time. In anger with himself, he shouted, “Damn her! She slipped through my hands (Allende 34)!” He had “no other goal than that of one day leading this girl to the altar, and death had stolen her away from [him] (Allende 34).” Esteban took Rosa for granted and thought that she would always be there, and so her death intensely shocked him. After her death he realized that “lying dead upon the bed [she was] more beautiful than ever (Allende 34),” and it was then that to he finally saw her beauty in its entirety, but it was too late. Without such a tragic loss, he had been unable to recognize what would have truly brought him happiness.
Another character that was taken for granted was Nana. She was the caregiver of the family and the supporter of its structure. She had helped bring them all to the world and care for them through life. However, the family did not realize how much they loved her, and how much she meant to them. When the earthquake hit, it “caught Nana in her bed (Allende 162).” The family and servants all got out but failed to call her. Nana was killed from her fright of the earthquake. It was only after “the fear of the first moment had passed (Allende 162)” that the rest of the servants realized that the old woman had not run out into the street with the others. Although she had been respected and loved, the loss of Nana made the family really appreciate what she had done for them. Esteban himself, also goes through this cycle of loss, before complete appreciation, several times in this novel. Another example is when he realizes that Alba is the only one he can ever care for. However, he does not truly appreciate or guard her until Esteban Garcia takes her from him. It is then that he realizes that he would do anything for her and begs Transito Soto to find her. He says, “I can give you anything you ask for, anything so long as you find my granddaughter Alba (Allende 421).” When Esteban finds her, he realizes how much he loves her and dies contently in her arms. For much of humanity, only such loss inspires the appropriate appreciation of what becomes taken for granted, as pursuits for wealth and modernization, in hopes of attaining happiness, often produce the desired results at the expense of what was truly treasured most.
The Essay on Hollow Men Eliot Loss Modern
I want an essay because i really suck at writing my own, as seen in this example... actually i'll give you someone else's notes... THANX TIM if you ever read this, but i couldn't think of anything else to put here... Loss is a very prominent subject matter in the poetry of T. S. Eliot and his contemporizes. These writers, such as Yeats and Woolf e, later grouped as modernists, were reacting to the ...
Often, man undervalues that which he assumes will always be there while pursuing further happiness. He does not appreciate a person, idea, or lifestyle until he loses or fails in such pursuits. This unappreciative attitude is what causes nostalgia for it upon its loss because of man’s inability to initially see and value what it already has. During the pursuit of advancement, humanity must stop and study its objectives and see how they will affect the positive aspects of life it already maintains. Man’s inability to realize what it is he values in his life is what leads to this drive for knowledge in hopes of becoming all-knowing and obtaining a comprehension of his universe. This drive for knowledge often leads to such a change in man’s surroundings that he loses what it is he actually values, and its destruction only forebodes his own. In order to prevent his own destruction, man must learn to determine what it is he holds most dear, before he parts with it in his pursuit of unattainable perfection.
The great tragedies in these two works lie in the loss of happiness due to foolish ambition and discontent. Man’s worst enemy is presented as being man himself, rather than nature or other men. He gambles away his happiness on dreams of castles in the air, and inevitably suffers the consequences of his thoughtlessness. Only through bitter loss does he realize the value of what he sold and then it is too late to regain it. These two Latin American books demonstrate man’s unappreciative nature of the present, and an unyielding pursuit of further happiness. Thus leaving him with an unattainable goal. Contemplation and appreciation of the here and now, and the people and ideas currently held dear, may be the only way for man to save himself from making this “progress” away from that which he already has, and onto the path of his own destruction.
The Essay on The Happy Man Happiness Life Problems
The story by Najib Mahfouz called The Happy Man is a story that has great meaning. It is about a man who is a writer for a newspaper company and one morning he awakens and decides that he is very happy. He decides that he life is perfectly happy. Throughout the day he makes many decision and there is a sequence of events which are based on the fact that he has perfect happiness in his life. In ...
Works Cited
Allende, Isabel. The House of The Spirits. Trans. by Magda Bogin. Bantam Books: New York, 1986.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans. by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Avon, 1971.
