Analysis of Melancholy and Nostalgia in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Literary Study

Extract

[...] The plunge of the scholar into melancholy We notice, however, a psychological evolution of the character during his journey, insofar as if he shows himself to be truculent and a bit delightfully malicious at the beginning of the journey, he becomes more melancholic and pensive afterwards: 'indifferent to the reality on board'. We find a certain number of terms that show this change in mood: 'nostalgia', 'melancholic'. It is then that the novelist embarks on a fine analysis of the character that shows the evolution of the character that is reflected both in his writing and in his physical appearance, his appearance that can be seen in the photos. The author also uses a neologism to describe this process by speaking of 'nostalgization'. [...]

[...] The scholar is characterized by a certain cynicism and a certain malice in explaining that it is 'the natural destiny of literature'. The character continues to adopt a fanciful behavior where his attachment to the three crates, even without the manuscripts, persists. The character shows himself once again extravagant in insulting the railway controllers who do not want the crates to accompany him in the passenger wagon as he wishes. He then expresses himself in 'Punic language', a very ancient language that has no place here. [...]

[...] We find in fact the very rich and abundant universe of the writer. Better than anyone, he is capable of rendering account of all the cultural richness of Colombia and South America. The universe presented in this excerpt is indeed an ambivalent, complex universe, shared between religiosity and pious images that we find even in brothels where one might think they have nothing to do with it and omnipresent sexuality up to the great taboo of incest. The characters are often, truculent, high in color, like the learned bookseller, an old solitary and extravagant original. [...]

[...] To show his indifference or rather the nostalgia that takes hold of him. We can notice the superlatives 'the most recent and the most banal' which also inspire him with nostalgia. We notice the parallel that is made between the progressive distance of the boat and the fact that he becomes more and more melancholic. This increasingly strong melancholy is made visible through the synecdoche 'his memory became melancholic'. At this point, the author sets up a kind of hypotypose, that is, he describes a scene as if it were unfolding before our eyes: 'During the winter nights, while the soup was boiling in the chimney.' The author then expresses his regret for his life in Macondo, which is paradoxical since he never stopped signaling to his companions in exile, not his books but the few genuine human beings with whom he exchanged the regret of his native city. [...]

[...] While he is so happy to find his native land, we understand to what extent he is disappointed and how he is indeed marked by a deep melancholy, a nostalgia, profound if not definitive. Solitude is indeed a crucial theme of the novel since we find this term even in its title. It is an opportunity for him to have great reflections on existence and a deep disillusionment. This excerpt is revealing of the particular style of the Colombian writer, a writer who stands out from traditional literature by the abundant universe he proposes, the themes he addresses with the prostitutes who occupy a central place in his work. [...]