Breaking the Crux of Solitude: Sexual Violence in 100 Year's of Solitude

Abstract

Gabriel Garcà­a Márquez‘s epic, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is the most influential Latin American novel of the twentieth century. The novel is the most famous literary example of “magical realism,” although as Rebecca Wortzman argues, the term should not be understood as a denial of real violence but as an attempt to represent it. In “Breaking the Crux of Solitude: Sexual Violence in 100 Years of Solitude,” Wortzman argues that Márquez‘s depictions of sexual violence, including incest, prostitution, and pedophilia, are connected to his larger literary project, which is to try to represent the way isolation is experienced by exploited individuals, colonies, and regions of the world.

Dr. Alice Brittan