A formal essay on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing styles and how it contributes to the Latin American heritage

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World Literature Paper 2

Sheryll Sison

Student Number

Atherton High School 2002

Anne Wilson, Instructor

Topic: A formal essay on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing styles and how it contributes to the Latin American heritage

Word Count: 1, 438

Love in the Time of Cholera is a renowned book that has earned its place as one of the best literary works of the twentieth century. The author, Gabriel Garcia Márquez offers his own Latin American culture to the reader, while incorporating his socialist views of society. In his novel, he not only includes bird and flower imagery, instances of irony, and foreshadowing, but also stylistic methods such as verb tense shifts, a structure of the Greek ideal play (in medias res), a creation of imagery associations among the characters and their names, and a list of definitions pertaining to the different types of love. In reading Love in the Time of Cholera, the reader is given the events and is left to ask the questions involving the how, instead of the what. The themes of the novel include the transcendence of love, the influence of fate, and the role of women in a chauvinist culture. With the writing styles and themes incorporated in the novel, Gabriel Garcia Márquez informs his readers about the Latin American culture and his values about love and marriage.

        The novel is divided into six chapters, which is the arrangement of the ideal Greek plot structure. Márquez was influenced by the Grecian plays such as Oedipus Rex and thought that the best way to write a story is to begin in the middle. With this structure, he works back to explain the chronological events that occurs prior to the beginning, and picks up to continue the story from the beginning. This plot structure of in medias res, not only offers an interesting twist to the story, but also allows the reader to try and predict the plot as it slowly reveals itself. The purpose of the plot structure is to show the demise of someone or something in every chapter as the story unfolds one part to another, informing the events to portray the characters’ development. This plot structure also allows the reader to understand Márquez’s style, which includes his objectives of establishing imagery associations and different definitions of love.

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        Márquez sets up his own imagery by creating characters with literal meaning. Florentino, for example, pertains to flowers. From this name, the reader can safely assume that the character is a romantic and is associated with flower imagery. Another example would be Dr. Juvenal Urbino, meaning “young urban” which is a contrast to Florentino’s character because he is associated with realism. The reader can recognize the main focus of a passage by simply observing the type of imagery being used. Márquez’s style of making self references to his characters sets him apart from many writers because he reconstructs a new ...

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