Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez create an environment in which the elements of magic are not considered out of the ordinary in their respective novels House of the Spirits and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In HOS, the magical elements of the story are present in Clara's involvement with the spirit world, for example her encounter with the spirit of Ferula, as well as Pedro Garcia's method of dealing with the infestation of ants at Tres Marias. In CODF, magic can be seen in the way that Santiago Nasar manages to walk several hundred feet, desperately trying to keep his guts from falling out of his open wounds. In each of the stories, the author presents the events in a calm tone that causes the reader to accept them as truth, despite the unreasonable nature of some of them. Allende and Marquez do this in order to make other, more important parts of the novels, seem reasonable in comparison. By doing this, the authors allow readers to be more comfortable accepting the validity of the rest of the novel.
The authors of these novels present concepts that are foreign to readers unfamiliar with the setting of the novel. If readers were to question some of these essential aspects of the novels, it may take away from the overall meaning of the novel. HOS, for example, takes place in Chile in the throes of political revolution. The setting has such a large influence on the rest of the novel that if a reader were to question the legitimacy of it, the political statement being made by Allende would be weakened. A reader unfamiliar with Chilean history might be reluctant to believe many of the details about the military coup given by Allende. However, in relation to the clairvoyant nature of Clara that is present throughout the novel before the military coup, the retelling of the events of the revolution is easily accepted by the average reader. A similar method is used by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in CODF. The social commentary that Marquez makes within the novel is reliant on the role of characters. As Marquez describes events such as a man walking several hundred feet immediately after being repeatedly stabbed before collapsing, other events become more believable in comparison. Specific to CODF, it is believable that a town full of people would neglect to inform Santiago Nasar that he is about to be killed when this sort of magical realism plays such a prominent role in the novel. Thus, by creating this sort of setting, the authors of these novels highlight their own beliefs.
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