Magical Realism

Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez use magical realism to express that real life can often be surreal to the point of seeming magical. Both of these stories chronicle bizarre stories that are based on real life events. The House of the Spirits follows a family through a huge earthquake, torture, and an uprising of a new political group. These real life events are so unusual that they themselves can seem magical. Allende is commenting on the oddness of these events by having magic and spirits be normal occurrences. To create the wonder of these real-life events more obvious Allende even has characters conquering their “fear of the ghosts Clara would invoke…but earthquakes [shake them] to the bones” (Allende 131). She is pointing out the oddness of the “real” events by making them seem abnormal in comparison to magic. Marquez also uses some magical realism for a similar effect. The death of Santiago in A Chronicle of a Death Foretold seems extremely foreign and unreal to many other cultures that do not view murder, society, and honor in this way. The addition of magic, such as reading dreams, helps the reader to notice the oddity of the events. The reader sees magical events and than notices that the event that happened is just as odd. Allende and Marquez are using magical realism to point out the strangeness and magic that happens in the world we live in.