Article Title

García Márquez on the Margin of Utopia

Authors

Peter G. Earle, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

In García Márquez there is a utopian longing which is almost contradicted by his grim political overview. Nevertheless, in many of his novels and stories he leaves us little escapeways of hope. Remember the ending of The Autumn of the Patriarch: bells toll, rockets burst in the air and people cheer when it is discovered that the dictatorial protagonist has sneezed himself to death. There's a chance that the Colonel's renowned rooster (Nobody Writes to the Colonel) will win on the day of its great test, 45 days after the novelette's conclusion. In Aureliano Babilonia, who dies in the hurricane that sweeps Macondo from the map and from human memory and who begets with Amaranta Ursula the last of the Buendia line, there's a suggestion of potential salvation. Aureliano—the last and littlest Aureliano—was the only Buendia conceived in the plenitude of love. And his father, Aureliano Babilonia, was in turn a foundling, the natural child of a proletarian, the apprentice mechanic Mauricio Babilonia, and Renata Remedios (alias Meme) Buendia. Aureliano Babilonia, the lover of learning, is also the descendant most faithful to historical truth, the one who persists in preserving for posterity the circumstances of the banana workers' massacre of 1928, of Colonel Aureliano Buendia's stature and strength as the leader of 32 revolutionary uprisings, and his pride in his own identity. And he's the last curator and scholar of the Melquiades manuscripts, in which the eternal defense against oblivion is written.

Recommended Citation

Earle, Peter G. (1986) "García Márquez on the Margin of Utopia," University of Dayton Review: Vol. 18: No. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol18/iss1/4