week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude - pt.1
Of what I have read so far of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I do find that I am enjoying it. The concept of having agency in your own fate is quite intriguing to me as well. My understanding of magic realism ties in with what I view the idea of fate to be. That fate itself is magical because it is 'out of our hands', yet our own desires and expectations do shape our destiny, which only brings me to question more and return full circle to the idea of that is inherently what fate is. Furthermore, as discussed in the lecture video, I find it fascinating the way in which objects are able to "have a life of their own... it's simply a matter of waking up their souls" (1-2). Meaning that the inevitable will come one way or another in it's own time. In my mind objects have a definitive fate (being their intended purpose or however they are used). However upon further thought the notion that objects do have a life of their own, something that at surface level has an undoubtedly predetermined fate, holds a strong truth. As I try to unpack what I have read so far, my confusion comes in when I try to understand my own perception, rather than the content itself (if that makes any sense).
My question for discussion is rather broad - can you alter fate? Or all the choices that could change your path simply leading you to your destiny?
Hey KD, great blog post! You mention the idea of objects having fate, and I think this ties into magical realism really well actually, which sort of turns this idea on its head: some objects seem to go against the fate that they are known to have (e.g. the purpose they are meant for) such as dead people not being dead and talking, or worms appearing in pots randomly when they shouldn't. To answer your question truthfully, at the risk of sounding psychotic, I think people do have fixed fates, but I believe conceptually, there are multiple realities / parallel universes for lack of a better term where each one captures a different choice that you could've made in each instance, sort of like probability distributions that spans across your lifetime. I guess I might think about this from a more mathematical angle in terms of all the probabilities that can occur at every moment until you die. I think personal agency comes into play in deciding which universe you sort of want to "manifest": in the one you are living in by taking that action and invoking that timeline, but I guess in that sense I view this circumstance as if there is some sort of "fate bank" and you draw upon one when you make a decision which comes with its fixed bundle of consequences, that being the choice's destinies, along with its bundle on next choices. I hope this answer doesn't scare you off, and if it does just pretend this comment's username is anonymous. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteI personally do not think you can alter fate, but that is really just a personal belief. I think that we are all destined to a certain thing or path and maybe we can take different routes to the path but at the end of the day we are going to get there. I also liked the comment you made about the object having a life of their own and I think that is just the beauty of magical realism and Garcia Marquez's way of writing
ReplyDeleteHello! Thanks for the very insightful blogpost! I loved the way that you described this almost "higher-power"-like destiny that drives the story forward. I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was trying to say that the actions of the past and of your ancestors, creates the world and present consequences that you live in. I also think that Garcia Marquez also uses A Hundred Years of Solitude as a cautionary tale.
ReplyDeleteHi KD, I enjoyed reading your blog post, including the question you asked. I think that you can't alter fate, and the choices that could change the path that you're headed are indeed simply leading to your destiny. I would like to think everyone's destined for greatness, but that is not always the case unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteHi KD,
ReplyDeleteI don't believe you can change your fate, but you can alter or change your decisions and mindset to change the timeline of the said fate. However, you can't really change what is here and now. It is nearly impossible to predict what's to come. Therefore the word "fate' comes in. I like Albert Einstein's quote that explains fate well: "Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."
"That fate itself is magical because it is 'out of our hands'"
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting thought, but I wonder if the reverse isn't (also) true... that "magical" thinking would be the notion that we can somehow escape fate. Isn't this the situation of Jose Arcadio Buendia, who believes that the "magical" inventions of the gypsies--magnets, flying saucers and the like--can enable him to trace a different path in life? Melquíades has to be the voice of realism when he tells him that this won't happen.