CAT 2020 PREP online
FRESH BATCHES STARTING IN AUGUST!
CONTACT NOW!
Whatsapp 09674548313!
To speak of a land of enchantment, even in reference to a contemporary novel, is to conjure up images of elves, moonbeams and slippery mountains. Along with the midgets and fairies, one can expect marvelous feats and moral portents, but not much humor and almost certainly no sex. The idea, it would seem, is to forget the earth. At least that is one idea of enchantment.
It is obviously not shared by the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who has created in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” an enchanted place that does everything but cloy. Macondo oozes, reeks and burns even when it is most tantalizing and entertaining. It is a place flooded with lies and liars and yet it spills over with reality. Lovers in this novel can idealize each other into bodiless spirits, howl with pleasure in their hammocks or, as in one case, smear themselves with peach jam and roll naked on the front porch. The hero can lead a Quixotic expedition across the jungle, but although his goal is never reached, the language describing
his quest is pungent with life:
“The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin, as their boots sank into pools of steaming oil and their machetes destroyed bloody lilies and golden salamanders. For a week, almost without speaking, they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, lighted only by the tenuous reflection of luminous insects, and their lungs were overwhelmed by a suffocating smell of blood.” This is the language of a poet who knows the earth and does not fear it as the enemy of the dreamer.
Near the end of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” a character finds a parchment manuscript in which the history of his family had been recorded “one hundred years ahead of time” by an old gypsy. The writer “had not put events in the order of man’s conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant.” The narrative is a magician’s trick in which memory and prophecy, illusion and reality are mixed and often made to look the same. It is, in short, very much like Márquez’s astonishing novel.
It is not easy to describe the techniques and themes of the book without making it sound absurdly complicated,labored and almost impossible to read. In fact, it is none of these things. Though concocted of quirks, ancient mysteries, family secrets and peculiar contradictions, it makes sense and gives pleasure in dozens of immediate ways.
1
Why does the author use the Macondo example?
a. To illustrate the absorbing examples used in the novel.
b. To emphasize the real-life characters in a realistic place.
c. To show that Marquez’s characters are not distanced from reality.
d. To show that Marquez’s characters are capable of earthly pains.
2
According to the author, which of the following is/ are not the characteristic(s) of ‘A Hundred Years of Solitude’?
A. Presence of ancient mysteries and family secrets.
B. Laboured and abstruse narratives.
C. A fantastic journey which is devoid of any goal
.
a. Only A
b. Only B
c. A and C
d.B and C
3
In the passage, the tone of the author can be best categorized as :
a. adulatory
b. caviling
c. analytical
d. laudatory
FRESH BATCHES STARTING IN AUGUST!
CONTACT NOW!
Whatsapp 09674548313!
No comments:
Post a Comment