My personal definition for magical realism is the lines between fantasy and reality are blended. In magical realism time is cyclical not linear. During at least one point of the story is in the real world. The uncommon becomes normal in magical realism.
Borges is a brain buster to me. His stories seem very straight forward and then all of a sudden magical realism makes the story into something completely different. The texts connect with today’s society because of its involvement with the Christian faith. I personally am not as religious as many, but even to me the stories connect with my life. An overlying theme of Borges’ texts is ignorance can destroy greatness and I firmly believe this. I believe people often make decisions or choices based off of how they feel, not thinking of the consequences of their actions. Another overlying theme to his stories is that time does not exist. Many stories involving magical realism believe that the past is happening now. This is a concept I have been struggling to grasp. Thinking that time is cyclical not linear, that the past is occurring while were experiencing the future, is mind boggling to me. On the other hand though, when it comes to magical realism it makes complete sense, you almost wouldn’t expect less. Borges’ writing is very entertaining. I think his storylines in the three stories we read were out of the box, but extremely fascinating.
Nice definition of magical realism: I like how you say "at one point of the story is the real world" which implies that most other points are not. You make some interesting observations here which are so good that this reader wishes there were more elaboration and explanation in order to understand them better.
ReplyDelete