2. Magical Realism

3. Learning Objectives
Students will be able to define hyperbole, symbol, and motif and provide examples.
2) Students will be able to define and identify Magical Realism in a text.
3) Students will be able to apply their knowledge of lit concepts to analyze the effect of them.
4) Students will be able to evaluate the effect of magical realism.
There will be a quiz next Tuesday (22.2) on learning objectives 1, 2, and 3.
Learning Objectives 1, 2, 3, and 4 will be tested on the Bless Me Ultima unit test and/or as part of the BMU essay.

4. Hyperbole
Hyperbole: explicitly exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

5. Hyperbole Hyperbole is one type of figurative language.
It is therefore also a lit device.

7. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”
A Tinge of Magic: A Portrait of Reality through Myth and Magic Realism
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

8. Magical Realism
“They both looked at the fallen body with mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather had taken away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that [they] very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar.”
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

9. Magical Realism What was unrealistic or fantastic about this passage?
What was realistic about this passage?

10. Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927-2014
Considered one of Columbia’s foremost writers
Began his writing career as a journalist and published his first two novels in 1961
Friends with Fidel Castro and founded the Colombian branch of Castro’s new agency
Known for writing works that angered his government
Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982

11. Author Study - Geographical Context
Colombia’s Geographical Split
Costeños
Coastal Caribbean
Racially mixed: descendants of pirates, black slaves, smugglers.
Reputation: people are outgoing, superstitious, dancers, adventurous.
Cachacos
Central Highland
Racially “pure”
Formal, aristocratic, speak excellent Spanish, proud of advanced cities (Bogotá)
Márquez
Considers himself a mestizo costeño

12. Magical Realism
A literary movement in which strange things exist in an otherwise normal world—and no one treats them as strange.
A literary style in which unusual or magical happenings are related to the reader as though they were ordinary.
It is NOT science fiction or fantasy
Pat Murphy states, “In science fiction, if everyone is walking around with a talking monkey on his head, you need an explanation for it. In magic realism, everyone acts as if the monkeys have always been there.”

13. What is Magic Realism?
Combines the real with the magic; set in the real, but includes elements of the fantastic
“These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales.” (M.H. Abrams, Glossary of Literary Terms, emphases mine)
Realism attempts to hold up a mirror to life
Magic realism holds up a “foggy” mirror (the reader is then required to reconstruct meaning from that distorted image).
Implications: “Some claim that it is a postcolonial hangover, a category used by ‘whites’ to marginalize the fiction of the ‘other.’ Others claim that it is a passé literary trend, or just a way to cash in on the Latin American ‘boom.’ Still others feel the term is simply too limiting, and acts to remove the fiction in question from the world of serious literature.” (

14. Which one best represents magical realism?

15. Which one best represents magical realism? – The Hobbit / Big Fish

16. Generate possible examples from popular culture and/or lit.

17. Literary Devices Examples for Magical Realism
Hyperbole/Irony
Example: short story title, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”
Personification
Example: short story title, “Dialogue with the Mirror”
Metaphor
Example: short story, “The Sea of Lost Time”

18. Common Characteristics of Magical Realism
Take out a piece of paper and take notes! Leave 5+ lines of space between each characteristic to find examples in a short story I will have you read.

19. Common Characteristics of Magical Realism
Realistic Elements
Recognizable characters, dialogue, true-to-life setting
2. Magical Elements
Supernatural or mysterious elements
3. Humor and Exaggeration
Hyperboles!! Watch for ’em

20. Common Characteristics of Magical Realism
4. Distortions of time and identity
Characters may change into other characters, lines between living and dead may be blurred
5. Political and social commentary
Directly/indirectly address concepts such as racism, tyranny and conformity