SPAN 312

  When reading One Hundred Years of Solitude I attempted to follow Jons advice, to read it as close together as we could. I found that this was helpful in following certain aspects of the story, especially the characters names, the environment and state of the town, Macondo. In the beginning of the book the town of Macondo seemed to capture this overarching idea of solitude that I had in my mind from the title. The town itself seemed lonely, quiet and secluded from the rest of the world. Then the town of Macondo transitions when a road connects it with the rest of the world. With this connection comes an increase in capital/wealth and with that increased societal problems, with hints of communism and political uproar against the government sprinkled in. Although eventually, almost like a circle, Macondo reverts to the quiet and secluded town it seemed to be at the very beginning.  Additionally, r eading this book was not similar to other historical fiction novels I have read, and Jon d

  Reading Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo this week was certainly easier to follow then last week's readings, and I enjoyed being able to feel as though I could understand and unpack the writing. Unlike last week's reading, the confusion I felt while reading Pedro Paramo felt more narrator based confusion rather than philosophical.  From my initial understanding of the story as I read, it begins with a story of a man in search of his father. As you read you begin to understand the reasoning behind his search for his father as a request of his dying mother. Something I did find a little shocking was how the story shifted from being centered around the young man to being centered around his father. This shift between lives continued and caused a sort of circular feeling to the text that gave it a lot of differing perspectives. The shift in direction and perspective made it engaging to understand who is narrating. Additionally, descriptions of the town in which the story takes place w

Reading Labyrinths by Luis Borges this week was certainly an interesting piece of work to follow. I first began by reading the text as I was interested in getting a brief understanding of what it was about before watching the lecture, however after the first few stories I was still quite lost and confused and I decided to watch the lecture before I continued reading. This certainly helped me feel as though I wasn't just misreading or misinterpreting the stories, but rather that they were crafted intentionally in a way to make us question and rethink what we have read. I also found it interesting to affirm that the ways in which Borges writes of serious matters, such as death, were also intentional.  One of the stories that is discussed in the lecture titled “ Library of Babel” was one that I found particularly interesting and I credit this to its intense use of visualization. Though I couldn't exactly pinpoint what book it reminded me of in terms of authors intentionally creati