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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Scientific Knowledge:
In his depiction of José Arcadio Buendía’s attempt to build a memory device which would include all possible information, Márquez satirizes science, and more specifically, the scientific desire to master the world through knowledge. After the insomnia illness spreads through Macondo, the narration gains a satirical edge as José Arcadio Buendía attempts to solve the problem of memory-loss:
The artifact was based on the possibility of reviewing every morning, from beginning to end, the totality of knowledge acquired during one’s life. He conceived of it as a spinning dictionary that a person placed on the axis could operate by means of a lever, so that in very few hours there would pass before his eyes the notions most necessary for life. He had succeeded in writing almost fourteen thousand entries [...]
Annoyed that the people of Macondo have turned to Pilar Tenebra’s fortune-telling, José Arcadio Buendía attempts to create a machine that would include “the totality of knowledge acquired during one’s life.” He designs this specifically as a response to the amnesia produced by the insomnia illness, allowing a user to review all of the information they once possessed, “every morning, from beginning to end.”
Like many of José Arcadio Buendía’s other inventions, this one is highly impractical, as a user would spend all day re-learning everything about their own life, only to forget it again the next day. In this scene, Márquez satirizes the characteristically scientific desire to acquire information and thereby gain a greater sense of control over the world.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—"Gringos" :
Márquez satirizes the white American “gringos” who travel through Latin America for tourism and business through his parodic depiction of Mr. Herbert, a hot air balloon entrepreneur who plans to exploit the distinct striped bananas of Macondo. As Mr. Herbert sits down at the Buendía family home to eat, the narrator states that:
When they brought to the table the tiger-striped bunch of bananas that they were accustomed to hang in the dining room during lunch, he picked the first piece of fruit without great enthusiasm. [When] he finished the first bunch he asked them to bring him another. Then he took a small case with optical instruments out of the toolbox that he always carried with him. With the suspicious attention of a diamond merchant he examined the banana meticulously, dissecting it with a special scalpel, weighing the pieces on a pharmacist’s scale, and calculating its breadth with a gunsmith’s calipers.
At first, Mr. Herbert is reluctant to try the strange fruit that he has never seen before. Soon, however, he becomes quite excited about the striped bananas, using an array of scientific tools to more closely examine them. Ultimately, he is not interested in their taste, but rather the profit that he believes that he can make by cultivating and selling the bananas. Through his characterization of the greedy and shallow Mr. Herbert, Márquez satirizes the white Americans who came to Latin America in the early decades of the 20th century in order to financially exploit the continent’s resources. Soon, Macondo is almost entirely taken over by the banana-farming operation ushered in by Mr. Herbert.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—War of Postponement :
Márquez uses an extended metaphor that compares dealing with government bureaucracy to warfare in a highly satirical passage. The narrator describes Colonel Aureliano Buendía's frustrations in attempting to secure the pension promised to him and the other soldiers by the government:
After the armistice of Neerlandia, while Colonel Aureliano Buendía took refuge with his little gold fishes, he kept in touch with the rebel officers who had been faithful to him until the defeat. With them he waged the sad war of daily humiliation, of entreaties and petitions, of come-back-tomorrow, of anytime-now, of we’re-studying-your-case-with-the-proper-attention; the war hopelessly lost against the many yours-most-trulys who should have signed and would never sign the lifetime pensions. The other war, the bloody one of twenty years, did not cause them as much damage as the corrosive war of eternal postponements.
Keeping in touch with his former rebel officers, Aureliano now fights a "sad war of daily humiliation" against the government in his futile attempts to secure his and their promised pensions. In an extended metaphor, the narrator characterizes this struggle as a form of combat, a war of "eternal postponements" that is "hopelessly lost" in the face of government bureaucracy.
Additionally, this passage satirizes the duplicity and inefficiency of the government, which lacks either the will or resources to distribute the promised funds. Márquez satirically mocks the polite but hollow language of government officials, who sign off their communications with such messages as "yours-most-truly" without genuinely intending to help.
