A Comparative Investigation of Magic Realism in the Novels The Land of Green Plums and One Hundred Years of Solitude

Magic realism is one of the modern narrative techniques in which all imaginary and unreal events appear wholly natural and factual all throughout the story so that they are readily admitted by the reader. Thereupon, Herta Müller’s The Land of Green Plums and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude seem to be authored on the grounds and principles of magic realism. The present article is, in fact, a recitation of magic realism’s position in above-mentioned novels. Moreover, investigation of the manner in which the two elements are integrated in the two novels constitutes the problem of the article. Müller and Marquez both employ magic realism in their fiction, but the divergence between the two is more considerable than their points of convergence. The question that comes to mind in this regard is, “How far has magic realism, as a modern narrative technique, been reflected in The Land of Green Plums and One Hundred Years of Solitude?” Using descriptive-analytic approach, results of this article confirm the hypothesis that Herta Müller has made attempts to recite the relationship between politics and society by means of magic realism, while Marquez, in his One Hundred Years of Solitude, rewrites the interaction and conflict between conventionalism and modernism. Worthy of consideration is, also, the point that both writers call out loudly the peoples’ responsibility toward their peripheral events in the real/unreal cosmos of the novel.