Reality And Illusion In Miguel De Cervantes's Don Quixote

Anachronistic knight errant, Don Quixote, in his persuasive discourse, “A Subtle Discourse on Arms and Letters”, compares and contrast on the professions of Arms and Letters. Quixote’s purpose is to persuade the idea that, the profession of Arms is superior to Letters. He adopts a dramatic tone in order to vividly describe what is going on to his audience.

In this essay, we will discuss how magical realism uses elements of real and of magic to create the literary style. At first, we will try to give a background of what magic realism, where it comes from, and how a story can be labelled as such. Alejo Carpentier’s “Viaje a la semilla” and Julio Cortazar’s “La noche boca arriba” will be our focus. The analysis of the two stories will attempt to generalize what elements of real and fantastic are in most, if not all of “lo real maravilloso.”

Religion has been a controversial topic for people with conflicting beliefs regarding a spiritual figure. Some authors today tend to stay away from the topic of religion fearing criticism from readers who disagree with their religious beliefs. Victor Villaseñor’s book, Rain of Gold is a non-fictional book that looks at the progression of the lives of Lupe and Juan who originated in Mexico. The book begins with Villaseñor describing the harsh condition in Mexico during a war that forced Lupe and Juan’s family to a journey to the United States. However, the journey was no simple task for the families. Even though Lupe and Juan come from different families, the similarities they had during their journey to the United States made

Written by Gabriel Garcia Márquez in 1958 as part of Los Funerales de la Mamá Grande, Un Día de Éstos is a short story addressing a vast theme; that of power and how it is balanced. By constructing the narrative primarily around the two characters of Don Aurelio Escovar, an unqualified dentist, and the mayor who is suffering of toothache, Márquez uses their reactions towards each other to guide the reader into understanding how easy it is to become vulnerable, notwithstanding their social class.

‘Lo Mexicano’ is a phrase-turned-concept in 20th century Mexican philosophy. The term literally translates to “the Mexican,” however, it is also used to superficially describe the identity of the Mexican individual. The notion came about after the revolution; the phrase was meant to emphasize and unite Mexico as an independent people. Today, the phrase is understood as an all encompassing term for “mexicanness,” or that which makes someone a true mexican.

In Inga Clendinnen’s Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570, the word, “ambivalence,” as the book is entitled, suggests to both the Spaniards’ purpose of conquering the Yucatan and the tolerance by the Maya of the conversion to Christianity. The conquest of the Yucatan can be outlined, as Clendinnen explains, “Then, finally, I turn to the Maya; to discover, through analysis of deeply partisan Spanish accounts, what they did, and from their own few and fragmentary writings what they meant by what they did.” She argued that this is because of the existence of the Aztec Empire. “The Cortés expedition effectively ignored Yucatan, making landfall only at Cozumel Island. That pattern was to persist for the decade took to dismember and to distribute the spoils of the Aztec empire. With the prospect of Mexican riches the inhospitable coasts of Yucatan had lost all attraction.”

With the purpose of understanding why writers write, this essay offers an analysis of the short stories of Shirley Jackson and Gabriel Marquez: “The Lottery” and “The handsomest drowned man in the world” respectively. Both writers perpetuate a contemporary literary genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy. Jackson and Garcia Marquez use symbolism in “the Lottery and “The handsomest drowned man in the world” to explore and communicate their perspective on magical realism through the main themes of the stories, the response to change and the importance of rituals.

When viewing the Mexican Revolution, a dichotomy between destruction and creation appears. When it kicked off in 1910, it was in the pursuit of noble goals. But at its core, the Revolution was a rebellion and at the heart of all rebellions is war. And with war comes destruction and death. While the Revolution last for at least a decade and perhaps longer, for the individuals involved life was often, as Thomas Hobbes once wrote, nasty, brutish, and short. Therefore, a question arises: how can creation and destruction find reconciliation in the Mexican Revolution?

In this part of the novel magical realism is present with certain situation that happen thought out this chapter. We can relate these movements to Mexico’s mythological believe. Jacqueline Fotes de Leff and Emma Espejel Aco wrote an article “Cultural Myths and Social Relationships in Mexico: A Context for Therapy” in this article the authors explain how myths influence family ideology, the authors states, “Myths develop from universal idea related to life, death and links in general, like union and separation. They can also be constructed based on historic elements that can be ambiguous or painful (Levy-strauss, 1968, 1969) or around missing elements in the history of individuals (Andolfi 1989). The events that happen in the house that are mysterious to Montero can be link to Jacquline and Emma research. In relation to Mexico as well, myths play a huge role in society. At one point in this chapter a flood of light in Montero room awakes him. He then walks to his bathroom to hear a yowling. He tries to locate the noise to see where is coming from but can’t, he trys opening the door hallway, but can’t hear anything from there. He then jumps up on to a desk in his room to a window and pulls himself up to look out at the side garden. He sees five, six, seven cats. As he gets down he wonders if he really saw the amount of cats, or in general saw cats. Late we come to realize the Consuelo tells Montero that there is no garden, that the house does not have a garden, they lost the garden when they build up all about them referring to the

This novel was written based on the Mexican revolution, which was an important event in history for the people of Mexico. The author of this novel, Juan Rulfo portrays the characters as being lost in purgatory to show how the people of Mexico felt during the time of Porfirio Diaz. Juan Rulfo used his experiences and suffering during the revolution and turned it into literature. During the Mexican revolution, there were situations in which men were more powerful and played a more important role in society than women. The use of descriptive language and imagery in the novel allows readers to understand how horrific the time period was and how the people felt.

In his work “The Underdogs”, Mariano Azuela is able to master the spirit of villismo regarding both its theoretic, underlying principles as well as the movement’s subsequent physical manifestations. Though significant characters conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the humble agrarian spirit central to villismo’s origin, characters in this text also exhibit the disruptive, callous behavior that is more characteristic of the federalist forces and dictatorships they aimed to unseat. Moreover, Demetrio’s degenerating understanding of the reason he’s fighting, coupled with his few instances of immorality, symbolizes the collapse of villismo morality into its culminating bandit-ridden reality.

Works of post-modern literature raise questions about life and the human condition. The questions raised by the author not always answered in the text. Juniot Diaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an example of this. In the novel the motif of love and violence raises the question, “How closely aligned is love or the lack of it to violence or madness?” The author provides no clear answer to this question and the questions helps to emphasize the meaning of the work as a whole.

Characterization in literary fiction that has special importance, and authors develop their sense of responsibility for full and effective character development. Character is everything in literary fiction. Characters can also be animals or whatever the writer chooses to act in his/her story. Simply, characters literally make things happen in a story. This essay will describe and give a broader picture of how the characterization is developed in the short stories and how would the story look like without characters by supporting with examples of some short stories.

First of all, Le Père Goriot is a novel included in a series of novels called by Balzac “La Comédie Humaine”. In its Avant-Propos, Balzac claims that he wants to represent in this series of novels, the society and the variety of human types. This statement is related to the concept of realism, indeed by affirming that he wants to represent the society and the human types, his novels should have some real foundations taken from the reality. Consequently, the context became fundamental and it represents the starting point for the description of the events. Le Père Goriot is set in 1819, after the Napoleon defeat and when the industrial revolution started. It was a period of great revolution and changes between the hierarchy of the social classes and Balzac aims to represent the various tensions of that period, especially in Paris. Moreover, in the Avant-Propos Balzac affirm that the novelist should be the secretary of the history, he tells us the story from a scientific point of view because he added that the novelist has to study the humanity as the biologist study the animals. Hence, this essay discusses the fact that the context of the novel and the description of the social tension can be defined as the realistic part of the novel which are intertwined in the plot and in the fictional characters who have a connection to the real life.

The art of storytelling is at the heart of fairy tales. Since the beginning, fairy tales have captivated readers with its magical worlds and enchanted characters. Quintessential to fairy tales are destined happy endings and the clear division between good and evil. The nature of these stories creates distorted perceptions that do not align with reality, making it difficult to distinguish between reality and illusion. This is portrayed in Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad, in which Lilith Weatherwax struggles to free herself from the fictitious world she has fabricated. With the use of storytelling, Witches Abroad uncovers the hidden dangers of false appearances to explore the underlying theme of reality versus illusion.