Song of Solitude

Every school year we are assigned to read at least one classic. Many times, only the teacher fully understands its essence, and thus gets why it is considered a literary canon. Meanwhile, students only wonder what makes it so special, since we don't understand most of the symbolism and depth. There's One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriela García Marquez, for example, which is read or at least known by almost every Colombian. While many people don't understand this novel's profoundness and literary strength, it is undeniable that it has become a canon in Spanish literature. And while reading Song of Solomon I couldn't help but be reminded of this Colombian-novel, because, even though they treat completely different subjects (the former dealing with Colombian struggles, while the latter with American ones), there are several items and techniques that make them surprisingly similar.

One Hundred Years of Solitude narrates Colombia's violent history throughout the years, its causes being issues such as political disagreements. This is done through the characters' lives, thus making it a story instead of a dense history lesson. Song of Solomon does pretty much the same thing: It portrays the racial inequality through the characters' eyes, thus making it all the more real.

Both of these novels also deal with gender inequality, exhibiting women's role as inferior. In One Hundred Years of Solitude there's a prostitute (Pilar Ternera) who is just an item to men while she is a very caring woman who wants someone to love her back. Similarly, in Song of Solomon, Milkman is with Hagar purely out of pleasure but feels absolutely no appreciation for her. Although she loves him, he doesn't. So she also has sex with him to receive his love, but to Milkman she is only an item that requires no commitment.

Additionally, in both of these novels the passage of time is unusual. In Song of Solomon, the story abruptly shifts from Milkman as a newborn to Milkman as a three-year old, leaving the reader baffled. Throughout the novel, time keeps on going by very quickly (from a three-year old Milkman to seven-year old one, and then to a teenage one, and then to an adult one). The same occurs in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where characters begin to age without the reader being aware of it, until suddenly they are all grown up or dead.

Since time goes by so quickly, it is evident that new generations will surge, and in both of these novels the authors take advantage of this to give hidden meanings to the characters' names and to repeat these names in order to make their objective clearer. In Song of Solomon there are three Malcolm Dead's and all three of them are very similar to each other (the main common traits are greed and selfishness). In One Hundred Years of Solitude there ends up being twenty-two Aureliano's (keep in mind that this larger number is due to the fact that it takes place in a greater lapse of time) and all of them have the characteristic of being violent.

Both of these novels treat completely different topics. However, they represent society through similar means, and this makes both the purpose and the outcome quite similar. Making two works that are so unknown to each other, essentially the same.