“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain said in a low voice that was slow and a little tired. “you have five minutes to withdraw.”
The redoubled hooting and shouting drowned out the bugle call that announced the start of the count. No one moved.
Five minutes have passed,” the captain said in the same tone. “One more minute and we’ll open fire.”
The above is a passage from the famous Spanish-language novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. In the aftermath of this, there was a massacre that killed three thousand people. If we do not know any period background or cultural background of the author (Garcia Marquez), we will find this episode very sudden and difficult to understand.
But when we learn something about what happened in the development of Colombia, we understand the author’s meaning. In the 1920s, after World War I, Colombia’s economy began to boom and grow. In 1928, the banana growers and pickers went on strike until the end of the year. More than 20,000 workers demanded improvements in their working conditions and economic situation. The managers of the company saw the ripe bananas rotting in the ground unpicked and finally turned to the Colombian government, leading to the massacre in the central square of Cienaga.
In this way, Marquez reflects the time in a way that we cannot know simply through formalism.
Zhongting, I like how you describe the ways that historical context influence our understandings of literature. It adds a level of nuance that formalism can lack because it does not address the positionality of the author, the historical context of the literature, and so on. It would have been interesting to see your take on what theory one should use instead of or in addition to formalism to fully understand situations like these. Also, I think you could have included more information about why formalists choose not to address things outside of the text, like historical background and the author.
Your post does a good job of showcasing the limitations of strict formalism–a disregard for historical events and other such goings on outside of the text itself can definitely make formalism seem lacking. Behind the words of Garcia Marquez lies a complicated and interconnected web of historical and cultural knowledge. I would note that, while you address the shortcomings, you don’t address what formalism can offer. Adding in some specific formalist close readings of the text could help to show where formalism can be used to draw out meaning and understanding of the text itself, while showing how the text fits into the world and history as a whole could emphasize where formalism falls short.
I am currently reading this book and really appreciate the reference to it! This is a strong argument to make, especially with this scenario. Formalism would not be the most helpful in looking at this novel, since historical context is of the utmost importance. I feel like formalism itself should be explored more in-depth in this post (what can formalism do?)