final project

For my final project I read two books: Selected Writings by Jose Marti and Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset. As the last of Marti's writing is in May 1895, Marti's generation is literally the one Ortega y Gasset writes about. A generation of social upheaval, from both the perspectives of both Cuban Marti and Spanish Ortega y Gasset, Ortega y Gasset insinuates that this generation also brings about the genesis of the "mass-man". In what resembles fifteen essays, Ortega y Gasset characterizes the mass-man, his origins, and his rise to social power.

In my paper, I am going to and prove Marti as one of Ortega y Gasset's "liberators of the masses" through both Ortega y Gasset's stated characteristics and the writings of Marti. I also am going to determine whether or not Marti is simply "mass" like those he is trying to free or if he is "noble", again using Ortega y Gasset's characteristics of different types of men.

revolt of the masses & one hundred years

Okay, so one of the books I am reading for my final project is this book The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset. An essay on the beginnings of the "mass-man" and his/ the mass' rise to power, Ortega y Gasset also discusses the progression of civilizations. One part that reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude: "...I believe that all life, and consequently the life of history, is made up of simple moments, each of them relatively undermined in respect to the previous one, so that in it reality hesitates, walks up and down, and is uncertain whether to decide for one or other of various possibilities."


Marquez's One Hundred Years is in fact, just this. A compilation of moments in no linear order, many of the moments told in Marquez's story would be considered more common, but it is times when Colonel Aureliano Buendia plays checkers with Moscote that eventually lead him to start a war against the Conservatives. In essence, it is what we could consider the littler, more every day moments in One Hundred Years that truly make the big impact.

cien anos de soledad - myth & archive

After reading the first article by González Echevarría, I found that the article helped me put a lot of different things in perspective - not only about the novel, but about our class this semester as a whole. Many of the themes (Biblical references, myth/ imagination over science, incest, etc) which we discussed in class in relation to 100 Years were mentioned, and after reading this article, I was more acutely aware of these details while reading the last two chapters of the novel.

What Echevarría's article, though, made me more aware of was the stylistic transition as I remembered the other works we read earlier in the year. Clearly 100 Years is completely different from The Jamaica Letter, but I came to see The Jamaica Letter, among the other writings, as truly a more scientific document, as Echevarría suggests the earlier Latin American literature is, not solely a letter from the Romantic period. Reading Echevarría's thoughts about how "the native has timeless stories to explain his changeless society" makes the more circular and definitely nonlinear pattern of the narrator's storytelling to be more understandable, as I now feel I have learned about a reason behind it.