Beyond Death

Death is the predestination that anyone can't evade.As the ending of life, it makes people afraid. But deathisn't meaningless to life, it makes the value of life clear.Death is the strength which arouses life, so life is notcolorful without the darkness of death. The binaryrelationship between death and life arouses people toexplore death, while the exploration of death just showspeople's love for life. The understanding of deathcongeals the mankind's intelligence, so death has been thefocus of the spiritual culture such as philosophy, religionand art. Literature further regards death as its eternaltheme. The writers who show the theme of death are countlessin the ancient and modern. They explore death fromdifferent angles and ends. The magical realistic writer ofLatin America Garcia Marquez is a marvelous one amongthem. He elaborated unique theme of death in his works. Thispaper will discuss the problem in three parts.The first part elaborates the symbol of death inMarquez's works. In his works, he elaborated the wonderfulrelationship between death and life: on one hand, death isthe threat to life because it is eternal,strong andirresistable, which has been reflected in quite a lot ofhis early works; on the other hand ,he not only publicizesdeath is unavoidable but also turns death from the stageto behind the scenes, thus as the ending of life, deathshows the meaning and value of life because deathstrengthens the string of life. So the existence of deathis not only frightful but shows the vitality of life. FromSomeone Mixed up the Roses , this tendency strengthensgradually, especially One Hundred Years of Solitudeconcentrately embodies the idea. The second segment explores the form of Marquez'sdeath theme. His works can't cast off the existence ofdeath from beginning to end because he possesses the strongconsciousness of death;however the unique landscape ofdeath which is showed in his works originates hisdistinctive opinion of death. The eternal consciousness ofdeath,the new attitude to death and the way of performanceall stem from his surroundings , experience and theinfluence of literary works. If the writer's strongconsciousness of death originates the extremely calamityof his motherland ,his personal distress and the influenceof the senior writer's death consciousness,the uniqueIndian culture and the composition of Juan Rulfo teacheshim how to make heavy death fresh. The third segment of the paper mainly elaboratesMarquez's wish of beyond death. Observing and describingthe existence of death is not the fundamental purpose. Ithas no practical value and significance. The key is to seekthe significance of death to life. Marquez doesn't giveup this kind of exploration in his works from beginning toend. It mainly shows in One hundred years of solitude.Macondo is doomed to die just as everyone is doomed to die.Here Marquez imagines several strength to save the deadlineof Macondo such as the salvation of scientific ration,love,beauty,religious strength and material civilization.Although all these efforts failed finally ,but theirintention of changing the ignorant condition conforms tothe historical trend of the time. Their spirit of quest isactive and their various tries enrich not only their ownlives but also the history of Macondo. Thus although...