Memory, forgetfulness and the preservation of ‘third world’ communities in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons

Abstract

Both Gabriel Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons focus on ‘third world’ transitory communities struggling to survive amidst internal and external forces which threaten to erase them from existence. The two communities are conceived, by the writers and some critics, as metaphors of Africa and Latin America’s respective pursuits of nationhood in the face of challenges ranging from internal conflicts to Western imperialism. While the results of the struggles by these communities may differ in the end, it is the researcher’s observation that memory and/or forgetfulness are made central to both cases as the ultimate keys to self-preservation or characteristic obliteration. Through a metaphoric reading of the ‘insomnia plague’ incident in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the researcher looks at the various ways in which threats emerge and how, subsequently, memory and forgetfulness are configured and ritualised by communities and their representative individuals in both texts when faced with these threats. By focusing on the two fictional communities, the researcher will also tries to establish the significance of memory and forgetfulness in the ultimate survival or demise of all communities, especially in the ‘third world.