Time in the mythical Cities of Latin American Literature: Macondo, Comala and Santa María

Abstract

In the paper we address the issue of time in mythical cities in the works One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo and The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti. First, we try to give a definition of the notion of the mythical city and the specific nature of its time. Then we investigate the following issues: relations between different presentations of the time (linear, cyclic, static), the repetition of events, the elements of its ahistoricity, the elimination of differences between past, present and future and the analogy with the concept of eternity in myth, the ambiguity between death and life that is based on the mythical concept of death and the fragmentation of time. In García Márquez’s Macondo, linear time of Melquiades’s room intertwine with cyclic time of the fiction. In Juan Rulfo’s Comala, the boundaries between life and death are erased and there is a common time for all. In Onetti’s Santa María, the fragmentary nature of time influences its perception and the fact that there are two alternate endings to the novel attests to the ahistoricity of time.