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Examples Of Realism In The Chronical Of A Death Foretold

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Calvino skilfully uses Magical Realism to bring out the relationship between a book and its reader. He exaggerates circumstances, without straying from the realm of possibility/reality. This adds a certain fictional quality to the everyday process of reading.
It has been said that the narrative technique is the soul of the novel. Calvino’s novel is the perfect example of this. He uses the forms of narration in this novel as tools to convey his message. He uses the “experimental” form to pique our curiosity and retain our attention, thus reviving our love for reading. He uses the second person narrative to involve us and to present his message directly to us. He uses Magical Realism so we may question the circumstances, thus introspecting about …show more content…

“But what a coincidence the two of us”, you say. In fact, coincidences play a major role in the novel, much like in Gabrial Garcia Marquez’s novel ‘The Chronical of a Death Foretold’ which is dubbed as Magical Realism due to the string of coincidences which eventually resulted in Santiago Nasar’s death. This is also a central feature in the story from the Arabian Nights that Calvino mentions. A Caliph, disguised as a merchant is entrusted with a secret mission to murder the Caliph, …show more content…

Oh, there’s enough material here to discuss for a month. Aren’t you satisfied?” You reply, “I didn’t mean to discuss; I wanted to read…”
Each incomplete book leads you to another, and while Silas Flannery, the writer in the novel wonders whether he is being controlled by aliens, you begin to question whether you, yourself are in charge of your own decisions.
Italo Calvino describes various futuristic machines in his novel – one that is able to read a text and interpret it according to the frequency of words, another which measures a reader’s interest in a novel, and a third that deals in censorship. He was writing in a period where the threat of technology was closely connected to his theme of ‘literature being on its way to extinction.’ The machines that he mentioned seemed far-fetched but could be possible in the near future.
In the end, you are not sure which is the real book - the one the Reader is attempting to read, the one Silas Flannery is writing about the reader and his book, or the one Italo Calvino writes about all these. Calvino’s hypnotic novel continues to puzzle you right upto the end where you, the reader, are almost finishing ‘If on a Winter’s Night a

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