Strange Pilgrims

'Strange Pilgrims' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Summary and Analysis of Major Themes

Strange Pilgrims , written by Marquez , is based on the literary technique called magic realism. Magic realism blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality. It is characterized by an equal acceptance of the ordinary and the extraordinary. In magic realism, the irrational is real and real is irrational. Magic realism often examines the character of human existence and makes an implicit criticism of society, particularly the elite.

Magic realism

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the leading exponents of magic realism in the arena of literature. Garcia Marquez emerges as a master of magical realism. Based on the notion that there is no inherent driven between the natural and supernatural, magical realism juxtaposes detailed descriptions of mundane events with fantastical occurrences. 

In his writing, Marquez interweaves realistic ordinary events and descriptive details with fantastic and dreamlike elements as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales. In Strange Pilgrims Marquez also represents dreamlike magical events in a way that even the descriptive details achieve magical touch of brilliant imagination. The twelve stories of this volume embrace life’s oddness, its poetic incongruities whether they are joyous, disastrous or bewildering. The most effective of these stories feature the combination of fantasy, reality and tongue-in cheek hyperbole that characterizes the best of Garcia Marquez’s fiction.

Crisis in life

In Strange Pilgrims, Garcia-Marquez seems to write about ordinary people whose lives take strange twists and as a result they face the deep crisis in their life. The worlds his characters inhabit, the people around them, the very fabric of their existence seem to me utterly fantastic. Here the characters suddenly find themselves in situations that totally unbelievable.

Theme of exile

If there is a theme that connects all the...