Reflective Journal Assignment

The term “magical realism” was first introduced by Franz Roh, a German art critic, who considered magical realism an art category. To him, it was a way of representing and responding to reality and depicting the enigmas of reality in pictures. In Latin America in the 1940’s, magical realism was a way to express the realistic American mentality and create an autonomous style of literature. More of a literary mode rather than a distinguishable genre, magical realism seizes the paradox in the union of opposites. It challenges polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past with the post-industrial present (Roh 16-17).

Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality, and the other based on the acceptance of the supernatural as reality. It differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with authentic descriptions of humans and society (Flores 100-111). Magical realism seems to involve the fusion of the real and the fantastic. According to Internet link research on this subject, some say the presence of the supernatural in magical realism is often connected to the primeval or “magical” Indian mentality, and exists in conjunction with European rationality. Gonzales Echeverria believes that magical realism offers a world view that is not based on natural or physical laws, nor is it based on objective reality. Hence, the fictional world is not separated from reality either?

The characteristics of magical realism include: hybridity; irony regarding the author’s perspective; authorial reticence; and the supernatural and natural. Hybridity illustrates magical realism in the inharmonious arenas of such opposites as urban and rural, or Western and indigenous. Irony regarding the author’s perspective is where the writer must have ironic distance from the magical worldview for the realism not to be compromised. The writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the