Magical Realism: Yellow Butterflies, Orange Trees, and Carrier Pigeons

I'm a huge fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, so as soon as I heard the words magical realism, I felt a wave of excitement. Garcia's novel spans several generations of the Buendia family and is rich with magical detail. An aging woman shrinks to the size of a raisin, a trickle of blood travels across town, a man devotes himself to crafting golden fish, and a young girl's passion for a greasy mechanic manifests itself in hundreds of yellow butterflies that suffocate the household. It's unreal. 

The omniscient narrator of Yamashita's novel is a ball that floats in front of Kazumasa's face and is his companion, pacifier, battered teddy bear (5). This use of an inhuman character as a narrator reminded me of Giocanda Belli's use of an orange tree as a narrator in The Inhabited Woman. In this instance, the orange tree represents Lavinia's connection to her femininity and the earth. Similarly, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest expresses an intimate relationship with an environment that possesses supernatural powers.

As I recovered from the strangeness of the narrative style and delved further into Yamashita's novel, what struck me was her ability to craft so many extraordinary characters with extraordinary lives. But, what are these separate stories collectively commenting on? In class, we briefly discussed the effect of mass production. The people creating the goods are separated from the ultimate product and profit. This is particularly illustrated in the passage:

"When the lace ribbon reached its final destination- the trim on a woman's blouse or negligee or the delicate border of a fine linen tablecloth- it had been bought for a hundred times the money Dona Maria Crueza had received for it. Gilberto knew nothing of the price of his lace, which was as ephemeral as the changing shadows of the banana tree and the foam at the edges of the land where he was born and had always lived" (26). 

Here we not only see the nature of industry, but the juxtaposition of the natural world with the material. Yamashita is constantly placing the magical and the material/industrial in the same space to create tension. For example, the perceptive messages that Batista ties to the leg of his carrier pigeon result in a regular spectacle where vendors sell everything from cotton candy to lottery tickets, and after Chico Paco builds an altar, "the clergy [attempt] to capitalize on the possible spiritual magnetism of the Matacao" (49). The action builds and soon exotic birds are being exploited for their plumage, pigeons are being exploited for advertising, and anything and everything is being crafted from plastic. We have an intimate relationship with nature, but we are constantly monopolizing on its beauty and magic. The consequence is the destruction of romantic relationships, deterioration of the environment, illness, and death.