Sunday, April 27, 2014
More Attention Please
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an advocate for the advancement of
Latin American countries and the image that they have in the eyes of the modern
world. That being said, the perfect opportunity for him to display these
thoughts was in the acceptance speech to winning the Nobel Prize. Through the
use of pathos, carefully selected diction and examples that resonate in the
minds of his audience, Garcia Marquez delivered a speech prompting social
thought alongside literary exploration.
Garcia Marquez knew exactly who was going to be listening to
or reading his speech, and that the opportunity to speak his mind about certain
controversial social issues had arrived. He took issue with several topics,
mainly slurs that discriminate against the Latin American culture, and
expressed that literature can funnel the thoughts that will provide change to
South American culture. He appeals to the audience’s pathos throughout the
speech, noticeably opting to use a tone that seamlessly changes from critical
to didactic. The people that he says “tried to change th[e] state of things,”
died violent deaths. Moreover, these deaths didn’t receive the amount of
international attention and scrutiny that they deserved. The appeal to pathos
comes from his sense of national pride. When he expresses the “outsized
reality,” he is appealing to the audience’s pathos. Any Latin American person
with an educated background was surely nodding along in agreement as the
Colombian scholar noted several examples of the harsh conditions of life in his
continent.
The diction used to portray the examples of hardship in
Latin America is very precise. He personifies the entire population of the
continent as “pawns.” More specifically, “a pawn without a will of its own.” In
the eyes of the audience, this must be troubling. If an entire continent is
rendered to the level of a pawn, what must a Nobel laureate do to exacerbate
the level of misfortune that has been laid upon his people? From the Argentine children born in prison,
to the first Latin American ethnocide, all the examples that he includes draw
one inevitable conclusion: Latin America deserves more attention. Furthermore,
the attention that Garcia Marquez is drawing for is one that punishes and
highlights the cruel events that occur (and that he describes in his book One Hundred Years of Solitude) while
also recognizing the intellectual richness that can be found in the region.
Overall, Garcia Marquez uses the speech as a means of propaganda
for South America. His earnest plea for life— citing William Faulkner— is a
respite from a long passage dedicated to showing his people’s misfortunes.
Using pathos as his means to endear the audience and carefully selected diction
to come off as didactic rather than complaining, the Colombian author not only
accepts the Nobel Prize, but prompts the audience to action.
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