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Magical Realism In Carlos Fuentes's 'Aura'

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Magical realism is a part of literature where magical elements are added into a realistic story, without breaking the flow of the novel for the readers. These pieces of literature have realistic stories that have magical elements integrated within them. Magical realism is prevalent all throughout Carlos Fuentes’s book Aura. It is used to test the imagination of the reader and to advance the plot of the story in various ways.

One example of magical realism advancing the books plot is at the beginning of the story on page three when Felipe reads an advertisement in a newspaper that was addressed to him and nobody else. The magical element that was added was that an advertisement in a newspaper was addressed for only one person, but it doesn’t make the rest of the story unbelievable. It is subtle magical elements like this that embody magical realism. Another example of magical realism is on page 91 when Felipe watches Aura hurting a child and walks into the other room in the house and watches Consuelo executing the same movements as Aura. This advances the plot of the story because Felipe is starting to realize that …show more content…

For example, on page 115 he describes feeling a disconnection from his body and says “You're sleeping all alone, far from the body you believe you've possessed.” This is part of a magical element because an ordinary person usually does not have an out of body experience. Another example of magical elements advancing the plot of this book is when Felipe is having sex with Aura and she transforms into Consuelo and Felipe himself transforms into General Llorente. This is when he fully recognizes that they are both not who he thought they were and his perception of reality is fully altered. This really brings the deeper meaning of the plot together and allows the reader to understand the message Carlos Fuentes wanted the reader to

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Ultima is one of the main characters and she is said to be a bruja (a witch in spanish), or one who does and practices witchcraft. "Ultima is able to lift the curses of the witches and also destroy spells of fellow brujas." (7) Also, the man who killed the sheriff known as Lupito had turned into an animal and he disappeared in the mud. Magical realism are the things in life that don’t seem real but in this book there is a lot of it magical realism is almost like magic.

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From the very beginning, it is clear that most of it surrounds Tita. Her actions having a great impact on everyone around her. The very first being the birth of Tita in the kitchen: “Tita was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor” (10). Right from the moment she was born magic realism is used to express the impact that she has on people.

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