Outside Reading - Week 1, Post A

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The differences between American and Mexican cultures that I noticed was in the response to modern technology. There are gypsies that come through town with new inventions and the entire community, including those that are opposed to modernization, comes out to see what new things have been found. One new "invention," among many more absurd, is ice. In America, ice was common at that time period, but in Mexico, without the climate and knowledge, ice is unconventional. The enthusiasm is shown when Jose Arcadio Buendia pays over 30 reales to "touch the cake" (18), and then he exclaims, "'This is the great invention of our time'" (18). An American would never say or think something like that in that time period because they were educated to know the phenomenon of ice even if they hadn't experienced it firsthand.