The end of the wor(l)d as we know it : textuality, agency, and endings in postcolonial magical realism

Abstract

The magical realist novels One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz exemplify the concerns of critical literacy theory for counter-oppressive textual agency through highlighting paradoxes in the nature of text and its relationship to agency implicit in the interaction between authors, texts, and readers. The nature of magical realism as a literary mode as it fits into postcolonial thought and engages with reader response theory allows for an analysis of the "apocalyptic" endings of these novels that shows that they engage in ontological disruption and conscientization on the part of the reader with reference to their role as reader, or consumer, of texts.