It is a great deal to decide what to write about when you are applying to college. However, if you want to study literature, this task becomes easier from the perspective of choice. In this case, the best solution is to present yourself as a connoisseur of worthy literature, telling about the books you read during the last year. Here is an essay template on this topic.
I have read a lot of books. Each of them was unique and unrepeatable. But now I want to talk about books that have become special for me over the past year. I will begin from the “ One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez.
This is the apogee of the writer’s creative skill. When the novel was issued for the first time, its author was forty years old. He accumulated a huge baggage of life experience, which he embodied in the novel. As for most of the works of Marquez for the novel “ One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the fuzziness of the faces of space, time, reality and fantasy is characteristic. The novel is impregnated with magic and sorcery, alchemy and fantasy, prophecy and fortune telling, predictions and riddles. It reminds a kind fairy-tail, but there is a problem that the heroes of the novel cannot solve. It is loneliness.
Loneliness is a hereditary trait, a family sign and the “ curse” of the genus Buendia, but we see that family members are locked in their loneliness not immediately, but as a result of various life situations. Fear of revenge, madness, love, and war are not all the reasons for their loneliness.
Throughout the novel, the life of six generations of the family of Buendia passes before our eyes. Their life is shown not completely, but fragmentarily. Marquez focuses attention on every step of the degradation of society, at every moment of an impaired, spiritless and in principle pointless existence of humankind. He brings out all the vices of the human race but does not show the way to solve them. The writer deliberately leaves a lot of white spots in the history of Macondo. This gives the reader space for reflection and reasoning and makes him think.
Despite the importance and depth of the questions raised by the author, irony and fairy tale prevail in the novel. “ One Hundred Years of Solitude” is primarily a philosophical tale. It is about how we should live on our planet which is doomed to loneliness in the Universe. This is a parable about an absolutely real life filled with miracles, which the person forgot to see because of his “ ordinary glasses.”
His novel is a new Bible In which all human sins and misdemeanors are shown. And, like in the Bible, punishment follows sins. This is a sentence of the creator for the absolute madness, for years of sinfulness and immorality, for all created for the sake of profit. And the verdict is that the human race, doomed to loneliness, will no longer appear on the planet.
The second book I want to tell about in my personal essay is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind. The main hero was born in a stinking dirt and was not accidentally killed by his mother. He grew up without warmth and love under the supervision of a nurse, who ruthlessly exploited the boy from his childhood. The only wish of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was simply to survive. The desire to avenge himself appeared later. His name in the translation from French means a frog.
What a dirty “ Frog” could have in his heart apart from hatred of people and revenge for his worsened life? The answer is obvious. But the crowd is guided not by reason but by feelings. Even before the execution of the murderer, the crowd is crazy about the perfume, from its idol, forgetting that those scents are infused with the torment of the dead women. However, the true triumph of the perfumer was not achieved, because he was not able to feel the usual human pleasure. He hated people; he created perfumes not for them, but for his own pleasure.
Nothing more interested him. The author with his story-parable reveals to us the secret of human relations. The smell in one way or another affects the subconscious of a person and causes different feelings, even if one does not suspect their source. It was such an invention made by Grenouille, learning to reproduce any fragrances, and then feelings. But the tragedy is that geniuses are not only good but also evil ones. That is what causes the sadness of the story. Beauty and pleasure cannot be created on the grounds of death, violence, and hatred. If a genius chooses the path of evil, the immense power of his talent destroys himself and leaves nothing useful to the world.
References
- One hundred years of solitude, Gabriel GarcíaMárquez – Gregory Rabassa – Penguin Books – 2014
