The Troubled Structures in William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez

This paper analyzes the filiations and affiliations of biography, architecture, writing, power, and history between William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez. The author argues that the structures of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch are highly symbolic and charged with a rich palimpsest of personal, historical, and national meanings. The structures are seen as troubled as they evoke both a critique of patriarchal power and violence in history even while they simultaneously reflect both author’s anxieties about newfound fame and the power that comes with it.