It’s just another approach towards a storyteller’s ultimate goal: to craft a world that an audience cares about. One example of this is the Rascal novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. So even if you’re not setting out to make something that is strictly in this genre, the ideas from the movement are helpful to everyone. Some authors use the genre as a way to combine elements of fantasy and science fiction. Other famous works of magical realism include Isabel Allendes The House of the Spirits, Laura Esquivels Like Water for Chocolate, and Tony Morrisons Beloved. Harry Potter uses magical realism tools to inspire wonder in an audience while also allowing them to feel like they could be in the world themself. Instead of fantasy, which takes place in a totally unrecognizable world, it can help a reader feel like their own world is magical. Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly. For example, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis a novel with themes that today’s critics would consider to be magical realismwas published in 1915, a decade before Roh wrote about magic realism and well before the genre emerged in Latin American literature. Magical realism can also be escapism rooted in reality.

Fantastical elements can be a type of hyperbole, taking things that exist in everyday life and heightening them to new levels of absurdity in order to shed light on the absurdity that’s already there. In a similar vein, Magical Realism is also a favored genre for those looking to critique power structures or cultural norms. Thus helping a reader understand something that might be difficult to truly wrap their heads around. There’s a reason why Magical Realism became so popular among marginalized or war-torn communities: the genre can help depict unspeakable tragedies and traumas through allegories and allusions. There are an endless variety of uses for it, but in a nutshell, it is a great tool to describe the indescribable. Magical Realism Definition The many uses of Magical RealismĪs you can probably tell from the aforementioned examples, magical realism, while seemingly narrow in its definition, can be applied to a variety of settings, stories, and media. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Midnights Children, and Beloved are defining examples of magical realism. This fantastical touch highlights his inability to let Birdman go. In the film, the actor is beleaguered by his Birdman character and persona, which is represented by either seeing the character or his occasional transformation into the character.

Example of magical realism