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Magical Realism on Born with a Tooth
In “Born with a Tooth” Boyden shows certain similarity to
Garcia Marquez, they both use a Magical Realism characteristic
known as “hybridity” in where Magical Realism is presented
as a collision between two opposites: the urban and rural,
and the Western and Indigenous. In example, Garcia’s
novel “Cien ańos de Soledad” the native and popular beliefs
are presented as a true knowledge rather than as a foreign,
unbelievable folklore. Garcia brought the past to life and
stimulates the reader to think as an important part of human
beings. Similar, Boyden in “Born with a Tooth” shows how a
teacher from the city interacts with an indigenous tribe
and wrap up with an Indian girl sexually, living
her pregnant of a young grey wolf.
“When it comes,the pain will be like that night with him, and
worse.I will open my legs wide and scream and curse and howl.
Then the midwife will back away, muttering prayers and
crying. My baby’s grey furry head will enter this world. He
will bare his white teeth and gnaw through our cord. He
will look at me and smile with black lips and yellow eyes.
He will run into the bush, and he will cross the ice highway.”
(Joseph Boyden, Born with a Tooth. Cormorants Books, p.16)
Joseph Boyden uses magical realism to criticize the realist
issue such as borders, mixing and changes of indigenous
tribes with the western world, blending the reality with the
fantastic when the Indian girl got pregnant with a baby
wolf. Certainly, Boyden accomplish in this case with the
parameters of magical realism because the supernatural in
this story is not displayed as questionable. This
mean that when the Indian girl got pregnant a baby
wolf the reader realize the irrational and rational
opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not
disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within
the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in
the fictional world. Fusioning the real life of indigenous
vs urban challenge with the fantastic of pregnancy of a baby
wolf gave Boyden the basic characteristic of
magical realism.
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