Meaningful Bizarreness
Flocks of yellow butterflies that appear when two lovers have their trysts, the trail of a man’s blood that finds its way home at the moment of his death, and zoological brothels with crocodiles, snakes and an artificial ocean are just some of the examples of the strange and magical places and occurrences in the novel. Having bizarre things is a big part of what makes Solitude magical realist. We see the same irrational occurrences in dreams. 
In “Bizarreness in Dreams and Other Fictions” literary critic Bert O. States tells us that “the assumption that dreams are bizarre, or contain extraordinary images that are inconsistent with realities in the waking world, is perhaps the most universal point of agreement among people who study or think about dreams” (13). This similarity is taken a step further when he points out that “where dreams are concerned, we are attaching the words ‘bizarre’ and ‘distorted’ to a form of mental experience that strikes us as perfectly normal while we are having it” (“Bizarreness” 14). Not only are elements of the bizarre prominent in both narratives, there are clear similarities in their representations. In both cases, the bizarreness of the narrative plots are only considered as such when taken outside the context of the novel or dream and applied to our own waking reality.
The connection between dreams narratives and magical realism is not only limited to the occurrence of the bizarre. Just a little information about how the brain works when we dream illuminates the ways in which we can understand how the bizarre is created in magical realism. Though there is little consensus among theorists and scientists as to what dreams are meant to do, there is an interesting, though not explicit, agreement among States and neurobiologists like Ernest Hartmann which is similar to how magical realism works; during sleep the neural nets of the mind are hyperconnective, resulting in the creation of metaphor. These metaphors, however, aren’t verbal, as in the traditional sense. They are pictorial.
In Dreams and Nightmares: The Origin and Meaning of Dreams, Hartmann posits that “dreaming makes connections more broadly and widely than does waking” (18). He adds that these connections, ones which we probably would not make in waking reality, are driven by the emotion of the dreamer. He adds 
that dreaming “find[s] a picture that provides a context for the emotion” (18). These contextualizations are what he calls metaphors.
Though not nearly as scientific, States also discusses the creation of metaphor in dreams in “Dreams: The Royal Road to Metaphor.” Metaphors are produced because dreams engage in the “collision of images” (“Metaphor” 105). The metaphors are therefore “nothing more than a highly specialized case of what we might call infra association…a process that makes connections among units of thought for which there is no visible or logical evidence of likeness” (“Metaphor” 112). As when yellow flowers rain, priests levitate after drinking hot chocolate, and ancient forgotten rooms are clean, the combination of realistic and illogical images occurs throughout Solitude. The images created by the magical realist mode are metaphors themselves. The mode combines two disparate images or ideas to form a new reality, and the poignancy arises from their deliberate opposition.
What is important to note is that both Hartmann and States believe that these metaphors serve a practical purpose. Hartmann claims that the possibilities that metaphors create can help with problem solving.
He believes that dreaming is a way to experience emotions in a safe environment, and that this act may prepare us for similar situations in waking life. States does not give any specific function that dreams have, but says that their metaphors can be seen as “a basic strategy for getting at certain kinds of fuzzy truth” (“Metaphor” 104). In dreams we are not limited by the rationalism of waking reality. While asleep we have the ability to explore impossible possibilities. Upon waking, we can see how the metaphors made can engender new ways in which we understand our psyche; there is a deeper reality to our inner selves than what is evident through waking consciousness alone. In the same way, Marquez makes connections between the fantastic and the ordinary as a way to explore the reality of the everyday people of Latin America: “You only have to open to newspapers to see that extraordinary things happen to us every day” (Mendoza 36). Marquez claims that everything he writes in Solitude is true. Because not all of Marquez’s readers are Latin American, and cannot personally relate to such a society, that employing metaphor useful: “the frequent confusion of the concrete and abstract heightens psychic tension and emotional impact by creating ambiguity and jarring the reader onto new levels of awareness” (Williams 103). Hopefully, this new awareness will allow for a loosening of the perception of Latin America since most traditional histories stem from a European or American view.
Center: Frida Kahlo: The Little Deer, 1946
Bottom: Frida Kahlo: What the Water Gave Me, 1938
Read more:
Considering Dreams in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Fictional Space
Dreams and Narrative
Magical Realism: The World of Macondo
Meaningful Bizarreness
Marquez and Jung
Concluding Thoughts
Further Reading
About the Author