Obsession is one of the greatest obstacles for humanity to overcome. In Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley and Gabriel Garcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, the motif of obsession helps characterize and even foreshadow the fate of the characters. Both novels illustrate that obsessions with an object or person lead to death, but the novels differ in how they depict the effects of these obsessions on humanity. Before continuing this analysis, obsession will be clearly defined. For the purposes of this essay, obsession will be characterized by three concepts: the character is shown constantly contemplating the desired object or person, most of a character's actions or goals are oriented towards the object or person and the character is shown willing to go. to extreme lengths to reach the object or person. In this context, obsession differs from desire because desire can be short-lived and easily satiated, but obsession leads desire to destructive means as the character focuses solely on the goal and ways to achieve it. Obsession will be defined more along the lines of addiction than desire. In the first novel, Midaq Alley, the characters are characterized by an obsession with love or money. Hamida, a woman raised in an unfavorable financial environment, is often portrayed as contemplating money and being willing to go against tradition and religion to achieve financial success. Hamida, as she walks the streets and looks at shop windows, is described as having a “desire for power [that] was centered on her love of money. [Hamida] was convinced that it was the magic key to the entire world” (Midaq Alley, P40). This mindset early in her life will affect her later…middle of the paper…in both novels she suggests that addictions lead to a degradation of humanity. In Midaq Alley, the author proposes a way to resolve this degradation through the introduction of a pious and honest man named Radwan Hussainy, offering a solution to this plague of obsessions. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, however, the author destroys the town and almost all the inhabitants of Macondo, a town full of the seven deadly sins and the obsessions that the characters possess towards these sins. By including the destruction of the city, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude offers no alternative to this sinful nature of man, illustrating that no matter what sin or obsession one possesses, all will be destroyed. Works Cited Mahfouz, Naguib. Midaq Alley. New York: Anchor Press, 1992.Márquez, Gabriel García. One hundred years of solitude. Perennial, 1998.