One Hundred Years Of Solitude Summary, Analysis & Themes

Table of Contents

Introduction

“One Hundred Years Of Solitude” is a 1967 novel by the famed Spanish author ‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez’. It is the story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family, which is mirrored by the development and destruction of their fictitious village, Macondo. Garcia Marquez’s unique narrative style in this work has made it one of the most significant novels of the 20^th century. The book has received universal recognition and has been translated into 37 languages. It was also cited among the works that earned Garcia Marquez the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

The book tells the story of seven generations of the Buendia family in a small, isolated village called Macondo. The Patriarch of the family, Jose Arcadia Buendia, founded the town after moving there with his new wife Ursula.

Characters SKetch

Jose Arcadio Buendia – He is the Patriarch of the Buendia Family and The Founder Of Macondo.

Ursula Lguaran – Ursula Lguaran is the Matriarch of the Buendia Family and is the wife and cousin of Jose Arcadio Buendia. She lives to be well over 100 years old and Oversees the Buendia household through six of the seven generations in the novel.

Jose Arcadio – Jose Arcadio is the firstborn child of Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula.

Colonel Aureliano Buendia – He is 2^nd child of Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula or the first person to be born in Macondo.

Amaranto – He is 3^rd child of Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula.

Remedios Moscote – Daughter of the town’s conservative administrator, Don Apolinar Moscote.

Rebeca – Rebeca is 2^nd cousin of Ursula Lguaran.

Pilar Ternera

3^rd Generation – Arcodia, Aureliano Jose, Santa Sofia, & 17 Aurelianos.

4^th Generation – Remedios the Beauty, Jose Arcadio Segundo, Aureliano Segundo, Fernanda Del Carpio & Pertra Cotes.

5^th Generation – Jose Arcadio, Renata Remedios, Amaranta Ursula, Mauricio Babilonia, & Gaston.

6^th Generation – Aureliano II

7^th Generation – Aureliano

About Author ‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez’

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian novelist, short story writer screenwriter and journalist. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20^th century, particularly in the Spanish language. He was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is best known for his novels – One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, called him.

“The Greatest Colombian who ever lived.”

Themes Of ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’

Solitude

The dominant theme of the novel, as evident from the title, is solitude. Each Character has his or her particular form of solitude. “If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself”, Ursula tells her husband. One form of solitude is that of madness – the first Jose Arcadio’s solitude is being tied to a tree, speaking in a foreign tongue, and lost in thought.

Love

In ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, Love’s various forms – lustful, familial love urges Jose Arcadio Buendia to discover a town to begin a new one. Sometimes familial love lifts its relatives to queenly and papal heights. Sometimes familial love veers into a devasting incestuous relationship.

Post and Present

Because characters are haunted by their pasts – decisions, history, ghosts, knowledge gained retrospectively – nostalgia Complicates their futures. Fernanda del Carpio’s upbringing affects her expectations, which estranges everyone in the Buendia house. Amaranta Ursula’s memory of home leads her back, where her life takes unexpected turns.

Setting

The setting of One Hundred Years of Solitude is the fictional town of Macondo, Columbia, which is much like Gabriel Garcia’s own hometown of Antarctica. The period is unclear at times, but it is roughly from the early-mid 19th century to the mid-20th century. Macondo is an isolated rural and surrounded by Jungle.

About The Title

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ is so named because it describes the town of Macondo, which is relatively isolated from the rest of Colombia for most of its one hundred years history.

Summary & Analysis of ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’

“One Hundred Years Of Solitude” is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family in the town of Macondo. ‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ gives every member of the Buendia family one of the following names: Men- Jose, Arcadio, Aureliana & Women – Ursula, Amaranta and Remedios. In an effort to make the novel less confusing, Marquez has included a family tree at the beginning of the novel.

It is both the history of Macondo, a small town in an unnamed region of South America, and the town’s founders, the Buendia family. The family patriarch Jose Arcadia Buendia, founded the town with his wife, Ursula Iguaran. Because Jose Arcadio and Ursula were Cousins and they have a fear of bearing children with pig’s tails, this fear will linger over the novel.

Jose Arcadio Buendia is an intrepid, curious man with a flair for exploration and the sciences. He delves into one scientific quest after another and eventually loses his sense, forcing the town to tie him to a tree. Both his strengths and weaknesses are exhibited in the Buendia men throughout the novel, starting with his sons Jose Acardio and Aureliano. Jose Arcadio inherits his father’s massive strength and impulsiveness; Aureliano inherits his strong ethical sense and his solitary intensity.

“Children inherit their parent’s madness”.

Both these men go to their extremes: Jose Arcadio becomes the ultimate macho and dies mysteriously after usurping lands; Aureliano (known in the novel as Colonel Aureliano Buendia) becomes one of the greatest most notorious rebels in the country during an extended period of civil war. Macondo, once an innocent paradise becomes acquainted with the outside world during the period of evil war. It is during this period death and bloodshed first come to Macondo’s door; the town remains linked to the outside world because of the fame of Colonel Aurelian Buendia.

In contrast to her husband, Ursula Lguaran is fiercely practical and possessed of much common sense. She is energetic tenacious (She lives so long that she loses track of her age) and spends her life looking after the family line. Unfortunately, none of the female Buendia’s match her fortitude. Amaranta, her daughter, is tenacious only in personal bitterness while her great-great-granddaughters are. Renata Remedios and Amoranta Ursula are possessed of her energy but not of her common sense. The failure of the next generations to be possessed of their ancestors’ strength of Character causes the family to falter as history and modernity storm Macondo.

After the civil war, foreign imperialism comes in with devastating effects. White capitalists come to Macondo and seem to usurp God’s powers with their ability to change the seasons and the water flow. They set up a banana plantation that exploits the residents of Macondo, when the workers organize and strike, they all organize and strike, they are all systematically killed in a government-sponsored massacre. One of the Buendia’s Jose Arcadio Segunda, was a major Organizer and could not face the world after this event.

For Macondo, too the banana massacre brings major change. Rains begin the night of the massacre and do not stop for almost five years, washing away the banana plantation and leaving Macondo in a state of desperation. The impoverished town loses its importance and its modernity, from then on, the town exists in a state of regression.

For the Buendia also the rains signal the quickening speed of their downward spiral. The older members of the family are lost in debauchery and solitary isolation. As the town is abandoned, the lost members of the family succumb to incestuous desire and birth a child with a pig’s tail. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that the history of the Buendias has been ordained since the beginning and that they will never have a second chance.

Conclusion

Thus, throughout the novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ author Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores the Buendia family’s story, spanning multiple generations. It also explores the cyclical nature of time and the inescapable repetition of history through the story of the Buendia family. Magical realism is used to blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy in the novel.

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