ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a novel detailing the rise and fall of the fictional village of Macondo and of the family that founded it, the Buendias. Since the book has already been outlined here before, I decided to concentrate on the parallels between the book and the life of the author. There are seven generations of Buendias in this story, and throughout all seven generations this family is plagued with incest. The couple who founded Macondo, Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula Iguaran, were cousins. So were Marquez’s grandparents.
Jose Arcadio Buendia created a village that seemed at first to be perfect, and no one did anything without asking his advice. However, whenever troops of gypsies came to visit the town he couldn’t help but get wrapped up in whatever great new invention they brought with them. He was aided in his scientific pursuits by Melquiades, a mysterious gypsy. Unfortunately, rather than finding success in his experiments he went completely crazy and spent the last part of his life tied to a tree mumbling incoherent phrases in Latin.
Ursula, the family matriarch, was a no nonsense woman who was completely devoted to the well being of her family. She also managed to start a successful business making candy to support the family after Jose Arcadio Buendia went crazy. She lived so long that she lost track of her age, and the only concession that she made to aging was that she went blind, although she never let anyone know it. Soon after, the house began to fall to ruin, the flowers quit blooming, and the ants took over the place. Ursula was based on Marquez’s grandmother, whose house suffered a similar fate after she went blind.
You would think that since Ursula was based on Marquez’s grandmother Jose Arcadio Buendia must be much like Marquez’s grandfather. Instead, Marquez used his grandfather as the inspiration for the first human born in Macondo, Colonel Aureliano Buendia. Just like Marquez’s grandfather, Colonel Aureliano Buendia served as a Colonel for the liberals in the Thousand Days War. Also, Marquez’s childhood experience of having his grandfather take him to see ice for the first time figured prominently into the book, and is mentioned in the first sentence in quite a remarkable way.
The Thousand Days War is the first time that Macondo was ever exposed to the outside world other than when they were visited by the gypsies. It was also the first time that there was ever a death in Macondo, and in many ways it was the beginning of the end for both Macondo and the Buendias. Shortly after the war ended a banana plantation was started at the edge of town. There were lots of tensions between the people of the town and the people of the plantation, and Macondo wasn’t really peaceful anymore. Eventually the plantation workers went on strike in order to procure better working conditions led by Jose Arcadio Segundo, the great-grandson of Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia. The workers were eventually massacred, and their bodies were spirited away by train. The only person to remember it was Jose Arcadio Buendia, and he lived the rest of his life crushed by the weight of it. This was also inspired by something that happened during Marquez’s childhood and shows his frustration with the fact that there is still no official record of it ever happening.
Even the style of writing in the book was influenced by the stories that Marquez was told as a child. His grandmother would tell stories of the magical and absurd as though they were simple fact, and that is something that is definitely displayed in this book. There are all sorts of crazy things such as someone being whisked up to Heaven while hanging up the laundry and a mechanic that is followed by clouds of butterflies. Not even time really makes sense, because in this book it tends to travel in circles rather than a straight line.
Lots of people walk away from this book hating it, some people (like me) love it so much they could read it over and over again. I have yet to meet anyone who remained neutral. Either way, it’s definitely worth reading and it’s a story you won’t soon forget.