One Hundred Years of Solitude summary and theme
One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of five
generations of the Buendía family, from the founding of their lineage and the
town of Macondo until both are wiped out by a hurricane. The novel is written
in third-person-omniscient past tense. Time shifts constantly: Chapters are
narrated out of chronological order, and the relative importance of events has
little relation to how much attention they receive on the page. Rather than
following a single protagonist through a linear set of events, the novel
contains many plots and subplots that revolve around both the central characters
of the Buendía family across generations and the side characters who interact
with them.
The book opens as Colonel Aureliano Buendía remembers his
childhood in Macondo, when his father José Arcadio Buendía was interested in
all the inventions brought to town by travelers. Subsequently, José Arcadio
Buendía experiments with new inventions, including alchemy and the astrolabe. Úrsula
Iguarán, his wife and the Buendía matriarch, becomes frustrated with his
behavior and his preoccupation with tinkering instead of completing more
practical projects.
Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía have three children:
Colonel Aureliano Buendía, José Arcadio, and Amaranta. Colonel Aureliano
Buendía lives a vibrant and exciting life as a Liberal general during wartime:
He fights for Colombian independence from the Conservative government and
survives multiple assassination attempts. He has 17 children by women he meets
on his military campaigns, and he spends his retirement making tiny gold fishes
in the Buendía house. José Arcadio becomes the father of Arcadio with Pilar
Ternera; when she is pregnant, he leaves to become a sailor. He briefly
returns, hale and hearty; while he is in Macondo, he marries Rebeca and stops
the execution of his brother, the Colonel. Amaranta outlasts her brothers; she
dies single and unhappy at home.
Arcadio has three children with Santa Sofía de Piedad: Remedios
the Beauty, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Arcadio dies after
becoming a dictatorial ruler of Macondo; Santa Sofía retreats to the background
for a few decades and then leaves Macondo to live with a cousin. Remedios the
Beauty lives a short but mysterious life before she ascends into the sky. José
Arcadio Segundo develops purpose as a leader of a workers' strike at a banana
company that is exploiting the people of Macondo; he is the sole survivor when
the workers are massacred.
Aureliano Segundo marries Fernanda del Carpio and takes Petra
Cotes as a lover. Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda del Carpio have three children:
Renata Remedios (Meme), José Arcadio, and Amaranta Úrsula. Meme falls in love
with a mechanic, and Fernanda sends her to a convent. A nun drops Meme’s son,
Aureliano, off at the family’s home later that year. José Arcadio goes to
religious school and meets the Pope; on a visit home, he is murdered in his bed
by teenagers looking for gold. Amaranta Úrsula is educated in Europe and returns
to Macondo with her Belgian husband, Gaston; they are not completely happy
together. When Gaston returns to Europe, Amaranta Úrsula begins a sexual
relationship with her nephew, Aureliano, with whom she has the final child of
the Buendía family.
At the end of the novel, Macondo and the Buendía family home
are in ruins. The child of Amaranta Úrsula and Aureliano is born with a pig’s
tail because it is the product of incest, the fulfillment of an omen that
appeared in the first generation of the Buendía family. Amaranta Úrsula dies in
childbirth, and Aureliano takes the infant into the town square, where he
drinks and loses the child. Later, he finds it being devoured by ants. He
returns to the crumbling Buendía home, where he decodes the ancient writings of
the wanderer Melquíades. As he reads the parchments, he realizes that the
writings predicted all the events that befell the Buendía family. A windstorm
rises as he is reading, and as he reads the last line, the storm wipes Macondo
off the face of the earth.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE CHARACTER ANALYSIS
ÚRSULA IGUARÁN
Úrsula Iguarán is the Buendía family matriarch. As a young
woman, she marries her cousin, José Arcadio Buendía. Together with other young
couples, they found the town of Macondo and begin their family there. Her
mother convinces her that the result of any incestuous relationships, such as
Úrsula's with her husband, will necessarily be a child born with a pig's tail,
so Úrsula retains a lifelong fear of that possibility.
She founds a prosperous business in Macondo selling candy
animals and raises the next four generations of Buendías. Her husband, always
obsessive, becomes mentally ill, and she visits him every day to assist him
with daily life tasks. When her sons and grandsons engage in military activity,
with one going so far as to install himself as the leader of Macondo, she
ensures they follow her will with violence. She refuses to let anyone else in
the family take the gold that a guest left in the Buendía house during the war
years, even when the family lives in poverty.
Úrsula is the archetypal matriarch, watching over the Buendía
family for many generations. Her long life symbolizes the central role of the
mother in Latin American culture. She is not only a maternal figure but also a
successful businesswoman and community leader. Her peaceful death is a reward
for a lifetime of remaining the most stable and capable member of the Buendía
family.
JOSÉ
ARCADIO BUENDÍA
José Arcadio Buendía is the husband and cousin of Úrsula
Iguarán. He is the father of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, José Arcadio, and
Amaranta. He is one of the founders of Macondo and well into his life acts as
an informal community leader; others seek his advice before making important
decisions. When traveling merchants come to town with new inventions, he feels
that he must try out or purchase all of them. He experiments with alchemy and
tries to find a route from Macondo to Colombia's capital.
José Arcadio is the archetypal dreamer. In contrast to his
wife’s practicality, he busies himself imagining a fantasy world of the future.
Symbolically, he represents the other piece necessary to founding a
civilization; if Úrsula is the practical one, he represents the ability to
dream and have vision. Because he fully embodies this archetype, he lacks other
qualities to balance out his extreme tendencies. In his later years, he becomes
mentally ill and must be permanently restrained. José Arcadio is a somewhat
tragic figure whose death establishes an ominous pattern for the men in the
Buendía family.
MELQUÍADES
Melquíades is a mysterious traveler and the novel’s archetypal
seer. He often wears a large black hat and is described as having "an
untamed beard and sparrow hands" (1). He arrives in one of the early
groups of wanderers to Macondo, and he is very excited to show José Arcadio the
world's latest inventions. As a seer, Melquíades connects the “real” world to
the world of mystery. He can see and understand things that others cannot. He
communicates with the gods and has the ability to resurrect through alchemy.
His age is indeterminate; he has traveled the world, and, most importantly, his
writings predict the Buendía family’s fate.
Melquíades's resurrection represents his connection to the
world’s mysteries. He is not a Christ figure, as he does not represent
sacrifice; rather, he brings arcane knowledge, the meaning of which can be
understood only many years in the future. His predictions link him to the
Buendía family’s fate. For many years after his death, his ghost appears in the
Buendía house. Family members see him, especially in his former workshop, which
is left untended after his death until other Buendía descendants renew an
interest in his work generations later.
COLONEL
AURELIANO BUENDÍA
Colonel Aureliano Buendía is the son of Úrsula Iguarán and
José Arcadio Buendía. He is the first person to be born in Macondo. The novel
opens as he faces a firing squad and thinks about the first time he sees ice.
This event represents his duality as a soldier and an artist. He becomes
politically aware and active as a young man when he professes Liberal
sympathies despite his comfortable upbringing in a largely Conservative
environment.
Colonel Aureliano Buendía is not a patriarch in the
traditional sense because his lineage is destroyed. He meets Remedios Moscote
when he is a young man and she is still a child. They marry, but she dies at 14
of blood poisoning. Over the course of his military career, he fathers 17 sons
by different women across the country. He remains unaware of them until they
converge on Macondo for a ceremony celebrating his service to the country. All
but one of his sons is murdered by unknown assassins, cutting off his potential
lineage.
AMARANTA
Amaranta is one of the three children of Úrsula Iguarán and
José Arcadio Buendía. She fights with Rebeca over the affections of Pietro
Crespi and goes so far as to attempt to ruin Rebeca's wedding dress and even
poison her to stop the marriage. When Rebeca marries José Arcadio instead,
Amaranta rejects Pietro in favor of remaining alone. She is courted by Colonel
Gerineldo Márquez, whom she also rejects.
Amaranta represents thwarted identity within a patriarchal
model that allows her no options outside marriage and motherhood. When her
original marriage plans fail, she has an incestuous sexual relationship with
her nephew, Aureliano José. She tries to end the relationship for fear of
becoming pregnant with a baby who has the pig’s tail Úrsula warned against;
this occurs after he returns home from war with the idea of marrying her. She
never marries or has children, rejecting each of her suitors once the man
becomes serious about making a commitment. In her later years, she spends her
time weaving her own death shroud; she is prepared for the moment of her own
death. Her rejection of marriage left her with no other options for
constructing a life or an identity outside the home.
JOSÉ
ARCADIO
José Arcadio is the son of Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía. He acts as a foil to his brother, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, because of his gregarious nature, his travels abroad, and his impulsive decision-making. The narrative arc between the two characters reaches its climax when José Arcadio threatens the firing squad and prevents the execution of the Colonel.
José Arcadio is the rebellious child. When he is young, he
begins a sexual relationship with the older Pilar Ternera. When she tells him
she's pregnant with Arcadio, their son, he leaves with a group of travelers and
returns years later, a crude, tattooed sailor who auctions himself off to the
highest bidder for sex, aware of his power over women. After his marriage to
Rebeca, he steals land from others in Macondo and collects taxes from them. He
dies under mysterious circumstances in his own bedroom, and his killer is never
found. His son, José Arcadio, becomes one of the fathers of the next generation
of Buendías.
REBECA
Rebeca is the orphaned second cousin of Úrsula Iguarán. As a
child, Rebeca arrives in Macondo under mysterious circumstances . She brings an
insomnia plague and a bag of her parents' bones with her. When she is nervous,
she exhibits symptoms of pica; namely, she secretly eats earth and whitewash.
She does not speak for a long time. Rebeca seems to have suffered a serious
trauma, but the circumstances that caused her condition are never named. Like
many characters in the novel, Rebeca has a fatalistic attitude about her past;
it is neither worth dwelling on nor worth trying to correct in the future.
Just as with many other characters—both male and female—her
life choices center on and are defined by her relationship. As a young adult,
she marries her adoptive brother José Arcadio. Together, they prosper and
eventually purchase a home on the main square of Macondo. After his death, she
retreats into their home and almost never leaves it for the rest of her life.
ARCADIO
Arcadio is the child of José Arcadio and Pilar Ternera. He
tries to have sex with his biological mother, but she sends Santa Sofía de
Piedad to him instead. Sofía and Arcadio marry and have three children:
Remedios the Beauty, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo.
During the war between Liberals and Conservatives, Arcadio is
named head of Macondo. He rules the town as a tyrant and locks up, assaults, or
kills those who disagree with him. He also steals money from the town and
embezzles. His mother deposes him and whips him for his behavior. This
represents the recurrent idea in the novel that family codes—particularly those
of the mother—overrule civic or military law. However, he is still subject to
the rule of law in wartime.
When a rider comes to warn him of the Conservative army
coming to town, Arcadio does not believe him. The army executes him when they
arrive.
PILAR
TERNERA
A daughter of one of the other founding families of Macondo,
Pilar Ternera becomes the oldest character in the book. Her lifespan lasts far
beyond that of a normal person; like Úrsula, she symbolizes the eternal
feminine caretaker. She is the biological mother of Aureliano José and Arcadio.
She also shelters and sometimes has sexual relationships with several other
members of the Buendía family, which sets her apart from the traditional
matriarch, Úrsula.
She is a lifelong sex worker who hosts other couples who need
a private place to meet at her house. She eventually establishes a zoological
brothel. Because of the role her career plays in Macondo, she tends to know
everyone's private business. Additionally, she tells fortunes and reads the
future through omens and cards. Some of her omens become plot points in the
novel: For example, she tells Rebeca that her parents' bones need to be buried
to be at rest, and she tells Colonel Aureliano Buendía to watch out for his
mouth before a poisoning attempt.
REMEDIOS
THE BEAUTY
Remedios the Beauty is the daughter of Arcadio and Santa
Sofía de Piedad. When the French women that José Arcadio Segundo brings to town
want to hold a carnival, Remedios the Beauty is named queen. She shares the
title with Fernanda del Carpio, who arrives in Macondo and enchants Aureliano
Segundo.
Remedios the Beauty is so beautiful that she must wear a
homemade sack dress to minimize male attention toward her. Men repeatedly die
by accident while trying to stare at or follow her, and she earns the
reputation of having a scent that causes men to die. Her ascension while
hanging laundry parallels the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In the novel’s
traditional Catholic worldview, this is a reward for her having tried to
minimize her sexuality and remaining a virgin.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE THEMES
THE NONLINEARITY OF TIME
Major elements of this book have a non-chronological
relationship to time. Time is fluid, and events that occurred at different
points in time collapse in on one another. Events are frequently narrated out
of order, and those attempting to keep a close eye on precisely the time often
fail.
Within individual chapters, the most significant events are
usually established early or narrated first, ranking them in order of
importance rather than in chronological order. To stack the text in order of
importance is to create an unstable relationship between time and memory. For
example, in the chapter dedicated largely to the marital disagreement between
Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo, the first event narrated is the long-term
rainstorm. Instead of narrating the chapter chronologically—first the argument,
then the rain, then the cessation of rain—events are narrated in descending
order of importance. This effect can be disorienting, as past, present, and
future intertwine.
Both the character Melquíadres
and his workshop appear to exist apart from time. After Melquíades dies, his
workshop does not age or decay, like the body of a saint. Jorsé Arcadio Segundo
and the little Aureliano describe their perception of time in the workshop as
though "it was always March there and always Monday" (348). The
physical space of the workshop is out of temporal sync with the other rooms in
the Buendía house. Time is described as though it sometimes "stumbles and
had accidents" (348). The workshop’s relationship to time is not linear.
Though Melquíades’s workshop stays eerily the same after his
death, the members of the Buendía family do not. Although a few characters live
quite long—Úrsula until she is over 100 years old—all of the characters
eventually die. Members of the Buendía family themselves are not stuck in time.
Like any other person, they grow old, fade, and eventually die. Even though
time may not be linear, all of the characters succumb to death. The apocalyptic
winds that destroy Macondo also put an end to time, placing the power of fate
above logic.
THE
LEGACY OF THE BUENDÍA FAMILY
The Buendía family has a legacy in Macondo. Over time, they
are well regarded for being one of the founding families. The earliest
generation of Buendías—especially José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán—takes
pride in both their family unit and in the legacy they create. Over time, each
generation builds up the family in preparation for the future. For the most
part, the parents want the best possible life for their children, and the
children want their parents to be comfortable as they age. Though they take
care of other as best they can, the family itself is only as strong as the
individuals, and over time, the flaws of the members of the Buendía family
bring its demise.
Once those who believe most strongly in the Buendía family
die, the family itself begins to fall apart. For example, Úrsula holds fast in
her later years to the control she has over Aureliano Segundo, Santa Sofía de
Piedad, and the children José Arcadio, Aureliano, and Amaranta Úrsula. She
raises them as she would her own children, even though she is elderly, and they
are quite young. After Úrsula dies (342), the family unit weakens to the point
of decay. Santa Sofía de Piedad keeps the household orderly and tidy for most
of her life. In her later years, she disappears entirely, after which the house
itself falls into disarray. Rather than being a single upstanding family unit,
the members of the Buendía house who are left behind act like individuals who
simply happen to have some interests in common.
A clear marker of the difference between the intended legacy
of earlier generations and the true legacy of later generations is the
treatment of the physical house itself. Though the elder women of the house
keep it clean and tidy, the fourth- and fifth-generation Buendías barely clean
the rooms they use every day, let alone those they do not inhabit. They let the
forces of nature overtake the house as they attend to other things, primarily
their sexual relationships. They do not think of themselves as a dynasty, nor
do they consider the continuation of the family line. For example, when Amaranta
Úrsula moves back into the family house in Macondo, she tries temporarily to
keep a few rooms habitable, but she soon becomes overwhelmed. Instead, she and
Aureliano inhabit only a couple of rooms as they let the rest of the house fall
apart. They neither strive for nor do they celebrate the Buendía family
legacy—instead, they have passionate sex and avoid going outside in public
(405). The birth of the fifth-generation Buendía child with a pig’s tail brings
the family dynasty to a close, ending it with incest, just as it began.
PREDICTIVE
OMENS
Throughout the book, omens and signs dictate characters’
behaviors. These omens represent fate. Thematically, the omens in the text
concern whether any one character truly has free will and the ability to make
decisions that do not have known outcomes. Omens, especially regarding travel,
violence, and death, guide behavior and choices. Overall, characters appear to
view the results of omens as inevitable. When the insomnia plague strikes the
town of Macondo in Chapter 3, many citizens forget the names of objects and
events from the past. Pilar helps combat the plague not by predicting the
future but by predicting how individuals reacted to the past. She
"conceived the trick of reading the past in cards as she had read the
future before" (47). Using the tarot cards to foretell the future changes
the way that the people behave, raising the question of whether suggestions
about the future become self-fulfilling once they are known, or whether fate
exists regardless of individuals’ prior knowledge of it.
Pilar foresees slivers of the future through direct omens and
also through the reading of tarot cards. Though several members of the Buendía
family come directly to her with their questions, she sometimes intuits
outcomes without being asked. Her personal history is threaded through the
history of the Buendía family. She is so close to them that she can predict
life events or characteristics without needing the aid of the cards. She is a
female seer, a character parallel to Melquíades. Each seer affects the fate of
the Buendía family in different ways.
With her omens, Pilar spontaneously foreshadows what might
happen to specific characters. When Amaranta receives an omen of death from a
woman in a blue dress who resembles Pilar (278), the inevitability of her own
imminent demise calms her. Instead of feeling panic, she prepares for the rites
of death. The omen gives her comfort and strength as she weaves her own shroud,
settles her affairs, and has herself measured for a coffin. She also chooses a
specific outfit to wear at the time of her death. Instead of fighting the omen
or disbelieving it, she takes it as truth and acts accordingly.
ALSO READ:-
- Caligula by Albert Camus summary and themes
- Bluebird, Bluebird Summary and Themes
- Explain the determinants of Interpersonal Behaviour
Whatsapp :- 8130208920
Youtube :- Myexamsolution
0 comments:
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.