Turtlepace: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabri...

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

(New York: Harper and Row, 1970)

Author:

Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colómbia, near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, on March 6, 1928. The eldest of sixteen children, García Márquez was raised by his grandparents until he was eight. His grandmother, Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, not only lends her names to One Hundred Years of Solitude, she spoke to García Márquez's about the supernatural as an accepted part of the world. His grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Márquez Iguarán, had fought in the Colómbian civil wars. The influence of both grandparents is clear in the novel.

At first, García Márquez prepared to study law, even as he wrote for newspapers in the late 1940s, but in the early 1950s he decided to become a writer. His first short story was published in 1955. After spending three years living in Europe, García Márquez returned to Colómbia to marry the woman he had fallen in love with when he was 18 and she was 13, Mercedes Barcha. They have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, which, in the book, are the names that Amaranta Ursula wants for her own imagined, ordinary children. The family went to live in New York and then Mexico, where, in 1965, García Márquez decided to focus on writing his novel. Like Melquíades, García Márquez isolated himself for 18 months while finishing the book. When One Hundred Years of Solitude appeared in 1967, it met with great critical and popular success.

García Márquez then published many more works, including The Autumn of the Patriarch in 1975 and Chronicle of a Death Foretold in 1981, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), The General in His Labyrinth (1989) and News of a Kidnapping (1996), a nonfiction work about the Medellín drug cartel in Colómbia. In 1982 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."

García Márquez has run into trouble with several governments, including the United States and his native Colómbia, for his political involvement, particularly in his writing. He has lived many places, including New York, Chile, and Paris, but he has spent most of the last few decades in Mexico.

Summary:

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of the Buendía family, a clan with such complicated connections and repetitive names that the family tree at the front of the book is essential for keeping everyone straight. While the exact location of the fictional town of Macondo is unclear, it is similar to Marquez's native Aracataca, Colómbia. Both the town and the family reappear in many of Marquez's works. Ursula Iguarán's parents fled after Sir Francis Drake destroyed Riohacha, Marquez explains, and so ended up in a small town in the foothills, where the Buendías lived. When, three hundred years later, Ursula married her cousin, José Arcadio Buendía, she so feared having children with pig's tails that she refused sexual relations for a year. When Prudencio Aguilar teases José Arcadio, he retaliates by throwing a spear through his taunter. Both Ursula and José Arcadio are so torn by guilt, not to mention haunted by Prudencio Aguilar, that they leave with some friends, arriving two years later at the edge of the mountains and establishing Macondo. This background, coming at the start of the second chapter, sets up many of the foci of the text: the way time flows, the entangled family history, the dead interacting with the living, the power of sexuality. This early background also establishes the parallels between Colómbian history and the Buendía family tale that run throughout the text.

Urusla and José Arcadio (I)* have three biological children. Their youngest is Amaranta, who lives her whole life an austere virgin, although she is sexually aroused when caressing both her nephew Aureliano José and her great-great-grandnephew, José Arcadio (III). Colonel Aureliano Buendía is a Liberal leader in the civil wars against the Conservatives. José Arcadio (II) leaves with gypsies and returns many years later as a gigantic, tattooed man. Both of these men have an affair with a much older woman, Pilar Tenera, resulting in their sons Aureliano José and Arcadio. The two young boys are brought into the Buendía house and raised by the Buendía women. Ursula and José Arcadio (I) also have an adopted child, Rebeca, who eats dirt and whitewash off the walls.

An old gypsy, Melquíades, captures José Arcadio's (I) imagination with wonders such as ice and alchemy. He then disappears for awhile, returning to cure Macondo, where everyone has lost his or her memory because of an insomnia plague. Melquíades settles down to live in a little room in the Buendía household, writing a mysterious parchment that no one can understand. That parchment becomes a fascination for various members of the family over the next one hundred years. Melquíades is the first person to die in Macondo, and so he puts the town on the map of the dead. Thus, José Arcadio (I) comes into contact with many of the dead and goes mad, so his family ties him to a tree in the yard where he lives out most of the rest of his life.

Although Rebeca and Amaranta are raised as sisters, they fall into a bitter rivalry over the foppish Pietro Crespi, an Italian pianola tuner. He chooses to marry Rebeca, but fate and Amaranta's bitterness keep stepping in the way. Then, José Arcadio (II) returns, looking very manly and impressive, and he marries Rebeca, who had joined the family after he left with the gypsies. Pietro eventually begins courting Amaranta, but she rejects him and he commits suicide. Amaranta intentionally burns her hand and then wears a black bandage on it for the rest of her life as a sign of her virginity.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía, when he is young, cannot find a woman he wants to be with, until he meets the prepubescent Remedios Moscote. When she reaches puberty, they marry, and she moves in with her many dolls, having a surprisingly good influence on the family. She cares for Aureliano José, her husband's child by Pilar Tenera. She also cares for old José Arcadio (I), who is tied to a tree and speaking only in Latin. She is the means of a truce between the old Macondo families and her father, the representative of the national government. Remedios dies with pregnancy complications, and her picture becomes a central place in the house, with a light kept burning for the length of the story.

After Remedios's death, Colonel Aureliano Buendía realizes he is meant to be a Liberal leader and he goes off to lead the civil war. He leaves his nephew, Arcadio, in charge of the town, but the younger man becomes a virtual dictator. Arcadio marries the gentle Santa Sofía de le Piedad, fathering three children before he is executed by the army. Meanwhile, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, off leading the war, fathers 17 sons by various women on his travels. Those sons later come to the Buendía house to be baptized. When they go to church on Ash Wednesday, they are permanently marked, and much later they are shot down by their father's enemies right through the ash cross on their heads. Colonel Aureliano Buendía, after fighting in so many wars, realizes he was fighting for pride and he becomes a recluse in the house, making and melting down little gold fishes. The Liberals all come to be just like the Conservatives, and sometimes the government even wants to honor Colonel Aureliano Buendía for all he did.

Santa Sofía de le Piedad's three children are Remedios the Beauty, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Remedios the Beauty is of legendary beauty but is so simple that she prefers nudity and is dismayed by the men who want to see her. She is eventually carried away to heaven by the sheets. Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo are twins who in their childhood keep switching identities, to the point where Ursula is convinced that they eventually traded places. Indeed, when they die of old age at the same time, their coffins are accidentally put in each other's grave. Aureliano Segundo marries Fernanda de Caprio, a stuck up woman of good lineage from the highlands. She is very cold and formal, and Aureliano Segundo keeps a mistress, Petra Cotes, in whose house he lives most of the time. Fernanda bears him three children, Meme, José Arcadio (III), and Amaranta Ursula. They give José Arcadio to Ursula to raise, and she is convinced he will be a Pope. He is sent off to Rome to study while Meme goes to a convent to study the clavichord. She has a rebellious heart and ends up conducting an affair with Mauricio Babilonia, a beautiful man who is preceded everywhere he goes by butterflies. While Mauricio is trying to sneak in to see Meme, Fernanda has him shot in the back. Meme stops speaking. Many years later, Mauricio dies a lonely death of old age, paralyzed, while Meme dies a lonely death of old age "with her name changed and her head shaved, and without ever having spoken a word, in a gloomy hospital in Cracow" (p. 302).

Fernanda is left to raise Meme's child, Aureliano. She tries to keep him hidden away, but eventually Aureliano Segundo finds him. Since this grandson is only a few years younger than their own daughter, Amaranta Ursula, they play together as children, often using the periodically senile Ursula as a plaything. Aureliano Segundo takes an interest in the two children and plays with them a good deal.

José Arcadio Segundo becomes a union leader at the banana company that moves in to the town and begins to exploit all its workers. One day, after the lawyers have managed to prove such things as "the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis" (p. 307), the union goes on strike. The authorities call all of the workers to the train station, saying that someone is arriving to resolve the issue. Instead, they begin firing on the crowd and then pile all the bodies into a long train. José Arcadio Segundo wakes up on the darkened train, surrounded by dead people, and manages to jump off, only to find upon his return that the authorities have managed to cover up the slaughter of over 3,000 people. José Arcadio Segundo is broken by this, and he goes into Melquíades's study to try to read the old gypsies parchments. When the army searches the house, they cannot see him in the room. Occasionally, Melquíades's ghost comes to visit José Arcadio Segundo, who otherwise becomes a hermit until his grand-nephew, Aureliano, begins also come to the study. When José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo die, and his playmate Amaranta Ursula goes off to school in Brussels, Aureliano closes himself up in the room, trying to read the parchments that no one has yet been able to decipher.

After Ursula and Amaranta die, Santa Sofía de le Piedad leaves forever. The only Buendías left in the house are Fernanda and Aureliano, who does not even know how he is connected to this family whose name he carries. Fernanda has long been engaged in writing letters to doctors far away, detailing the ailments she suffers. The letters do no good because she uses euphemisms to refer to everything. She is also involved with a fictitious correspondence with both of her children, Amaranta Ursula and José Arcadio (III). She lies to them about how things are going in Macondo, and they lie to her about what they are doing with their lives. When she finally dies, the reclusive Aureliano preserves her body for four months until José Arcadio (III) arrives. Greedy and shallow, José Arcadio (III) continues to restrict Auerliano to his room while he laments the lack of the fabulous inheritance that Fernanda had pretended existed. Only shortly before his murder at the hands of four children he befriended does José Arcadio (III) find hidden gold and make friends with Aureliano.

After José Arcadio's (III) death, Auerliano begins to leave the house more, making a group of close friends. He is sorely out of touch with what passes for reality: he believes José Arcadio Segundo's tale that 3,000 people died, rather than the official reports; he only knows what he has read in Melquíades's parchments; and he does not even know his connection to his family. His friends help him to begin to join the outside world, and he meets Pilar Tenera, who is now well past 145 years old. She gives him much the same affection that she has given so many other Buendías, but eventually she dies. Amaranta Ursula returns with her husband Gaston, awakening a passion in Aureliano. As neither one of them know their blood relationship, they become lovers. When Gaston leaves for an extended trip, they lose themselves in their passion, forgetting to maintain the house or his friendships. She dies giving birth to their son, Aureliano, who finally has the long expected pig's tail.

Aureliano is stunned to realize how alone he has become again. As he watches ants carry off his son, he suddenly understands Melquíades's parchments, which many others failed to comprehend because it was not yet the appropriate time. He runs off to the study, and as the wind pulls the Buendía house down around him, he reads the story of his whole family that Melquíades predicted. Melquíades did not write linearly, but rather "had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant" (p. 421). As Aureliano skips forward to read about the last of his family's being destroyed once he finishes reading the parchment, the reader realizes that she has been reading Melquíades's manuscript.

COLÓMBIAN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Much of One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects the violence of Colómbia, as do many of García Márquez's other works. Colómbia has been independent since 1810, but since the middle of the 1800s has been besieged by violence between the Liberals and Conservatives. These are not so much political parties as warring factions. Their ideologies are not really all that different, and both parties are violent and corrupt. From 1899 to 1902, the groups fought the War of a Thousand Days, which led to the death of 100,000 people. García Márquez's grandfather, a veteran of this war, told him stories about the violence.

The banana company of One Hundred Years of Solitude is based on the United Fruit Company, a corrupt and abusive American company. In 1928, the Conservatives massacred hundreds of strikers and later made more disappear. Eventually, they made the whole event disappear, striking it from the history books. The period from 1946 to 1953 is know as la violencia, a time when 150,000 Colómbians died due to battles for power between the Liberals and Conservatives. Each group had its own guerrilla army, and assassinations and killings were common. While García Márquez fictionalizes all the events in his book, the Buendía family story reflects much of the reality of twentieth-century Colómbian political history.

Questions:

While answers are provided, there is no presumption that you have been given the last word. Readers bring their own personalities to the books that they are examining. What is obvious and compelling to one reader may be invisible to the next. The questions that have been selected provide one reasonable access to the text; the answers are intended to give you examples of what a reflective reader might think. The variety of possible answers is one of the reasons we find book discussions such a rewarding activity.

Is Remedios the Beauty retarded?

Remedios the Beauty disregards most social conventions, seeing them as unnecessary or even incomprehensible. She is unbounded by the clothing, desires, and expectations that restrict people like Fernanda. Her long baths, we are told, may seem to be "deserved admiration of her own body." Actually, however, she bathes because she feels like bathing; the baths are "a way of passing the time until she was hungry" (p. 238). We can interpret this either to mean that she is so stupid as to have nothing better to do than sit around in a bath killing scorpions and waiting to be hungry, or we can interpret this to mean that she is so wise as to realize that there is nothing that is really all that pressing for her to do. When we contrast the way she spends her morning with the man who watches her, we can understand how ultimately practical her line of thinking is. While this man is so conventional that he considers the opportunity to watch her bathe a great boon, she tells him "that she would never marry a man who was so simple that he had wasted almost an house and even went without lunch just to see a woman taking a bath" (p. 239). The bath, for the man, is a waste of time because it is dangerous and he does not get to eat. For Remedios the Beauty, the bath is a place to spend time because she does not bother with conventional timetables and so it is suitable to her situation to stay in the bath. She is, rather than retarded, the extreme version of the artist who is able to free himself from the limits that society will place on his visions. She does not produce writing like Melquíades, because she is the spirit of artistry, free to live as she pleases and ascend beyond all the foolishness of the earth, and even writing is earth-bound. In the end, we see one more contrast between her divine sense of doing that which best suits her and those whose devotion to convention causes them unhappiness because they focus on the most unsuitable ideas. Stating that she "never felt better," Remedios the Beauty gives a "pitying smile" to Fernanda, who is obviously incapable of understanding anything but the ordinary, and calmly rises into the skies with the sheets, transcending "the environment of beetles and dahlias" (p. 242-3). She has moved beyond the physical boundaries most people must abide, just as she moves beyond all conventions, to spend her time in the upper reaches that are most suitable to her. Fernanda, meanwhile, wastes her time "praying to God to send her back her sheets" (p. 243). The first woman does the extraordinary quite naturally because she is not bothered by conventions, while the second woman has only conventions to occupy her mind.

So what role does the writer have in One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Writers can be problematic when they are mired down by convention. Fernanda's "pernicious habit of not calling things by their names" is a result of her over-attention to modesty. When she writes to the doctors, bound in by this conventionality, she is incapable to communicating anything useful and they have no idea what is wrong with her (p. 353). And, when she writes to her children and they write to her, everyone lies to everyone else because it is easier just to present what the reader expects. This leads to frustration and confusion, but it does not provoke any real understanding. Really effective writers are free of conventions, writing not what the reader expects, eventually leading to a complete understanding.

Such is the case with Melquíades, who, as the writer, transcends the usual boundaries. He is not limited to fiction or fact in the usual sense of those words because he writes the future (a type of fictional creation) that is an actuality. In addition, he creates his own readers by magically drawing the various Buendías into his text, and creates the context in which his text will be understood by setting it up so no one will understand for one hundred years. This parallels the way that García Márquez also transcends boundaries when he writes of supernatural occurrences in the same tone that he uses to discuss ordinary ones. He also clouds the boundaries between the reader, the writer, and the characters when, at the end, the reader realizes that she has been reading a text by a writer, García Márquez, but also by a character who is the writer, Melquíades. This is all very confusing, as she is a reader right alongside a character who is also a reader, Aureliano. As both readers come truly to understand the full impact of the manuscript at the same time, García Márquez succeeds in creating a very fluid relationship between reader, writer, and character. None of this can really ever be pinned down with certainty, which is part of García Márquez's charm, so discussions of this issue can be very fruitful. What is certain is that this text produces much more real understanding than Fernanda's silly, proper letters ever could.

How is the house itself significant?

This is a tale of the House of Buendía, which is both the family and the home. For the Buendías, it is almost impossible to escape the home, and even those who leave eventually return. The seventeen Aurelianos, for example, all come to the house to be baptized into the family, and when Aureliano Amador is wandering, hiding from the gunmen who have exterminated his brothers, he remembers this house as "the last redoubt of safety left for him in life" (p. 380). This house is not, however, really a refuge for the family; rather, it is a part of the family itself. Aureliano Amador is rejected from the house because the family has forgotten its past. As the family corrodes, so too do the foundations and walls of the house. When Fernanda is in charge, the windows are closed off, much as the family is closed off from the community. And, as the last member of the House of Buendía faces his end, the house itself is falling down around him.

What does it mean to be masculine?

There are certainly many macho men in this book, but their brand of masculinity is not necessarily admirable. For example, José Arcadio (II) is quite macho when he returns. He can lift an entire bar and he raffles off his virile sexuality to the women. But this is not the type of masculinity men strive for. In fact, it is not actions that are masculine, but rather intentions. Colonel Aureliano Buendía fights in a worthwhile war, but since his motive is pride, he cannot even respect his own involvement. These are men who are macho without being admirable, but there are also men who are foolish because they are so effeminate. For example, José Arcadio (III) is so concerned with his own physical appearance that he is drowned in one of his many long baths. What all of these men lack is a masculinity that is concerned with the well-being of others.

Aureliano Segundo's story is telling. When he is younger, his relationship with Petra Cotes is mostly about his own gratification, as is his eating. But, when the rains come, he loses weight and begins to take an interest in his daughter and grandson. After the rains, he does whatever it takes to do right by his family. Because of this, "For Petra Cotes... he had never been a better man than at that time," (p. 344) and "Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance, and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude" (p. 345). All those hyper-masculine activities made him macho, but when he begins to focus on people other than himself, he becomes admirably masculine. He may be in solitude, but his solitude is shared.

What does it mean to be feminine?

Admirable femininity, like admirable masculinity, requires the woman to think of others besides herself, and it calls for sensuality. Women are not feminine just because they behave properly, or Fernanda would be feminine. But she has no sexuality and causes others discomfort, not comfort. However, The Elephant is very feminine even though her great distinction is being able to out-eat a man. She is feminine because she is strong like a man but has manners and, most importantly, she has cultivated her way of eating as a part of her concern for her family (p. 261). She is the only female character, other than Ursula, who has the combination of strength, sensuality, and concern for others that makes a woman truly feminine in the context of this book. Santa Sofía de le Piedad is sensual and caring, but she has little strength. Meme is strong, but she is thoughtless, while Remedios is caring but too weak to survive her own fertility. As with masculine men, feminine women are scarce in this book. Of course, this is why the characters are so captivating, because they fail to live up to the expectations that they set for their own genders.

How does time function as a character within One Hundred Years of Solitude?

García Márquez presents time as anything but linear. Time plays games with the characters, interacting with them as another character. As Ursula notices, just as the characters' names keep recurring, so too do the events of their lives. For example, Colonel Aureliano, José Arcadio Segundo, and Aureliano all become entranced by Melquíades's manuscripts and repeat the same pattern of becoming hermits. In the same way, Ursula Amaranta repeats the behavior of both of her namesakes. Like Amaranta, she cannot keep her hands off of her kinsman, Aureliano. In a larger circle, she finally fulfills the fears that Ursula had of a child with a pig's tale. Time is then circular, either in repeated full cycles or as one large cycle that comes to fruition at the end. But, time is not that predictable, which is why it is in a sense a character that interacts in unpredictable ways with the others. Sometimes it passes so quickly that everything changes completely without anyone noticing, such as when Aureliano emerges and realizes that the whole world has changed and the town is totally different (p. 418). Yet, sometimes it barely passes, so that Pilar Tenera lives for a century and a half. Then, just when it seems that time will have no effect on her, she dies and is not there for Aureliano when he needs her and when the Buendía she has supported for so long most needs her. At the end, the reader realizes that this is because Melquíades has written the manuscript that way, effectively making time a character. As García Márquez has blurred the lines between manuscript, writer, reader and character, and the character Melquíades has turned time into a character in the manuscript, this treatment of time is a part of the larger playing with conventional boundaries that García Márquez so relishes throughout the text.

What is García Márquez saying about the nature of solitude?

In this book, everyone essentially exists in solitude. Those in love may have "shared solitude" (p. 345), but no one escapes solitude. Some, like Colonel Aureliano, turn to solitude as an escape into futility, as he creates and destroys little golden fish. Others, like Melquíades, use their solitude to do something meaningful. The characters are differentiated by the nature of their solitude, because, although a person cannot avoid aloneness, she certainly plays a role in determining what that experience will be like for her. So, for Amaranta, solitude is about bitterness and loneliness and for Fernanda it is about propriety and restrictions. However, for Remedios the Beauty, solitude is a wonderful way to spend long hours in a bath and, as is also the case with José Arcadio (I), a kind of divine madness. The characters who rebel against solitude, like Meme or José Arcadio (II) and Rebeca, trying to deny solitude in love, end up either dead or sad, lonely and alone.

What brings about the destruction of the Buendía family?

There are many factors that hurt the Buendía family, such as the persistent incest, violence, and hermitism. However, these things are symptoms rather than causes of the problem that the Buendías have, which is a mixture of pride and selfishness. As most of them choose a solitude that is based on their own self-aggrandizement, they bring about their own downfall. Colonel Aureliano Buendía, for example, spends his youth steeped in the "pride" that compels him into the "desolate wasteland of glory" (p. 247). He creates eighteen sons, seventeen of whom are destroyed because of his prideful involvement in the war and one of whom, Aureliano José, is destroyed by his own overconfidence (p. 157-8). As Ursula realizes, "Colonel Aureliano Buendía had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the war, ...but that he had never loved anyone... . She sensed that he had fought so many wars not out of idealism, ...but that he had won and lost for the same reason, pure and simple pride" (p. 254). The Colonel himself comes to realize that he is full of pride, but what Ursula realizes is that his pride stems from an inability to love, an immersion in himself away from other people. This is a way of living that many of the other Buendías share, such as José Arcadio (II) and Amaranta, who as a result has no offspring. In the end it is Aureliano's immersion in passion that secludes him from his friends and his fascination in his own fate that causes him to neglect his newborn son. In his self-involvement, Aureliano lets ants carry off the infant, the only hope for the family's continuation.

What authority does the written word have?

While writers are obliged to create real understanding, official writing seems altogether separate from the writer. One Hundred Years of Solitude underscores the incredible authority that society gives to the written word. But, for García Márquez, the written word is only valuable when it is connected to the physical world in a meaningful way. So, the documents that the banana company creates to defeat the workers legally and the history books' reports of the massacre are grotesque because they are falsehoods that obscure reality. On the other hand, when Aureliano Segundo decides that the Tartar warrior in the encyclopedia is Colonel Aureliano Buendía, it is in some sense true because that connects the written and physical worlds in a satisfactory manner. The parchment itself is worthless until the very end of the book, when it suddenly collides with reality and is revealed as containing all of the reality of the whole book. Thus, García Márquez gives his book credibility because it is the very manuscript that at the end becomes one with reality.

Why is Meme the only family member who does not return to Macondo when she leaves?

The daughters of the family do not marry, except for Amaranta Ursula. But, even her marriage does not last long, as she prefers instead to procreate with a male of the family. This is much like Rebeca, who is, interestingly, not listed as a daughter of the family but as a wife of one of the men. Nonetheless, the only two women who are raised in the family who marry eventually turn to the men of the family as mates, even though both of them originally try to find men outside of the family. Ursula has set this standard years before when she married her cousin, and so even though the men do find wives and mistresses from outside the family, the women are condemned to keep returning to Buendía men. Thus, when Meme has a child with a man from outside of the family, she is effectively making the choice to abandon her family in a way none of the other women have. So, when she changes her name and never returns, it is more a reaffirmation of her desertion than the desertion itself.

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Thursday, February 02, 2006

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabri...

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