Category Archives: García Márquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude II

As I reached the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance between the novel and Borges’ labyrinthine short stories. The themes of repetition and cyclicity that permeate both texts were whimsically portrayed through the seemingly never-ending, similar fates of Aurelianos and José Arcadios, as well as the inevitable doom of the town of Macondo, where everything ultimately ended up back where it started, as depicted in the novel’s conclusion. It was as though the story of the Buendía family had been stretched out with gradually increasing force on a spring, in terms of spatiality and proliferation, until García Márquez had expended all his energy, at which point he released the spring, returning it abruptly to its original position, bringing the novel to a close. This prophetic end of the story reminded me of Borges’ short stories, particularly The Circular Ruins and The Library of Babel, where the cyclic nature of fate was depicted in a similarly haunting manner, as well as the resemblance of Melquíades’ manuscript to the nearly-indecipherable books in the library.

However, it was not just the cyclical nature of time that fascinated me; García Márquez’s portrayal of historicity through the massacre at the train station of Macondo also struck a chord. The only survivor of the massacre, José Arcadio Segundo, told a version of events that was deemed absurd by the inhabitants of Macondo, who accepted the government’s official version of history, where “there were no dead, the satisfied workers had gone back to their families” (309). This could be seen as a metaphorical event, reflecting the often silenced voice of the “loser” in history, a theme we had discussed in class during the week of Cartucho by Nellie Campobello.

As the novel drew to a close, I found myself pondering upon the fundamental question of whether the fate of the Buendía family was predetermined. Throughout the book, the Buendía family operates according to traditions passed down for generations, and impulsive decisions or acts that confront these traditions often lead the characters back to the same point, creating a sense of futility in breaking out of their predetermined fates, as evident in the experience of Colonel Aureliano Buendía who had fought for years only to return to his laboratory later and spent the rest of his life there as he did in his young age. It is as though the Buendía family is trapped in a cycle of love and loss, unable to escape their destiny.

Ultimately, the novel left me with a sense of futility and inevitability, as the Buendía family is trapped in a cycle of love and loss from which they cannot escape, as hinted at a few times in the second half of the book.

Question: Do you believe that the cyclical nature of time and predetermined fate portrayed in One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects the reality of human existence? Do our innate desires for never-ending advancement (e.g. AI) foretell our predetermined destiny, one that may ultimately lead us towards catastrophe, or do we have the agency to break free from the cycle?

One Hundred Years of Solitude I

As I delved into Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, I found myself being transported to a world that felt like a distant memory, a world that felt like it was ripped straight from the pages of a dusty old book that has been sitting in the attic for ages. García Márquez’s masterful use of comedic writing style was evident from the very beginning, and it had me hooked from the first page. As I continued reading, I couldn’t help but feel like I was listening to the bizarre stories my grandparents used to tell me when I was a child, stories that had been passed down for generations and were now a part of the family’s collective memory.

Despite the book’s length, García Márquez’s whimsical and light-hearted approach made it a joy to read. The Buendia family’s long history was made more enjoyable by the author’s use of humor, which was both masterful and playful. Even in the midst of tragedy, García Márquez found a way to inject humor, as seen in the scene where the attackers discovered the identity of the person who bravely defended the headquarters. The description of the corpse as having “a woman’s full head of hair held at the neck with a comb and on his neck a chain with a small gold fish” (118) was immensely amusing, despite the dark nature of the scene.

As I read on, I was struck by the book’s use of magical realism, which added a layer of folktale undertones to the story. The idea of giving birth to a child with a pig’s tail due to incest and the discovery of a Spanish ship in the middle of a forest were just a few of the many fantastical elements that made the book so enchanting. These stories were written in a nostalgic way, reminiscent of the bedtime stories I used to hear from my grandmother when I was young. They were the kind of stories that didn’t need much explanation, and often defied our understanding of the world around us.

But there’s more to One Hundred Years of Solitude than just whimsy and nostalgia. The secluded town of Macondo, which is located in the middle of nowhere and unaware of the ongoings of the outside world, is a metaphor for Colombia on the world stage. I did not come to the realization that the town of Macondo represented the state of Colombia until I watched Jon’s interview with Gerald Martin. It is the book’s ability to connect real-life events as such and weave them into the story that makes it a literary masterpiece. I believe García Márquez’s ability to make these connections is what elevates One Hundred Years of Solitude from a whimsical tale to one of the greatest literary works of the 19th century.

Question: What impact does García Márquez’s use of magical realism have on the reader’s understanding of the world around them? How does this technique challenge traditional notions of reality and storytelling, and what does it reveal about the power of literature to capture the complexities of human experience?