Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Key Outtakes
You know that feeling you get during the last day of college, during graduation you say goodbye to all your friends, many of whom you might never meet for the rest of your lives. If you want to relive that feeling for several 100 pages then this is the story for you

If you do want to undertake reading this, make sure you have by your side, a complete family tree for the Buendias of Macondo. Otherwise it is easy to be confused as to which Aureliano or arcadio we are talking about at any point in time.

I feel love for Santa Sofía de la piedad, the constant helper and ever in the shadow, who never asked anything for herself, and was then forgotten, left a home where there was nothing left for her.

I feel sympathy for Fernanda who despised everyone from the rambunctious Buendia bunch, and in the end, lamented her old age and solitude.

I feel Pity for Aureliano who spent most of his life behind solitude, and was abandoned to fate, out of his hands.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Magnum Opus starts with Jose Arcadio Buendia & his wife Ursula Iguarin form the first line of the illustrious and tumultuous Buendia Family Line. With a spirit of adventure and exploration of the unknown bordering on insanity, they along with some followers leave their ancestral lands in search of a new settlement which was to become their utopia.

There is something with cock fights & ghosts with a hole in throats, as well as a chastity belt.

While crossing the mountains he had a prophetic vision of a city filled with mirrors, where the heat was bearable and lands prosperous, and he found this patch of land and as per his visions named it ‘macondo’.

A Man all too easily obsessed with his passions, Jose arcadio Buendia was often deluded from family duties by the mystical artifacts brought by the wandering gypsies. Magnets, lens, alchemy and such. And he formed a life long friendship with one of the oldest gypsies, the enigmatic mystic Melquiades.

While not captured by flights of fancy, Jose arcadio Buendia was an enterprising and innovative man, whose genius helped design the impeccable architecture of Macondo for maximum comfort for its inhabitants and places Palm trees along the roads, which remained standing till Macondo's last days.

In pursuit of his scientific madness of passion, the upkeep of the household fell on Ursula. A resourceful and enterprising woman, her zeal for business ensured that even after squandering her savings multiple times, on her husbands mad endeavors, there was enough for her to rebuilt their house multiple times while raising their children.

They were, the oldest Jose arcadio, the second Aureliano, first person to be born in macondo, the young daughter Amaranta & the foster child Rebecca, afflicted with Pica & who unknowingly brought the memory plague to the town, which infected the entire populace, until they were cured by a reincarnated Melquiades.

The memory plague was the first indication of the magical realism nature of the story. The earlier instances, the ghost of Prudentio Aguilar, Jose Arcadio Buendio’s visions and the Gypsies’s magic could’ve been attributed to Superstitious Hallucinations and Sleight of hand.

During this whole incident, the boys had grown up to puberty and were in time entrapped by the mature seductions of Pilar ternera, the local wench and fortune teller, mistress to both the buendia sons, who would be the unrecognized grand mother to many of the later generations of buendia, and would spectate over the cyclic happenings of each successive generations.

Also attributed to her is one of more enduring quotes of the story:

There was no mystery in the heart of a Buendía that was impenetrable for her because a century of cards and experience had taught her that the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle.

When ternera is pregnant with Jose arcadio’s child, he panics and runs away with the gypsies.

Here after, there was the first contact for Isolated Macondo with the outside world, brought upon unwittingly by Ursula, in search of her wayward son. And with the arrival of Don Apolinar Mascote, the figurehead governor of the conservative party.

But things go the same for a while, because Macondans have more Respect for the authority of Buendias than the distant governments.

During this brief period of interlude, the taciturn aureliano falls in love with Remedios moscote, a young girl, much, much his junior. But their families agree to their communion and once she is of a womanly age, they are married.

At the same time, Rebecca and Amaranta fall in love with their Music instructor, Pietro Crispi, and hence begins the 3 way rivalry, which lasts for their entire life, results in the suicide of Pietro Crispi, amarantha remaining unmarried till her death, and rebecca getting married to her foster brother, the newly returned tattooed sailor Jose arcadio.

Around this time Jose Arcadio Buendia succumbs to dementia. Raving mad, he is tied to a tree in front of the house till the time of his death.

For a while things are well. Remedios grows to a responsible and capable housewife, who brings joy to all members of the family and is equally loved by them. Even the Buendia sisters put aside their bitter rivalry when it comes to Remedios.

But as will be a trend in the story, someone who is this good will invariably come to an abrupt and painful ending. Remedios was such a positive influence on the family, that she had to die.
She may or may not have been inadvertently poisoned by Amaranth, who had meant it for Rebecca getting married to Pietro Crispi. Guilt from this might be the reason why she refused all her future suitors. Though it doesn’t stop her from engaging Incestuous PDA and frottage and caresses with her nephew Aureliano jose, whom she helped raise.

When things come to head between the Conservative & Liberal factions, Aureliano, fresh from loss of his wife and liberal Sympathizer christens himself Colonel Aureliano Buendia and continues to wage 32 wars over the next few decades, losing all of them. And in time fathers 17 children named Aureliano (ne Mother) who all bear the ash cross from a church ceremony, which would serve as their death flag when the government agents kill them as a warning to the retired colonel.

So Colonel aureliano after a long and illustrious run, having survived multiple assassination attempts, bedded numerous women and travelled around the world, gave up and spent the rest of his life as a hermit, making and unmaking gold fishes in her silver workshop. Which is a common end to one half of the Buendia Males.

Jose Arcadio, after marrying Rebecca, becoming a forceful landlord, revelling in lustful nights and days with his half sister, and saving Aureliano from the firing squad, dies from a mysterious gunshot.

This incident turns Rebecca to a hermit, till the end of her days. She dies shortly before amaranta. Amaranta, leading the life of a spinster, and causing the suicide of peitro crispi, atones to herself, by burning her left hand in the stove, and covering it with a black cloth as a sigh of penance. She dies of old age satisfied with her life choices.

Jose Arcadio & Pilar ternera’s son Arcadio died after turning into a liberal tyrant of macondo after his uncle gave his charge of the town while he fought wars. He was shot by the conservatives, and his death is one of the more poetic ones in the novel. Although to be fair, every death in the story is poetic in one way or another.

Before death, he lusted after his mother pilar ternera, whose identity he didn’t know, but was persuaded by her to marry Santa sofía de la piedad, one of my favorite characters. She who came to the household by marriage, was the eternal shadow guardian who took care of multiple generations of Buendias without asking for much in return.

While Fernanda del carpio took the forcible reign of the family from an aged Ursula, Sofia was the spiritual heart of the household. Which is why, her departure, after the death of the long standing matriarch nailed the final coffin in the fall of the household. After all, if your decade old silent guardian could no longer resuscitate the house from decrepitude who could ?

Aureliano Jose meanwhile fled macondo to join his uncle’s war, to run away from his passion for his aunt. Amaranta had briefly entertained the incestuous love, she must have a thing for guys whom she helped raise. There was some kissing, caressing, frottage and foreplay, but clarity came to her and cock blocked him.

He would return briefly to try and again gain her affection, but his happy married future, as foretold by Pilar ternera was derailed as he became an unintentional victim of a political assassination.

Arcadio and Sofia had 3 children, Arcadio Secundo, Aureliano Secundo & Remedios the beauty. The boys were twins connected by an extra normal telepathic link, which connected them well onto death.

In the meantime, Jose arcadio Buendia and Melquiades would die. Jose arcadio secundo would remain unmarried, and after the events of the banana workers massacre would become a hermit, trying to decipher Melquiados’s coded encryptions in his workshops where time behaved differently.

Aureliano Secundo would flourish due to the luck of his mistress Petra cotes & grow rich. Marry Fernanda del carpio as his legal wife. There was always tension between them.

They had 3 children, Jose Arcadio, sent to rome to become the pope, remedios (meme) Renanta & Amaranta Ursula.

Fernanda is not well liked by the rest of the family due to her conservative and strict outlook on life. When Meme falls in love with a factory mechanic, Mauricio Babilonia (yellow butterflies) she orchestrates to have him shot as a thief. And has meme enrolled in a convent. Meme, having gone mute with shock and defiance, gave birth to Aureliano babilonia. Unable to kill him, Fernanta portrays him as an orphan and raises him in captivity.

Around this time, Colonel Aureliano Buendia dies in his own solitude watching a changing world and the futility of his forgotten wars,in solitude.

Remedios the beauty, who was never one engaged in the happenings of life, and whose innocent allure led to the death of countless men who lusted after her, one day rose to the sky and disappeared. Which is treated as a matter of fact event.
There is also the event where a half angel, cloven hoofed chimeric being is hunted and stoned to death by the crowd. Which plays no role in the main story at all.
The events that led to the formation of the banana factory and the eventual massacre, culminated in a deluge which lasted for over 3 years. By the end of which, all of macondo had turned to a wet ruin. Aureliano Secundo’s riches washed away. He and petra coles strived to maintain a modicum of fortune for the rest of their lives. And the poverty brought them together. And they found love of an intimate kind during old age.

Ursula who had survived the deluge, and was struggling with blindness and bouts of dementia died at the age close to 150.

The deaths in cien anos de soledad are romanticized to an art. Melquiades and the yellow flowers, ursula and the fetus like regression and dead birds.

Fernanda poisoned her husband by witchcraft. Before dying he sends their youngest Amaranta Ursula to Brussels for studies. At the exact moment of his death, his bond brother Jose arcadio secundio too succumbs to his death.

And so we enter into the period of macondo’s continued decline and the life of one of the most pitiable characters of the whole rosters. And one to whom I feel the most sympathy.

By the time Aureliano Babilonia comes of age, there are only 4-5 old people living in the Buendia Household. Following the death of the twins, with whom he had a grandfatherly bond, and the departure of Santa Sofía de la piedad his grandmother figure, he is left in the decrepit house with a scornful Fernanda, and they both live in solitude. Aureliano is in imprisonment, deciphering Melquiades’s parchments; and fernanda lamenting over her solitude and reminiscing the time when she was considered a queen amongst women.

After her death, her son Jose Arcadio returns, and finds a cache of gold buried under Ursula’s old room. He is initially antagonistic to Aureliano, but then grows to care for him. Right as things start to look up, he is drowned by 4 children, who proceed to steal his gold and flee. Aureliano is once again left alone.

The last remaining Buendia, Amaranta ursula returns to Macondo with her trophy husband Gaston, and using his riches tries to restore her ancestral home.

Until this time, Aureliano still confined to the room of melquiades befriends an old catalonian librarian and makes friends with four young men.

In time, Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano engage in a secret affair. Therein repeating the cyclical nature of Buendia men, lusting after their Aunts. Though in this case, due to fernanda’s machinations, neither are aware of their relations.

Amaranta comes to an amicable break up with Gaston, and tries to revive her family, now just the two, and without much financial resources. Which is what I don’t get. No amount of nostalgia would endear me to spend my life in the slum hole which macondo had become at that time.

By this time, all of aureliano’s friends had left for other places, and the wise catalonian book store owner had also been gone.

Only the pure love he held for Amaranta Ursula kept him sane. For weeks and months, amongst ruination, with diminishing finances and no one to call family, they had revealed themselves in exploring each other's beings. Their happiness reached the zenith in the months that she became pregnant and they were expecting their new born. Which culminated in tragedy.

The boy, named aureliano was born with a pig’s tail, reaffirming the fear of Ursula Iguarian that incest would lead to this. Amaranta Ursula died shortly after succumbing to massive blood loss. Aureliano, a man untethered, let his son be devoured alive by an army of red ants.

For the third & final time in his life, Aureliano Babilonia is truly alone.

And this brought about the realization of what was written in the parchments of Melquiades. It was the entire series of events and predictions, as to the history of the Buendia Family. With impeccable accuracy.

But fate was such that, as he finally rushed to reach the ending of those parchments, he came to the realization that, having read them, he would never step out of this workshop alive. Which Was proven true, as he and the entirety of Macondo is wiped off the earth in a biblical hurricane.

And that is how the story ends, sucks doesn’t it?

 

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