One hundred years of solitude

A comprehensive analysis of multiple themes interwoven in the novel.

1. ANALYSIS OF THEMES BY SADIQA BATOOL NAQVI

2. SOLITUDE

3. The most dominant theme as evident from the title also. Solitude does not stand only for ‘loneliness’ in the novel but refers to withdrawal, alienation, retreat and isolation also. One form of solitude is that of madness. The first Jose Arcadio’s solitude is being tied to a tree , speaking an unknown language , and lost in thought.

4. The ultimate expression of solitude is Colonel Aureliano’s achievement of absolute power,” an inner coldness which shattered his bones. Consequently, he orders a chalk circle to be marked around him at all times allowing nobody to approach him. Amaranta is another extreme example . She keeps her hand bandaged as a sign of her ‘solitude unto death’.

5. All the other characters have lesser forms of these two extremes. They either’ lost in solitude’ or ‘achieve an honourable pact with solitude’.

6. FATE AND CHANCE

7. Commenting about the plot of his novel, Marquez once said ,” It is the story of a family who for a hundred years did everything they could to prevent having a son with Pig’s tail, and just because of their very efforts to avoid having one, ended up by doing so’. The fate of the women in the novel is Eve’s fate. they bear the pain of birth knowing in advance their children’s fate.

8. Ursula’s attempt to avoid taking part in this fate is not only circumvented, but her efforts prompt her family’s expulsion from home under the shadow of a murder. Thus the cycle of violence, incest and procreation starts and all efforts to alter this course fail. For instance , Fernanda decides the fate of her children but receives hatred in return.

9. The epigraph of Melquidas’s manuscript aptly points towards the role of fate, “The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.”

10. Religious Symbolism

11. Symbolically, Macondo is just like the ‘Garden of Eden’, where Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia are like Adam & Eve ,producing the long line of Buendia family. The city is full of innocence and joy in the beginning ,with no death and no war.

12. The incest of Ursula & Jose Arcadio relates to the idea of ‘Original Sin’, and results in the inevitable burden of solitude in all the offsprings . As Garden of Eden was invaded by Satan, similarly Macondo lost its peace and innocence when foreign imperialism came in with devastating effects.

13. According to Bible, as a devastating flood was sent by God to purify the world of sinfulness, in the same way Macondo receives a flood of rains for five years after the ‘Banana Massacre’ as it is a way of cleansing Macondo from all the impurities brought to it by technology. The book begins with a story of creation and ends with total destruction

14. TIME

15. Playing a role in the development of fate is the nature of time. Throughout the novel, time moves in ways that are non-linear. When Ursula sees Aurliano Triste planning for thr railroad just as his grandfather Jose Arcadio planned Macondo’s development, it “confirmed her impression that time was going a circle” She makes similar observations about her great grandson Jose Arcadio Segundo, whose actions resemble those of her son Aureliano

16. Time and the circular history of the Buendia family. Every child is named after a family member and their personality traits are also repeated within every generation. The name creates a predestined character in the child. Every family member experiences extreme solitude.

17. The characters seem to have no control over their own history or destiny, so that history inevitably repeats itself and they have no real future besides what fate has for them. “it’s as if the world were repeating itself”(320)-Ursula This circular or non-linear sense of time ,along with the mythical elements of the novel, create the feeling that time is nothing more than an illusion, which motivates the reader to interpret the situations in a unique way.

18. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

19. One Hundred Years Of Solitude also reflects political ideas that apply to Latin America as a whole . Latin America once had a thriving population of native(Aztecs & Incas) but , slowly, as European explorers arrived , the native population had to adjust to the technology and capitalism that the outsiders brought with them.

20. Similarly Macondo begins as a very simple settlement , and money and technology become common only when the outsiders arrive . In addition to mirroring this early stage of Latin America’s growth , civil wars & political unrest; dictatorships in various countries have been condemned . Though in real life Marquez was a staunch communist , yet his objective depiction of the atrocities of dictatorships show that his communist sympathies do not extend to the cruel governments that communism sometimes produces.

21. One Hundred Years of Solitude is an extremely ambitious novel.

22. To a certain extent, in its sketching of the histories of civil war, plantations, and labor unrest, One Hundred Years of Solitude tells a story about Colombian history and, even more broadly, about Latin America’s struggles with colonialism and with its own emergence into modernity .

23. García Márquez’s masterpiece, however, appeals not just to Latin American experiences, but to larger questions about human nature. It is, in the end, a novel as much about specific social and historical circumstances—disguised by fiction and fantasy—as about the possibility of love and the sadness of alienation and solitude.