ragool

Apr 03, 2022

It started with discovery of ice.

Different plot developments may become apparent depending on where the reader focuses his or her attention. The reader may focus on the discovery and Spanish colonization of the Americas; on the wars and fights between the Liberal and Conservative Parties; on American neo-colonialism; on the effects of a dictatorship; on love, the lack of love, eroticism, or incest; or on the solitude and isolation of a town and its people. Any plot the reader chooses has such a plethora of information that he or she would be hard-pressed to organize and recall everything that is taking place.

The lineage and events of the Buendıa family, however, can be seen as the main story in the narrative, regardless of interpretation. However, this still does not make it an easy story to follow. The difficulty in understanding the story can be attributed to the enormous amount of information given in each chapter, and indeed on each page. Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that his first impression, on reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, was that of an aesthetic battle fatigue, since every page is so full of life that it is beyond the capacity of any single reader to absorb (Bloom 1). Mexican author and literary critic Carlos Fuentes, before Bloom, affirmed that One Hundred Years of Solitude should be read at least twice to begin to understand it. Most readers find themselves overwhelmed by the number of events and characters involved and become unable to maintain the plot’s thread. This often leads readers to put the book down unfinished. However, diligent readers will be left with the empowering feeling of having read about a universe filled with strong women and men who dare to dream. One Hundred Years of Solitude is nowadays seen as a classic of contemporary literature, a tour de force of great virtuosity and strength.

One Hundred Years of Solitude begins in medias res (in the middle of events) and covers a wide focus. The omniscient narrative voice introduces great suspense at the very opening of the novel when the reader is faced with a violent image: one of the main characters, Colonel Aureliano Buendıa, is about to be killed by a firing squad. The omniscient narrative voice knows everything that happens to the characters and understands why they behave as they do. The chapter ends and the execution fails to take place. Although the reader is given enough information to imagine the founding of Macondo and the major roles of Ursula and the gypsy Melquıades, the opening chapter does not provide enough information to find out why Colonel Aureliano Buendıa is to be killed. In fact, the colonel never is killed. As readers learn several chapters later, Jose Arcadio saves his younger brother, the colonel, from the firing squad. Within the opening chapter the reader goes back in time and witnesses the “memory” that opens the novel. It concerns the time when the founding father, Jose Arcadio Buendıa, paid for a chance to see, along with his two sons, a block of ice. The contemporary reader may fail to see a block of ice as a great invention, but for a rural Colombian man at the end of the nineteenth century, it was an invention beyond measure. Jose Arcadio Buendia is not naive, he is simply unaware of what is happening outside Macondo. This is a man who does not know about the magnet and sees dentures as a form of magic.

Succeeding chapters introduce Jose ́ Arcadio and give more background on his brother, Aureliano, who grows up to become a colonel. Aureliano marries Remedios Moscote, with whom he has no children; however, he does engender seventeen sons, all named Aureliano, each with different mothers. Amaranta, the only daughter of Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendıa, never marries, preferring to stay home and help around the house. Amaranta’s name reappears at the end of the novel, in that of Amaranta Ursula. Amaranta Ursula gives birth to a son out of wedlock. It is this son, named Aureliano Babilonia, who will be the last of the dynasty of Buendıas. He will fulfill the prophecy that one of the Buendıas would be born with a pig’s tail as a result of incest.

The repetition of names causes confusion to the reader, although the author is simply reflecting the Spanish tradition of passing the father’s name on to his firstborn, a tradition also found in Europe and the United States. Jose Arcadio, by contrast, is recognized by his monumental size and is referred to by the author as Jose ́ Arcadio, while his father is referred to as Jose Arcadio Buendıa. Jose Arcadio, before leaving Macondo to join a group of gypsies, leaves Pilar Ternera pregnant with his son. When the baby is born, he is also named Arcadio, honoring both the father and the grandfather. This chaotic and circular way of repeating the names Arcadio and Aureliano is discussed in depth later in this chapter under the section on character development.

Pilar Ternera is the daughter of one of the founding families, but her social status is beneath the Buend ́ıas. She lives a life of no restrictions, unattached and carefree. She initiates young Aureliano (the legendary colonel) into sexual matters and ends up having a son by him named Aureliano Jose. These two grandchildren of the Buendıas, born to Pilar Ternera, confirm the family’s downfall initiated by the incestuous marriage of their grandparents, founders of Macondo. Both grandchildren are the first Buendıa bastards in a town where illegitimacy is far from the exception. Although Colonel Aureliano Buendıa fathers seventeen sons, plus Aureliano Jose, these eighteen grandchildren’s lives contribute minimally to the way in which the plot of One Hundred Years of Solitude unfolds.

For over half of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the life of Colonel Aureliano Buendıa functions as the leading thread to the plot. Some readers may choose him as the central protagonist of the novel, although he dies—of old age, defeated, without any honors, ignored by the crowds and in complete solitude—while the novel continues. His own family is not aware that he is dead until the next day at eleven in the morning. His whole life seems like one big failure. He loses all the wars he fights, and none of his eighteen sons continues his bloodline. It is through Arcadio, the Buend ́ıas’ grandson, that the lineage and the plot continue. With his lover, Santa Sof ́ıa de la Piedad, Arcadio fathers three children: Remedios the Beauty, Aureliano Segundo, and Jose ́ Arcadio Segundo. These great-grandchildren of the original Buend ́ıas continue the emphasis on the circular aspect of the plot. Remedios the Beauty is named after Remedios Moscote, the child-wife of Colonel Aureliano Buend ́ıa. Remedios the Beauty is free of small-town conventionalisms. Unaware of her eroticism and her beauty, she prefers the solitude of the house, where she goes around nude. However, her beauty is tinged with tragedy, which leads those who become attracted to her to their death.

Like their grandfather (Jose ́ Arcadio) and their grand-uncle (Colonel Aureliano Buend ́ıa) before them, Aureliano Segundo and Jose ́ Arcadio Segundo also share the same woman (Petra Cotes), but no children are born of her. However, Aureliano Segundo marries Fernanda del Carpio and does have three children with her to carry forward the Buend ́ıa name. Fernanda del Carpio brings to the Buend ́ıas the refinement they lack but also the prejudices they had lacked as well. Although Ursula, the founding mother, accepts the first two bastards (Arcadio and Aureliano Jose ́) as members of the family, Fernanda del Carpio, who was educated “to be a queen” (222), feels compelled by social and moral prejudices to hide the pregnancy of her daughter, Meme. When the child of the love between Meme and Mauricio Babilonia is born, Fernanda del Carpio hides the identity of her grandson. This child, also named Aureliano (Aureliano Babilonia), best describes the confinement and solitude of the Buend ́ıa descendents. By way of his solitude and confinement, he manages to translate the parchments written by Melqúıades in Sanskrit. As Aureliano begins to decipher the parchments, he (the fictional reader) and we (the real readers—those with the book in their hands) somehow come to understand why the plot development is so difficult to follow. He decodes: “Melqu ́ıades had not put events in the order of man’s conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant” (446). As Aureliano Babilonia reads the parchments, he begins to read of his own life. He learns that the object of his love is his aunt, Amaranta Ursula, and that the baby boy they have was supposed to be born with a pig’s tail and eaten by ants. Aureliano Babilonia is thus deciphering the instant he is living.

The labyrinthine plot, viewed through the Buend ́ıas’ lineage, comes to an end as the novel ends. As Aureliano Babilonia deciphers the parchments, he and the reader both come to understand that the end is apocalyptical. He knows he will never leave the room of what is left of the Buend ́ıas’ house. He knows his death is imminent. He reads that the town of Macondo will be wiped out by the twirling wind and erased from the map “when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments” (448). However, Aureliano Babilonia continues to decipher the parchments. Why would anybody continue to read in the knowledge that it would speed up his own death? This is left up to the reader to decide. There are those who say that Aureliano Babilonia continues to read and others who believe that he stops as if in a freeze-frame.

The end of One Hundred Years of Solitude is indeed puzzling. Aureliano, the last of the Buend ́ıa dynasty, is decoding Melqu ́ıades’ parchments. He comes to understand that he will not be able to leave the room in the house where he is reading because Macondo will be erased from the surface of the earth. This is written in Melqu ́ıades’ parchments. Would he then stop reading and thus stop the destruction of Macondo—and his own destruction? Literary critic Emir Rodr ́ıguez-Monegal thinks that is exactly what Aureliano does. “He, Aureliano, is petrified forever in the last line in the act of reading” (Rodr ́ıguez-Monegal 152).