Classics Corner: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; One Hundred Years of Confusion, Beauty, Magic, Emotion, and Fate

Classics Corner: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; One Hundred Years of Confusion, Beauty, Magic, Emotion, and Fate

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book published in the 20th Century



Spoilers: Make no mistake about it, One Hundred Years of Solitude is not an easy book to read. But it is a book that is better experienced, thought about, and felt. It's the kind of book where images will stick with the Reader long after the book is closed. They will picture and remember those images and how they made them feel.

First come the difficulties in reading this masterpiece, then the praise.

Characters's names get repeated so often that the Reader should thank any deity imagined that there is a family tree that they can consult when mass confusion arrives over who is who.

The plot focuses on five generations of the Buenida family, a Colombian family that settles in Macondo, an isolated village. They begin with Jose Arcadio and his wife, Ursula. They have three biological children, Aureliano, Jose Arcadio, and Amaranta and one adopted, Rebeca. We then go into subsequent generations which boast of a total of 22 Aurelianos, 4 Jose Arcadios, 3 Remedios, 2 Amarantas, and 2 Ursulas. (It's not even a tradition. Other characters talk about the confusion and oddity of the name repetition.) Not only that, but many of the same generations have similar personality traits and physical characteristics, so many characters are interchangeable. They are less of individuals and more like one long continuous chain of the same people making the same mistakes, having the same beliefs, and living the same lives.

It's not uncommon to read about one character with one name and have them interact with another character with the same name, leaving the poor Reader to try to remember which generation that they are reading about. For example, Jose Arcadio the Father and Jose Arcadio the Son have a conversation in which Jose Arcadio (Son) runs off with a nomadic tribe. Then, Jose Arcadio (Father) regresses into a childlike state right before Jose Arcadio (Son) returns after a long estrangement.

The repetition of names gets comical when Aureliano, by then Col. Aureliano Buenida, impregnates 17 women, fathering sons by all of them. Of course all are named for their father, making that 17 Baby Aurelianos. It gets better. About four of the young Aurelianos move to the Buenida family manse and are called "Aureliano X," first name: Aureliano last name: their mother's family name (like Aureliano Triste). Then as if to make things even more confusing, the 17 Aurelianos all get murdered before they turn 35.

The narrative runs less like a smooth course down a stream and more like a rippling rapids down a rocky coast. Marquez writes like a person telling an oral story going on about something without making a point or telling part of a story and leave out vital information, only to remember it later. He begins the book telling us that Col. Aureliano Buenida was in front of a firing squad and had a childhood memory of seeing ice for the first time. Marquez only thinks to tell us later why he is in front of the firing squad and still later to tell us that he didn't die by the firing squad, but died much later of natural causes.


The effect of Marquez's writing is reminiscent of a ring of small children gathered around a wise village storyteller. They get droplets of information. So they lean in and pay attention to the details so they can get more. Real historical events are present like the military takeovers, civil wars, industrialization, and the rise of the fruit corporations. However, the events aren't a concrete focus so much as how they affect this little village and the people inside it. When Col. Aureliano leaves to start a military revolt against the oppressive Conservative government, he puts his nephew, Arcadio in charge. Unfortunately, Arcadio becomes a dictator turning Macando into a microcosm of the situation in the rest of Colombia, a country of great beauty trampled upon by corrupt political and military leaders. Ultimately, the other residents turn against Arcadio leaving him to face an execution as many leaders who begin their reigns with blood on their hands end the same way.

This book and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende could be considered twin spirits. Both are multigenerational books about Central and South American families and both books are considered the embodiments of the magical realism genres. However, both books are excellent in their own ways. The House of The Spirits is technically better written. The plots in the Allende book are straight forward and have clear beginnings, middles, and ends. While the characters are different generations from the same family, they also stand out as individuals. Their personalities, traits, goals, interactions, and ambitions are recognized. It is a book that is excellent on a mental level.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is better on an emotional level. Some paragraphs might be confusing, but the beautiful images are not to be missed. No Reader will forget Jose Arcadio (Father)'s dream of a house of mirror walls that leads him to discover Macondo or the continuous rain that pours down throughout the village.

The long illness in which the villagers all have a simultaneous case of insomnia is another image that stays. As are the means they use to keep their sanity and memories intact like writing notes and placing them on common objects, so they don't forget what they are.

This is a full sensory experience that draws the Reader in and doesn't let them go. It almost has a dream-like fairy tale quality. In fact, fairy tale tropes run abound in this story. There is the jealous rivalry between two sisters: Amaranta and Rebeca that intensifies to death threats and complete isolation for one of them. The divergent paths between Jose Arcadio (Son) and Col. Aureliano is reminiscent of those stories where one brother travels the world to seek his fortune and the other remains inside the kingdom to rule. There is even an eccentric woman, Pilar Ternera, a card reader, who alternates between Fairy Godmother and The Witch in the Woods. The beauty surrounds the book so much that the Reader can forgive the lapses in coherence. It is the deep emotional connection that stays with the Reader.

If there is a book that best represents the magical realism genre, it is this one. There are so many magical touches that add to the emotional experience. Many characters have unusual talents such as Aureliano's ability to survive several near death experiences. As she grows older and blind, Ursula is able to find anything that is lost simply by paying attention to the pauses and breaks from other's routines.

One of the more interesting, almost otherworldly characters is Remedios the Beautiful. Her physical appearance draws men to commit violence or suicide. Even when she wears plain clothes or has her head shaved, her natural beauty shines through. However, she is unaware of her physical appearance because she lives in a state of permanent childlike state, almost like a holy innocent ever virginal or untouched. So of course it makes sense that Remedios' end would not be conventional. She ascends into the heavens, like a saint.

Fatalism is a common theme to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Many characters like Pilar Ternera predict things that later come true. There is a consistent curse hanging over the family's head that occurs during a dream of Ursula's. She dreams that their family line will end when a baby is born with a pig's tail. Five generations later, a baby, Aureliano, is born with the pig tail but to parents who are unaware of the implications and are helpless to stop their inevitable end.

Perhaps that is why the characters all share the same names and are not individually defined as they are in The House of the Spirits. They are fated to become the same people in that continuous chain and the links will continue until the family line ends. This isn't the story of one person in a family, but one family that moves as one person that begins the world with much beauty and magic, but is destined as we all are to come to an inevitable end.