Conclusions and Interpretations of One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Conclusions and Interpretations of One Hundred
Years of Solitude

• Kristen Johnson Brittany Patterson

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Religion

• Macondo is an Edenic city, where Úrsula and José
  Arcadio Buendía are like Adam and Eve, producing
  the long line of the Buendía family
• The city is innocent in the beginning, with no
  death and no war
• The incest of Úrsula and José Arcadio Buendía
  relates to the idea of Original Sin, and results
  in the inevitable burden of solitude in all the
  offspring
• Just as God sent a flood as punishment for
  sinfulness in the Bible, Macondo recieves a flood
  of raid for almost five years after the banana
  massacre, as if it is a way of cleansing Macondo
  from all the impurity technology brought to it
• The book begins with a story of creation and ends
  with total destruction

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Time

• Interpreted as Linear History
•  - The story of Macondo demonstrates a linear
  history beginning with the founding of the town
  and ending with its destruction
• - Can be seen in four major stages
   utopia/innocence, warfare and struggle,economic
  success coupled with spiritual decline, and then
  physical and moraldestruction
• - The story is mostly told in this chronological
  order, so that major occurrences give the reader
  a sense of where the story is in time (the
  arrival of technology from the gypsies, the war,
  the railroad, the Europeans, etc)
• Interpreted as Circular History
• - 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
• - 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
• Its as if the world were repeating itself
  (320). - Úrsula
• - This circular sense of time, along with the
  mythical elements of the novel, create the
  feeling that time is nothing more than an
  illusion, which leaves room for the reader to
  interpret the situations in a unique way

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Society/Economy

• The Insomnia Plague
• - a statement about the economy which
• depends on continuous and rapid change for
• progress, but because it is based on
  self-interest
• and profit gain, destroys the society it was
• created to serve.
• The Railroad
• - shows how technology depletes Macondo of its
  thriving success and its vitality
• Outsiders
• - the Americans and Europeans are never
  incorporated into Macondo society, and remain
  distant from the Buendía family. This
  demonstrates the separation that Latin America
  feels from Europe and America and their need for
  their own identity.

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Latin America

• Some scholars believe that Marquezs style of
  magic realism is a comment about the supposed
  Latin American tendency to see history as fantasy
  and not quite real, just as they fail to see
  themselves as autonomous beings responsible for
  making their own history.
• In One Hundred Years of Solitude nothing ever
  turns out as people expect everything surprises
  them all of them fail all are frustrated few
  achieve communion with others for more than a
  fleeting moment, and the majority not at all.
  Most of their actions--at first sight like the
  structure of the novel as a whole--are circular.
  . . . In short, they fail to become agents of
  history for themselves. . . . The only
  explanation possible is that they are living out
  their lives in the name of someone else's values.
  Hence the solitude, central theme (together with
  the quest) of Latin American history it is their
  abandonment in an empty continent, a vast
  cultural vacuum, marooned thousands of miles away
  from their true home.
• - Gerald Martin

• Scholars say that Marquez is claiming that this
  escape from reality through fantasy will lead to
  failure, just as the Buendía family inevitable
  perishes at the end and Macondo is destroyed.
  This happens once the parchments are finally read
  and the real history is known. This novel may be
  a way of recording true history so that it is not
  forgotten or fantasized.

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Solitude

• All characters are in solitude in their own way
• Unable to fully connect to each other reader is
  kept at a distance.
• In a way, because they share their solidarity,
  they are connected to each other.
• Comala is in solitude in the beginning.
• The more Comala is exposed to the world, the
  worse it becomes.

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Sex

• Passionate without being melodramatic, simple yet
  filled with graphic honesty.
• Honest and realistic sex no exception.
• Sex is not about passion, but more a physical
  need.
• Example Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula.
• Because the first view of sex is incest, the
  impression given of sex is bizzare yet honest.
• More bizarre Aureliano Buendia falls in love
  with Remedios Moscote who is seven years old.

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Sex, continued

• Since One Hundred Years Of Solitude was
  published in 1967, it is obvious that Gabriel
  Garcia Marquez intended that the novel appeal to
  a modern audience. He introduces the characters
  of the Buendia family as a people with whom we
  are supposed to travel through one hundred year
  of life. Marquez gives us sexual relationships as
  one common ground to base our impression on. In
  our world of child abuse, prostitution, sexually
  transmitted diseases, rape etc..., we are able to
  see the strange sexual relationships depicted in
  this novel as no more bizarre than what we see
  going on around us. The development of the
  characters sexual relationships is an important
  tool that leads to better understanding of the
  individuals lives and experiences while at the
  same time giving the reader a familiar background
  common to all human experience.
• Robin Fiorello

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Women

• Women are not weak, but powerful in their own
  way.
• Empowerment comes either through age or strength
  of sexuality.

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Women

• Empowerment through age
• Ursula
• Matriarch of town
• Bears three children for Jose Arcadio Buendia
  that she rears single handedly, against the laws
  of creation. (p. 85)
• For this, she is considered equal to her husband.
• The mother to children

• Empowerment through sexual strength
• Pilar
• Sexual matriarch
• The mother to adults
• Has children with both Aureliano Buendia and Jose
  Arcadio. Has sexual relationships with Aureliano
  and Arcadio.
• The attraction to her is passed down by
  generation, thus giving her a power that no one
  else in the family possesses.

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Oprah

• Oprah chose One Hundred Years of Solitude as her
  book club selection in 2004.
• Instantly went from number 3,116 to number one.
• Marquez is discovering that winning the Nobel
  Prize boosts literary reputations, but nothing
  helps sales more than Winfrey's endorsement.
  -USA Today
• When Oprah selected it, she said "You have to be
  a bona fide reader for this. It takes us inside a
  world where the lines of magic and reality are
  blurred, so stay with it. It's not like anything
  you've ever read before.
• Received criticism for choosing this novel
• not the right audience for 100 years.

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Bibliography

• http//www.literatureview.com/fiction/fict_solitud
  e.html
• http//www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2004-01-28
  -solitude-oprah_x.htm
• http//losingelphie.blogspot.com/2006/01/my-oprah-
  rant.html
• http//links.jstor.org/sici?sici0029-51322819712
  42943A23C1873ALS3E2.0.CO3B2-Y
• http//www.mala.bc.ca/johnstoi/introser/marquez.H
  TM
• http//www.uniandes.edu.co/Colombia/banco_de_image
  nes/