“Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de 20 casas de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo".”
One Hundred Years of Solitude always intimidate me for the fact that everyone told me to read it in the right time, and mightn’t even be able to read it at first but only at the second or third try.
I’ve read it once, and I would read it all over again.
My advice, before you enter the world of Macondo the Buendía family, is to keep an open mind and drop everything you know as possible, real or defined by our society. This is what magic realism is about and Gabriel García Marquéz its pioneer.
It had to be a logical explanation to why Gabo’s writing is so magical and superb. It had to be a logical explanation to why Gabo’s writing made me be in the clouds, making me a part of every action and suffer alongside the characters, and still me with a warm heart. The mix of magical realism and intelligent good-humoured writing made me surrender to this author.
One Hundred Years of Solitude portraits the 100 years of 7 generations of the same family – Buendía – while facing modernization bought by the gipsies, party civil wars in Colombia in the XIX century (based on the real Colombian civil wars), the consequences of the exploitation from United Fruit Company (once again based on the real massacre), incest and each of the family member’s solitude. The solitude made them more isolated, unbale to show love, leading to neglect and, by consequence, leading towards a perpetual cycle of solitude and inability to show love.
There’s a certain level of autobiographical content that makes the plot have a more intricate reality. From names from the author’s family, moments of his childhood, civil war leaders to the massacre occurred in Marquéz hometown (Banana Massacre in 1928). As a matter of fact, the idea for the book came from visit the author paid to his mother, in Aracataca (his hometown), in 1952 (the book was published in 1967).
Marquéz tells the story so wonderfully as if we’re hearing from our grandfather, telling a tale where’s no linear time, where creation and development of characters and environment are done effortlessly and subtly. Like we’re watching a movie or a soap opera.
I was able to clearly imagine all of it: Macondo, the characters, the entire plot.
By having so many Jose Arcadio and Aureliano (that fact is related to Buendía’s vicious cycle of time), I had to make, as I read, a family tree to keep track of the characters and what generation they belonged to. Other than that, it was a pleasant and marvellous reading. It wasn’t light one though.
I was truly amazed with the author and with One Hundred Years of Solitude. It made me suffer, shocked, do a Picard’s facepalm.
You may think that solitude is a sad and a bad thing. Even because, being one of the main focuses, is a good-humoured book.
"Taciturn, silent, insensible to the new breath of vitality that was shaking the house, Colonel Aureliano Buendía could understand only that the secret of good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude."
Being solitary doesn’t mean, in any way, lack of attention or company. All of us need our solitude, to be alone with our thoughts, our silence, our peace. Not everybody can face solitude lightly, nor understand what it means. Some people don’t know, nor can, be able to be alone. I know because I love my solitude, my alone time. And it’s vital not only to have solitude but the people around us to know, or at least respect that. In that alone time, in our solitude, we introspect, many times unconsciously, seeing things from another perspective or clearer, end up being some sort of meditation. And that’s what happened to the Buendía family, they fell into full solitude, they weren’t able to come back from it. They were trapped in their own torments, trying to live with it, incapable to see life’s light. It has to be a balance, and they didn’t balance.
In every reading there’s always something that stays in our mind after, to makes us think. More than not theories, connections or justification for the actions and behaviours of the characters. And this “little one” made me rack my brain, subtly, but it did. Questions popped in my head such:
What justified the solitude of a certain character?
What’s the connection between certain action and another?
And also, of course, all of the answers and interpretations come from life, reading, overall experiences and principles that we have. That’s why reading is such a solitary and personal thing, uniquely ours, making part of our constant growth.
I’m so amazed that I can’t say anything else (and I think I said enough!). Finishing reading that last sentence, my heart was crunched, knot in the throat. I didnt want to leave Macondo and the Buendía. Not because they were perfect, since they are exactly the contrary, because that were amazing in their own way, each and everyone of them (especially Ursula).
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
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