“A DVANCING IN THE O PPOSITE
D IRECTION
FROM R EALITY ”:
O NE H UNDRED Y EARS
OF S OLITUDE IS A
DECODIFICATION OF THE NATURAL ORDER
The novel deliberately undermines the trend
toward rational objectivity.
It presents the laws of the universe, not as if they
were objective and self-evident facts, but instead
as if they were unnatural and strange
productions of man’s mind.
Though Melquíades and José Arcadio Buendía,
like other scientists, wonder at the profound
mystery of reality, both men’s scientific quests
are fuelled largely by alchemy rather than by
modern science.
The science García Márquez weaves into One
Hundred Years of Solitude’s fabric is alchemy,
while the age of modern technology stands
outside of the magical realist world of the text.
A LCHEMY AND MAGICAL REALISM
Just as magical realism relies on the juxtaposition
of two “realities”—the supernatural and the
everyday—so too does alchemy rely on a
dichotomy, that is, on its simultaneous physical
and spiritual goals.
Both alchemy and magical realism depend on the
earthly as well as the “other-worldly.”
The magical realist writer is an alchemist of
words; he metamorphoses both the everyday
and the supernatural until they meet on common
ground.
Alchemy reinforces the sense of a magically real
world, stressing that what we know as science,
Macondons believe to be magic, and vice versa.
Melquíades brings the outside (specifically
modern science) to the attention of Macondo
not in order to clarify things but rather to mystify.
The inhabitants of Macondo attempt to
reconfigure the outside world into something
magical as it invades the interior of the text and
the town.
One Hundred Years of Solitude makes no
attempts to codify the magical; rather, in
Macondo, it is reality that must be rationalized.
the balance of the magical and the real is a
necessity in Macondo. To do without reality is to
go insane, as José Arcadio Buendía proves.
Colonel Aureliano’s final solitude proves that to
forego the supernatural is no less dangerous in
Macondo than is José Arcadio Buendía’s loss of
reality.
ALCHEMY
Among the many alchemists García Márquez
creates in One Hundred Years, Melquíades stands
out.
He and his alchemy arrive on the first page, on
the heels of the Buendía family.
The home of alchemy in the text—Melquíades’s
room—is also residence for, or connected with,
many of the magical realist events that occur in
the novel.
Melquíades’s influence over the Buendías
produces a long line of alchemists.
the patriarch of the family, José Arcadio Buendía,
is Melquíades’s first student.
But his neglect of those miracles results in his
ultimate failure.
José Arcadio Buendía’s lost sense of time offers
the most telling bit of evidence that he has failed
as an alchemist. “Today is Monday, too,”
Monday corresponds to silver, the “little work” of
alchemy when compared to the “great work,”
that is, the progression from silver to gold
Aureliano can only be tempted away from the
alchemy lab by two things: war and women.
The gold fish he fashions, melts down, and then
recreates in his old age seem to connect
Aureliano symbolically to the quest for the
philosopher’s stone, since the fish is a most
common symbol for Christ, who is in turn
frequently used in alchemical texts as a symbol
of the philosopher’s stone.
Next students were Aureliano Segundo
And José Arcadio Segundo
He shows the most promise as an alchemist.
He is the only Buendía, in fact, to make Melquíades’s lab
his permanent residence.
As the sole survivor of the Banana Company massacre, he
seeks solace in his work.
o
García Márquez describes José Arcadio Segundo
through a series of alchemical references like Arab
eyes.
o
Aureliano Babilonia deserves mention among the
Buendía alchemists.
Like Colonel Aureliano and the patriarch, José
Arcadio Buendía, Aureliano’s alchemy is undone
by his passion for a woman.
He is the last in a long line of Buendía men who,
for one reason or another, never fully experience
complete and total immersion in alchemy.
M ACONDO AS M ACROCOSM
The creation and destruction of the Buendía line in
Macondo can be considered García Márquez’s
attempt at one “run-through” of the alchemical
process.
In this macrocosmic vision of One Hundred Years of
Solitude, the characters must be the ingredients or
“elements.”
As an alchemist repeats his experiments in order to
purify the process, Marquez shows that the impurity
of Macondo (which is buendia’s incest) must be
filtered out.
C HARACTERS
AS ELEMENTS
Melquíades can be considered the materia prima
of alchemy in the text.
The many Aurelianos with gold in their names,
are perhaps the most obvious.
To begin the process, alchemist needed sulphur
and mercury.
The alchemical process has six stages.
Although there were six generations, no result
came out. Because they grow multiplicatively
rather than spiritually.
From one Aureliano spring seventeen golden
sons; on the surface, then, it looks as though
Macondo fulfills the cycle of alchemy. Instead, it
is a multiplication that goes nowhere, since only
one son will even live into his twenties.
The Buendía line ends just as it begins—with an
incestuous couple and their “golden” offspring.
“Races condemned to one hundred years of
solitude did not have a second opportunity on
earth”
Their failure to make the final alchemical leap
suggests that the macrocosmic alchemy of One
Hundred Years of Solitude will fail as well.
Though the Buendía family fails, García Márquez
succeeds in his literary alchemy. He creates a
world where the believable is unbelievable and
where the odd barely causes a stir.
Magical realism suspends the fate of the
Macondons by trapping them in a cyclical web
from which they cannot escape. Macondo must,
like the alchemists’ experiments, be redone, tried
again, and refined.
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