One Hundred
Years of Solitude
By
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Magical Realism
Genre of literature which uses a narrative technique that blurs the distinction between
fantasy and reality and is characterized by an equal acceptance of the ordinary and the
extraordinary; magic and reality are not distinguished.
 The term was initially used by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925 to describe painting
which demonstrated another possibility of reality, an altered reality.
 The term has been attributed to the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier who first applied it to
Latin American fiction in 1949.
Well-known Works of Magical Realism
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The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Beloved by Toni Morrison
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Gabriel Garcia Marquez “Gabo”
 Known fondly as “Gabo” in South America,
particularly in his native Columbia and his home of
Mexico City.
 Born in Aracataca, Columbia in March 1927.
 Lived with his grandparents because his parents
had financial difficulties.
 His grandfather was a liberal retired Colonel.
 His grandmother was an avid storyteller; she sold
candy animals to support the family.
“The tone that I eventually used in One Hundred Years of Solitude was based on the way my
grandmother used to tell stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told
them with complete naturalness…. What was most important was the expression she had on her face.
She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories and everyone was surprised. In
previous attempts to write, I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to
do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother
told them: with a brick face.”
 Garcia Marquez studied law and journalism at the
National University of Bogota and at the University
of Cartagena.
 He became a journalist and published several
controversial articles. He was founder of Prensa
Latina, a Cuban press agency and worked in Prensa
Latina offices of Havana and New York.
 He worked all over Europe and in Latin America. In
1955 he was the European correspondent in Rome
and Paris for the newspaper, El Espectador.
 García Márquez met Mercedes Barcha while she
was in college, but they decided to wait for her to
finish before getting married. They were finally wed
in 1958, and they raised their family in Mexico City.
 He worked as a traveling encyclopedia salesman, a
journalist, and a poet. He was rejected by his first
publisher, but he persisted.
 He was influenced by the writings of Franz Kafka,
William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.
 He had always wanted to write a book based on his
experiences being raised in his grandparents’ house,
but it wasn’t until a trip to Acapulco with his family
that he suddenly became inspired, turned his car
around, and returned to Mexico City.
 He spent the next 18 months writing every day until
his family was penniless. One Hundred Years of
Solitude was the result of this. It was published in
1967.
 Other Works:
 Leaf Storm
 Love in the Time of Cholera
 Chronicle of a Death Foretold
 Autumn of the Patriarch
 In Evil Hour
 The General in His Labyrinth
 Short Stories
• “The Handsomest Drowned Man”
• “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
 Fidel Castro became his most
famous and controversial fan.
Marquez claims that their
friendship is mainly based on
their literary interests.
 He was exiled from Colombia and
denied entrance to the U.S. from
1962-1996, even as the Nobel
Prize recipient. He was finally
allowed into the U.S. when
President Clinton lifted the travel
ban against him in 1995.
 He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 for his novel One Hundred Years of
Solitude. During his acceptance speech, Marquez referred to a passage from the
novel:
“. . .A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for
others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and
where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last
and forever, a second opportunity on earth."
What is One Hundred Years of Solitude about?
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An interweaving of reality and fiction
A questioning of subjectivity
Retelling of the history of Colombia from a critical perspective
Retelling of the colonialization of Latin America
Retelling of the Banana Strike Massacre of 1928
The story of 100 years in the lives of the imaginary Buendía family
The story of the birth, development, and death of the imaginary town of Macondo
The story of the life of Úrsula Buendía who lives well past 100 years old
The story of civil war between the Liberals and the Conservatives
A story of myth and history
Allegory of the rise and fall of human civilization
A story of solitude in all its connotations
The isolation of a culture
The isolation of an individual
The circularity of history and the repetition of mistakes in history
A reflection on time
A commentary on the power of language
The conflict between tradition and modernization
Proof that reality is stranger than fiction and fiction more powerful than reality
. . . Or did you want a simple answer?
Context: Colombia
Historical Context
 Like much of Latin America, Colombia was colonized
by Spain, but between 1810-1819, there were
several wars for independence. In 1820, Simon
Bolivar became Colombia’s first president.
 The novel takes place in the imaginary town of
Macondo and begins sometime in the early 1820s
when there was relative calm or innocence, a kind of
rebirth for the nation. This reflects the “Garden of
Eden” phase of Macondo.
 Macondo is believed to be modeled after Marquez’s
hometown of Aracataca.
Simon Bolivar
Liberator of Latin America
Historical Context
 Colonialism: Clash of cultures; Indigenous
cultures of Mayans, Incas, and especially
Chibchas (in the Bogota area) were over-run by
Spanish colonizers.
 The conflict over the Panama Canal; the United
States took control in 1903.
 Post-colonialism: Western invasion and
exploitation; Western companies invested,
extracted, controlled, and then abandoned
Colombia.
 Battle ground for the ideological war between
Capitalism and Communism
 Cycle of political upheaval—one coup after
another; conflict between the Conservatives and
the Liberals
 Dictatorships and the terror of the FARC—
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—
military wing of the Colombian Communist Party
established after La Violencia of 1964
Historical Context: Banana Strike Massacre of 1928
 The “Banana Republics”
 The United Fruit Company outsourced their labor to South America.
 Workers become discontent with the terrible labor conditions; they held a
strike and demonstrated in the city.
 The United States threatened to invade if the Colombian government did not
intervene to protect the United Fruit Company’s interests.
 The conservative government deployed the army to open fire on the strikers.
 The number of casualties has never been confirmed; estimates range from
47 to 3,000.
 Marquez’s version of the events in his novel has become one of the most
commonly cited.
Characters—Buendia Family Tree
Characters
The book takes place over the course of a hundred years, so the
events and characters are described in rapid-fire succession.
Major turning points flash by quickly: births, deaths, marriages,
love affairs. The Buendía characters are contrasted and repeated
to show the inherited family traits, the bad blood, and the
repetition of mistakes. The Buendia men are divided between the
Arcadios and the Aurelianos.
Arcadios
Aurelianos
Extroverted
Adventurous
Introverted
Interested in intellectual pursuits
Spontaneous
Reflective
Sexually promiscuous
Physically strong
Solitary
Physically weak
Characters
First Generation of the Buendia Family
and Inhabitants of Macondo
Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran
Melquiades and the Gypsies
Characters
Second Generation of the Buendia Family
Colonel Aureliano Buendia
Jose Arcadio Buendia
Amaranta Buendia
The Women Whom the
Buendias Loved
Pilar Ternera, Rebeca, and
Remedios Moscote
Characters
Third Generation of the Buendia Family
Aureliano Jose, Arcadio, and the 17 Aurelianos
Characters
Fourth Generation of the Buendia Family
Remedios the Beauty
The Twins: Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo
Aureliano Segundo
Jose Arcadio Segundo
Big and strong
Thin and boney
Interested in Melquiades’ manuscripts
Wants to see an execution but later becomes
disturbed by it; becomes involved with
cockfighting and interested in bestiality
Begins to have sex with Petra Cotes after his
brother but keeps it from him and makes
Petra Cotes think that he is Jose Arcadio
Segundo;
Contracts venereal disease from Petra Cotes
Gives venereal disease to Petra Cotes
Stays with Petra Cotes and eventually keeps
her as his mistress even after he marries
Fernando del Carpio, the intruding Festival
Queen
Leaves Petra Cotes
Becomes rich because animals proliferate
and grow to extreme sizes because of the
magic of his union with Petra Cotes
Wants to build a waterway to the ocean to
allow ships to come to Macondo
Squanders money and papers his house it
Brings one log raft up the river to Macondo
with the French prostitutes on board
The Last of the Buendia Line
Aureliano
Founding of the isolated town of
Plot Synopsis
Maconda by Jose Arcadio Buendia and
Ursula Iguaran
Appearance of the gypsies, led by
Melquiades who befriends Jose Arcadio
Buendia
Introduction of inventions, such as ice,
telescope, and alchemy
Jose Arcadio Buendia is very curious and becomes very isolated in his interest in
the gypsies’ inventions. He is also introduced to Melquiades’ manuscripts, and he
becomes obsessed with translating them because they contain prophesies.
His oldest son, José Arcadio, is very strong and spontaneous like him.
His younger son, Aureliano, is very intense and driven like him.
As more outside influences enter Macondo, the town changes and loses its
“Garden of Eden” state.
Plot Synopsis
Ursula Iguaran, the Buendia matriarch
continues to hold the family together in
her belief that they will endure desite all
the conflicts.
Technology, industrialization,
imperialism, and other forces of
modernization are quickly invading and
destroying Macondo.
The influence of outside government is
shown through the appearance of Don
Moscote who commands the citizens of
Macondo to paint all their houses blue.
The railway is built bringing in more
negative influences than positive.
Civil wars erupt over the conflict between
the Liberals and the Conservatives, which
causes violence.
Aureliano leads a rebel group and
becomes the leader of the Liberal cause as
Colonel Aureliano Buendia.
The days of peaceful Macondo are gone,
and the government changes several times.
Arcadio, Jose Arcadio’s son, becomes the
most vicious dictator of all, and he is
eventually killed by a firing squad.
Colonel Aureliano Buendia loses sight of
what he is fighting for; winning is now more
about pride. His tradition of handing out
gold fish that represented his cause turns to
his obsession of melting them down
because they have come to represent
something that he no longer stands for.
Plot Synopsis
The United Fruit Company moves into Macondo to
start a banana plantation business. This represents the
height of capitalist imperialism in the book.
Local workers are exploited for cheap labor and the
working conditions are very poor.
The Americans who own the plantation come into
town and set up their own wealthy area of town.
The banana plantation workers eventually decide to
strike, and thousands of them are massacred by the
local army after they are directed by the United Fruit
Company and the US government.
The bodies are dumped into the sea, and the
government hides the evidence. The people all lose
their memory and forget the massacre.
Torrential rains continue for five years, which creates
a flood that causes Macondo to slip into isolation.
The whirlwind of destruction that descends on Macondo is paralleled by the
destruction of the Buendia family and their home, as they become more isolated,
divided, and demented.
As Macondo begins to fade away, many of the Buendia family members are so
focused on nostalgia or their own limited preoccupations that they fail to see the
demise of their own family.
Several members of the Buendia family have become incestuously obsessed,
which literally causes the end of the family line, but also symbolically reflects their
isolation.
Finally, Aureliano (II) Babilonia, the last
surviving Buendía, translates the ancient
manuscripts of Melquiades, which Jose
Arcadio Buendia was originally obsessed
with, and discovers that all the predictions
are true and they have only been living out
their predetermined fate.
The book makes a full circle as the town of
Macondo returns to its isolated state.
Motifs and Themes
The Gypsies
The Railroad
The Gold Fish
Yellow Flowers
Rain/Deluge
Time and History
The Bible
Prophesies/Manuscript
Memory and Forgetfulness
Technology versus Tradition
The Power of Language
Subjectivity/Perception
Rhetorical Devices
Compact writing style
Fast paced narration
Third person omniscient
References to TIME
Character repetitions and confusion
Foreshadowing, flash-forward, and flashback
Magical realism
“Brick face” narration of magical events
Allusions
Primary Characteristics of Magical Realism
1. The irreducible element of magic defies the laws of the universe as we know it. Proof
of the irreducible element of magic is that it is seen by more than one person so that
the event cannot be blamed on hallucination or a dream.
2. The reader hesitates between the different interpretations of an event so that he/she
does not know for sure which is correct. The hesitation occurs when deciding between
the uncanny and the marvelous.
*uncanny—can be explained by circumstances within the real world
*marvelous—new concepts of the world need to be developed in order to understand it
3. The world is described in great detail, which is also a characteristic of literature from
the genre of realism.
4. There is a closeness between the two realms or worlds – the magical and the real.
5. Basic concepts are questioned, such as time, space, and identity.
Secondary Characteristics of Magical Realism
1. Metafictional element is present. This means that there is a self consciousness to the
text. The text (story, novel, film, or artwork) is aware of the writing or the creation of the
text. Perhaps a character is an artist and is aware of the problems of writing. The text talks
about the process or the act of writing itself.
2. Linguistic magic or the literalization of metaphor: Language doesn’t reflect the world.
Language shapes the world.
3. Fresh or childlike vision—Marvels and wonders are presented naively or without doubt.
The real begins to seem magical. Magic is not created, but is shown to exist in reality, in our
real lives.
4. Mirrors—Spatial or temporal
5. Reversals—Characters are the reverse of each other. Time can go backwards.
6. Repetitions---Events, characters’ names, actions
7. Breaking of the laws of cause and effect, such as a reversed relationship (the effect leads
to the cause).
8. Metamorphoses
9. Journeys—There is sometimes a journey between realms, but the journey is not clearly defined
because the magical and the real are not separate. The journey is a passing between and within
these realms.
10. The Real is made to seem ridiculous and marvelous.
11. Revolutionary—The text is often critical of the official, conventional, or accepted norm of
society. This is also true of Realism.
12. Narrative stance becomes an explicit issue. There is a questioning of the distance between the
narrator and the author or between the narrator and the audience. Strange things happen to the
narrator.
13. Magical Realism seems more popular compared to the Modernist fiction from which it comes.
In other words, it is not read only by those interested in literary studies but by a more general
reading audience.
14. There are surprises for the reader.
15. There is reflection on pre-Enlightenment types of belief systems. There is a sense that the text
is set in an area of belief in such miracles or magic.
16. Magical Realism usually presents confusions and obscurity rather than clarity and distinction.