One Hundred Years of Solitude

This is the quintessential ‘magical realism’ novel. Gabriel García Márquez isolates his story by creating the village of Macando, where his novel’s characters, the Buendía family, live and grow their family.

Its spell binding, to the say the least. The family and their lives and business is the subject of the novel, and Macando serves as a setting and character of its own. Even though the novel’s characters are a family, one of the central themes is Isolation. Incest is one way Isolation is represented, a topic that is not shied away from within the novel. Rather than offsprings of incestuous relationships sprouting physical deforms, it passes on mental traits and problems to the next generation - it’s a never ending circle. Another way is character isolation/solitude within work, for instance: José Arcadio Buendía is obsessed with his inventions and experiments, or even how some characters in the family isolate others.

In their world, Magic is real, technology and science disrupts the ‘magic’ and culture. Western culture and capitalism corrupt and bring down the Macando. Were things better before the West corrupted Macando? I think it’s a question many ask about Western influence in general, and it’s clear Gabriel García Márquez is quite critical of Western ideological and religious influence.

Overall, this is a difficult novel to read, mainly because we’re not used to such great writing and such a different and intense story. It takes a little bit of getting used to the style and characters, but once you are in the groove of things, you’ll be drawn into the tragic story of the Buendía family and their home of Macando.

Some words I learned while reading the translation:

Didactic: intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive.

Daguerreotype: a photograph taken by an early photographic process employing an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor.

Diatribe: a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.