The Analysis of Solitude
Excluding the title of the novel (sorry, didn’t mean to spoil the book), it is evident that throughout Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s hit, One Hundred Years of Solitude, there exists this element of solitude that has a direct correlation with the various exhibited themes. One of the distinguishing qualities that establishes the book as rather interesting to the common reader (that amongst many other things), is the way by which this theme of solitude is presented. Rather than simply reading the novel and analyzing the text to decipher the ultimate meaning, remarkably Marquez instills solitude so that it serves as a recurring and active theme throughout the plotline. Typically, the theme of solitude in its various forms are accomplished and attributed towards specific characters. Individually, these characters symbolically represent the active presence of solitude in its various forms. When it comes to the identification of these characters who achieve these different measures of solitude, almost without any exception, it’s evident that the Buendia males are marked with tragic solitude. Perhaps this theme best be understood by analyzing the characters individually.
Represented as debatably the most outstanding member of the Buendia family, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was a character whose life exemplified that thematic illustration of solitude consistently throughout the novel. Acquired from the rather earlier portion of the novel, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was the first human being to be born in the village of Macondo and almost immediately he was identified as hesitant to become anything, living his life in solitary. However, he was, even then at his young age, immensely sympathetic towards the imperfections of Macondo. Marquez writes, “He was silent and withdrawn. He had wept in his mother’s womb and had been born with his eyes open.” (Marquez 14). Even in Ursula’s womb, Colonel Aureliano was weeping as if he was saddened by the idea of living. The Buendia family praised him as though he had “prophetic powers”, and so his early life of solitary transitioned to this prophetic expectancy. Throughout the novel, people were inclined to believe in Colonel’s prophecy. However, just before his death, his mother Ursula claimed that this fetal weeping only meant he had an, “incapacity for love.” (198). This truth that Ursula beheld about Colonel Aureliano would eventually come to symbolize the solidarity of love. After his affair with Pilar Ternera, he bears his son Aureliano José, which ends in tragic results, all resulting because of Colonel’s “incapacity for love”.
In reflection of the lives of Aureliano and Jose Arcadio Segundo, evidently there are qualities that pertain to another form of solitude that occurs in the novel, and that is solidarity through mourn or grief. Between Aureliano and Jose Arcadio Segundo, Marquez conveys his own definition of solitude as not being simply a state of social isolation, but overall a need for a relationship. For instance, Aureliano Segundo strongly exhibited the qualities of being a reckless individual, who was primarily caught up in satisfying his own pleasures and appetites. He lived between want and plenty, virtue and hypocrisy, and was constantly at confusion for his consistent patterns of complacency, dwelling on his sadness. However, his brother, Jose Arcadio Segundo did not exhibit that self-pity, nor did he feel the need to satisfy his own pleasures as his brother did, as Marques writes, “José Arcadio Segundo, who took a long time to discover that he had been supplanted, was unable to understand his brother’s passion.” (328). He lived in a condemned life, consistently separated in all of his action from his family. “In reality, José Arcadio Segundo was not a member of the family, nor would he ever be.” (208). Living his life without an emotional family, José Arcadio Segundo was confined to life pervaded in his childhood memories, never forgetting the “sad and somewhat mocking smile of the man being shot” (208). José Arcadio Segundo’s solitude of grief was a reaction to the frustration that he found in his dual nature, and especially in discovering his true identity. Never forgetting the massacre of the three-thousand slaughtered men, he spent nearly the last days of his sad life trying to convince the people of Macondo that it actually took place. Years of trying to express this to the village, José Arcadio Segundo died only having one person believing in him, ending his life in a mournful solitude.
One of the persistent themes occurring throughout the novel was this theme of history and truth being forgotten. Although these themes in particular aren’t recognized on great proportion, evidently there was a major correlation between the theme of forgetting and the theme of solidarity through death and isolation. As a matter of fact, the way by which this theme of solitude was accomplished was quite unique, considering that the lineage of the Buendía family and ultimately the fatality of Macondo symbolically are represented through death and isolation. Analyzing these themes and ultimately accomplishing their representations become evident through the repetition of death throughout the characters of the Buendia family tree. Thematically, solitude through death is best exemplified through the life of Aureliano Babilonia, as he was the last remaining character throughout the long lineage of the Buendías. Being the last remaining member of the Buendia family, Aureliano Babilonia’s life represented much more than what was seen on the surface of the plotline. Likewise, as the story began to unfold, ultimately the fate of the Buendia family and the village of Macondo would be in the hands of Aureliano Babilonia. However, as that predicament was challenge by the conflict of the hurricane that would kill every last member of the Buendia family, there would not exist a person capable of deciphering Melquíades work and history of the family. Marquez writes, “he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men” (328). As the hurricane destroys Macondo and all that seized to exist no longer existed, the memory of the Buendia’s would also seize to exist, forever remaining in solitary state of death and isolation.
One of the rather common questioning regarding Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, primarily involves how the novel is so capable of producing this theme of solitude in many fascinating ways. Elementally speaking, it is because of this presence of diversified solitude that makes the novel the literary masterwork that it has reputably gained over the years as arguably one of the best novels of all time. The theme of solitude presented in the novel in itself represents what