One Hundred Years of Solitude-The Story of Mankind Re-visited

Abstract

One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel by Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez mirrors the world we live in, it is the story of mankind retold. The novel is set in the imaginary community of Macondo, a village on the Columbian coast, and follows the lives of several generations of the Buendia family. Chief among these characters are Colonel Aureliano Buendia, perpetrator of thirty- two rebellions and father of seventeen illegitimate sons, and Úrsula Buendia, the clan’s matriarch and witness to its eventual decline. Besides following the complicated relationships of the Buendia family, One Hundred Years of Solitude also reflects the political, social and economic troubles of South America. This paper highlights how the novel in the progression of an entire civilisation of Macondo in a span of one hundred years the hundred years symbolise the march of human civilisation from the beginning to the writer’s assumed end. Further, the paper elucidates the meaning of solitude. The solitude has two connotations- firstly, it is a society studied in isolation, a society ridden with problems which are peculiar to it, a society in solitude because of the absence of communication links with the rest of the world. Secondly, it is also solitary because according to the writer every person during his lifetime suffers from his own solitude- a person’s happiness, sorrow, madness, sickness are peculiar to him/her alone. The novel also significantly represents the politico-social and chronological development of a society.