One Hundred Years of Solitude



It's not a hundred years but one hundred years of solitude. The word one gives a sense of certainly to it. So it is that the fate of Macando is certain as well. It does not matter that there is such a long story through generations on and on, only history repeats itself. It does not matter how many times the matriarch Ursula tries to change the course of the future to stop history from repeating, to save Macando from its fate. The fate is certain and it will be so.
It's a long story and a very long one, and so densely packed that every page is oozing with detail and the story just keeps going on and on. Yet you know the end is coming, soon. Yet you are never bored, not for once. Yes, you occasionally wonder where it's all going and why it's so repetitive but that is what it is. You see, history repeats itself.
A man and his wife, escape their village because the man murdered another and they travel far and wide and finally settle down in a place and that's how the Buendias establish Macando. There they have sons and daughters who have sons and daughters who have sons and daughters. Most of the sons are named either Aureliano or Arcadio and the daughters are few and have a few different names. The repetitive nature of the names adds to the confusion while reading the book but when you follow the story it helps in setting the similarities of every generation. Ursula sees it too, especially when a pair of twins named these two names get swapped at birth and spend their whole lives being called by the other name. Yet traits tell Ursula that they were probably swapped. Aurelianos are supposed to be pensive and poetic while Arcadios impulsive. Talk of magical realism, the twins die at the same time and mistakenly get swapped when they are buried, ensuring that each went to the grave with their birth name.
Through out the story, it seems like many ills befall this little settlement and yet it was meant to be. Eventually the settlement is destroyed and just before it is, the last of the family decodes an ancient parchment that had been with the family for generations. And when the fate of his family dawns on him, it is also the end of it. And when it has all ended, a passerby would never know Macando once existed there...
They say Gabriel Garcia modelled this story on Colombia. I don't know enough about Colombia to know. All I know is the beauty of his magical realism that I had understood when I read the obituary of Gabriel Garcia Marquez on The Economist and I knew that I had to read this book.

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