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{{Short description|1967 novel by Gabriel García Márquez}}
{{Infobox book
| name              = One Hundred Years of Solitude
| title_orig        = Cien años de soledad
| translator        = [[Gregory Rabassa]]
| image             = Cien años de soledad (book cover, 1967).jpg
| caption           = First edition
| author            = [[Gabriel García Márquez]]
| illustrator       =
| cover_artist      =
| country           = Argentina <!--PLEASE do not change this to Colombia. Argentina refers to the initial country of publication, not the author's nationality or the book's setting.-->
| language          = [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| series            =
| genre             = [[Magic realism]]
| release_date      = 1967
| english_pub_date  = 1970
| publisher         = Editorial Sudamericana
| publisher2        = {{Plainlist|
* [[Harper & Row]] (US)
* [[Jonathan Cape]] (UK)}}
| oclc              = 17522865
| preceded_by       =
| followed_by       =
| pages             = 422
}}

'''''One Hundred Years of Solitude''''' ({{langx|es|Cien años de soledad}}, {{IPA|es-419|sjen ˈaɲos ðe soleˈðað|lang}}) is a [[1967 in literature|1967]] [[novel]] by [[Colombian people|Colombian]] author [[Gabriel García Márquez]] that tells the [[Family saga|multi-generational story]] of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictitious town of [[Macondo]]. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in [[world literature]].<ref name="oedb.org">{{cite web|url=https://oedb.org/ilibrarian/50_books_that_changed_the_world/|title=The 50 Most Influential Books of All Time|website=Open Education Database|date=26 January 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://thegreatestbooks.org/|title=The Greatest Books|website=thegreatestbooks.org}}</ref><ref name="telegraph.co.uk">{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/best-greatest-novels-of-all-time/|title=The 100 greatest novels of all time|website=The Telegraph|date=23 July 2021|last1=Writers|first1=Telegraph}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2018/100-must-read-classic-books/|title=100 must-read classic books, as chosen by our readers|website=Penguin|date=26 May 2022 }}</ref> It was recognized as one of the most important works of the Spanish language during the 4th [[International Conference of the Spanish Language]] held in [[Cartagena, Colombia|Cartagena de Indias]] in March 2007.<ref>{{cite web |title=Agradecimiento |url=https://congresosdelalengua.es/Cartagena/inauguracion/garcia-marquez.htm |website=Congresos Internacionales de la Lengua Española |access-date=31 August 2024 |language=Spanish}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Tovar |first1=Guillermo |title=Gabriel García Márquez será el personaje central del IV Congreso de la Lengua |url=https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/03/22/cultura/1174560104.html |access-date=31 August 2024 |work=[[El Mundo (Spain)]] |agency=[[EFE]] |date=22 March 2007 |language=Spanish}}</ref>

The [[Magic Realism|magical realist]] style and thematic substance of the book established it as an important representative novel of the literary [[Latin American Boom]] of the 1960s and 1970s,<ref>[http://thewalrus.ca/2007-12-books-2/ "One Hundred Years at Forty"] (December 2007) ''The Walrus'', Canada</ref> which was [[Style (fiction)|stylistically]] influenced by [[Modernism]] (European and North American) and the Cuban [[Cuban art#Vanguardia artists|''Vanguardia'']] (Avant-Garde) literary movement.

Since it was first published in May 1967 in [[Buenos Aires]] by Editorial Sudamericana, the book has been translated into 46 languages and sold more than 50 million copies.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://culturacolectiva.com/entretenimiento/netflix-estrenara-su-nueva-serie-cien-anos-de-soledad|title=Esto es lo que sabemos de la serie de 'Cien Años de Soledad' que producirá Netflix|website=culturacolectiva.com|date=29 September 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21601223-gabriel-garc-m-rquez-latin-americas-literary-colossus-died-april-17th-aged-87|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170906091425/https://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21601223-gabriel-garc-m-rquez-latin-americas-literary-colossus-died-april-17th-aged-87|url-status=dead|archive-date=2017-09-06|title=The magician in his labyrinth|newspaper=[[The Economist]] |date=2017-09-06|access-date=2020-04-16}}</ref><ref name="Bell">{{cite book |title=Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook |last=Bell-Villada |first=Gene H. |author-link=Gene H. Bell-Villada |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-514455-4 }}</ref><ref name = "PSinsights">''One Hundred years of Solitude'', by Gabriel García Márquez, 2003, Harper Collins: New York, {{ISBN|0-06-088328-6}}, post-script section entitled: 'P.S. Insights, Interviews & More' pp. 2–12</ref> The novel, considered García Márquez's ''[[Masterpiece|magnum opus]]'', remains widely acclaimed and is recognized as one of the most significant works both in the [[Hispanic literature|Hispanic literary canon]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.rae.es/obras-academicas/ediciones-conmemorativas|title = Ediciones conmemorativas &#124; Obras &#124; Real Academia Española}}</ref> and in world literature.<ref name="oedb.org"/><ref name="telegraph.co.uk"/>

In 2024, the book was adapted into an authorized [[One Hundred Years of Solitude (TV series)|television series]] released on [[Netflix]] and executive produced by García Márquez's sons.

==Background==
In 1965, [[Gabriel García Márquez]] was driving to [[Acapulco]] for a vacation with his family when he thought of the beginning for a new book; he then turned his car around, asked his wife to manage the family's finances for the coming months, and drove back home to Mexico City. For the next year and a half, García Márquez spent his time writing what would eventually become ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''. Though inspired by Colombian history and his experiences as a journalist, García Márquez was greatly influenced by his maternal grandparents: Nicolás Ricardo Márquez and Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes. A decorated veteran of the [[Thousand Days' War]], Ricardo Márquez's accounts of the rebellion against the conservative Colombian government led his grandson to a [[Socialism|socialist]] outlook. Meanwhile, Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes' superstitious beliefs became the foundation of the book's style. The couple's house in [[Aracataca]] where García Márquez spent his childhood inspired him to make Macondo his book's setting.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Díez-Buzo|first=Francisco|date=August 30, 2018|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2zhLYz4pYo|title=''Why should you read One Hundred Years of Solitude?''|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}</ref>

García Márquez was one of the four [[Latin America]]n novelists first included in the literary [[Latin American Boom]] of the 1960s and 1970s; the other three were the Peruvian [[Mario Vargas Llosa]], the Argentine [[Julio Cortázar]], and the Mexican [[Carlos Fuentes]]. In 1967, the book earned García Márquez international fame as a novelist of the [[magical realism]] movement within Latin American literature.<ref>"The Modern World". Web, www.themodernword.com/gabo/. April 17, 2010</ref>

==Plot==

The book tells the story of seven generations of the Buendía family in the town of [[Macondo]]. The founders of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, leave their hometown after José Arcadio kills Prudencio Aguilar after a [[cockfight]] for suggesting José Arcadio was [[Erectile dysfunction|impotent]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Love and Immolation in Argentina |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1981/08/16/love-and-immolation-in-argentina/9cf0bdac-cfc3-4198-8824-d89d5e059c55/ |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |date=16 August 1981}}</ref> One night of their emigration journey, while camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio dreams of "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to establish Macondo at the riverside; after days of wandering the jungle, his founding of Macondo is [[Utopia|utopic]].<ref name="Bell"/>

José Arcadio Buendía believes Macondo to be surrounded by water, and from that island, he invents the world according to ''his'' perceptions.<ref name="Bell"/> Soon after its founding, Macondo became a town frequented by [[Magic realism|unusual and extraordinary events]] that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic (mostly self-inflicted) misfortunes. For years the town has been solitary and unconnected to the outside world, with the exception of the annual visit of a band of [[Gypsies]], who show the townspeople scientific discoveries such as [[magnet]]s, [[telescope]]s, and [[ice]]. The leader of the Gypsies, a man named Melquíades, maintains a close friendship with José Arcadio, who becomes increasingly withdrawn, obsessed with investigating the mysteries of the universe presented to him by the Gypsies. Ultimately, José Arcadio is driven insane, speaking only in [[Latin]], and is tied to a [[chestnut tree]] by his family for many years until his death.

Eventually Macondo becomes exposed to the outside world and the government of newly independent Colombia. A rigged election between the [[Colombian Conservative Party|Conservative]] and [[Colombian Liberal Party|Liberal]] parties is held in town, inspiring Aureliano Buendía (José Arcadio’s son) to join a [[civil war]] against the Conservative government. He becomes an iconic revolutionary leader, fighting for many years and surviving multiple attempts on his life, but ultimately tires of war and signs a peace treaty with the Conservatives. Disillusioned, he returns to Macondo and spends the rest of his life making tiny gold fish in his workshop.

The [[railroad]] comes to Macondo, bringing in new technology and many foreign settlers. An American fruit company establishes a banana plantation outside the town, and builds its own segregated village across the river. This ushers in a period of prosperity that ends in tragedy as the Colombian army massacres thousands of striking plantation workers, an incident based on the [[Banana Massacre]] of 1928. José Arcadio Segundo, the only survivor of the massacre, finds no evidence of the massacre, and the surviving townspeople deny or refuse to believe it happened.

By the novel's end, Macondo has fallen into a decrepit and near-abandoned state, with the only remaining Buendías being Amaranta Úrsula and her nephew Aureliano, whose parentage is hidden by his grandmother Fernanda; he and Amaranta Úrsula unknowingly begin an incestuous relationship. They have a child who bears the tail of a pig, fulfilling the lifelong fear of the long-dead matriarch Úrsula. Amaranta Úrsula dies in childbirth and the child is devoured by ants, leaving Aureliano as the last member of the family. He decodes an encryption Melquíades had left behind in a manuscript generations ago. The manuscript reveals every fortune and misfortune that the Buendía family's generations lived through. As Aureliano reads the manuscript, he feels a windstorm starting around him, and he reads in the document that the Buendía family is doomed to be wiped from the face of the Earth because of it. In the last sentence of the book, the narrator describes Aureliano reading this last line just as the entire town of Macondo is scoured from existence.<ref name="Wood">{{cite book|last=Wood|first=Michael|title=Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1990|isbn=0-521-31692-8|author-link=Michael Wood (academic)}}</ref>

==Characters==
[[File:One Hundred Years Of Solitude Buendia's Family Tree.svg|thumb|center|upright=3|The Buendía family tree]]

===First generation===
;'''José Arcadio Buendía'''
José Arcadio Buendía is the [[patriarchy|patriarch]] of the Buendía family and the founder of Macondo.<ref name="Gordo">Gordo-Guarinos, Francisco. ''Cien años de soledad.'' Barcelona: Editorial Vosgos, S.A., 1977.</ref> Buendía leaves his hometown in [[Riohacha Municipality]], Colombia, along with his wife Úrsula Iguarán, after being haunted by the corpse of Prudencio Aguilar (a man Buendía killed in a duel), who constantly bleeds from his wound and tries to wash it.<ref name="Gordo"/> One night while camping at the side of a river, Buendía dreams of a city of mirrors named Macondo and decides to establish the town in this location. José Arcadio Buendía is an introspective and inquisitive man of massive strength and energy who spends more time on his scientific pursuits than with his family. He flirts with alchemy and astronomy and becomes increasingly withdrawn from his family and community. He eventually goes insane and is tied to a chestnut tree until his death.

;'''Úrsula Iguarán'''
Úrsula Iguarán is the matriarch of the Buendía family and is wife and cousin to José Arcadio Buendía.<ref name="Gordo"/> She lives to be well over 100 years old and she oversees the Buendía household through six of the seven generations documented in the novel. She has a business of making candy animals and pastries which she continues until the arrival of Fernanda. She exhibits a very strong character and often succeeds where the men of her family fail, for example finding a route to the outside world from Macondo. She deeply fears her family resuming their incestuous practices as her inbred relatives tended to have animalistic features. From a strong and active matriarch, Úrsula is reduced to a plaything for Amaranta Úrsula and Aureliano in her last years and shrinks to the size of a newborn baby when she finally dies.

===Second generation===
;'''José Arcadio'''
José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula's firstborn child, José Arcadio seems to have inherited his father's headstrong, impulsive mannerisms.<ref name="Gordo"/> He eventually leaves the family after being molested by Pilar Ternera to chase a Gypsy girl and unexpectedly returns many years later as an enormous man covered in tattoos, claiming that he has sailed the seas of the world. He marries his adopted sister Rebeca, causing his banishment from the mansion, and he dies from a mysterious gunshot wound, days after saving his brother from execution.

;'''Colonel Aureliano Buendía'''
José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula's second child and the first person to be born in Macondo.<ref name="Gordo"/> He was thought to have premonitions because everything he said came true.<ref name="Gordo"/> He represents not only a warrior figure but also an artist due to his ability to write poetry and create finely crafted golden fish. During the wars he fathered 17 sons by unknown women,<ref name="Gordo"/> all named Aureliano. Four of them later begin to live in Macondo, and in the span of several weeks all of them but one (including those who chose not to remain in Macondo) are murdered by unknown assassins, before any of them had reached thirty-five years of age.

;'''Amaranta'''
José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula's third child, Amaranta grows up as a companion of her adopted sister Rebeca.<ref name="Gordo"/> However, her feelings toward Rebeca turn sour over Pietro Crespi, whom both sisters intensely desired in their teenage years. Amaranta does everything she can to prevent Rebeca and Pietro marrying, even attempting to murder Rebeca. Amaranta dies a lonely and virginal [[spinster]], but comfortable in her existence after having finally accepted what she had become.<ref name="Gordo"/>

In her later years, she becomes a caring figure within the Buendía household, particularly showing affection for her nephew, Aureliano José.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/One-Hundred-Years-of-Solitude |title=Maranta |website=www.britannica.com /|access-date=2023-05-26}}</ref>

;'''Remedios Moscote'''
Remedios was the youngest daughter of the town's Conservative administrator, Don Apolinar Moscote.<ref name="Gordo"/> Her most striking physical features are her beautiful skin and her emerald-green eyes. The future Colonel Aureliano falls in love with her, despite her extreme youth. She dies shortly after the marriage from a blood poisoning illness during her pregnancy. Until soon before the Colonel's death, her dolls are displayed in his bedroom.

;'''Rebeca'''
Rebeca is the second cousin of Úrsula Iguarán and the orphaned child of Nicanor Ulloa and Rebeca Montiel.<ref name="Gordo"/> At first, she is extremely timid, refuses to speak, and has the habits of eating earth and whitewash from the walls of the house, a condition known as [[pica (disorder)|pica]]. She arrives carrying a canvas bag containing her parents' bones and seems not to understand or speak Spanish. However, she responds to questions asked by Visitación and Cataure in the Guajiro or [[Wayuu language]]. She falls in love with and marries her adoptive brother José Arcadio after his return from traveling the world. After his mysterious and untimely death, she lives in seclusion for the rest of her life.

;'''Pilar Ternera'''
Pilar is a local woman who moved to Macondo to escape the man who raped her as a teenager. She sleeps with the brothers Aureliano and José Arcadio.<ref name="Gordo"/> She becomes the mother of their sons, Aureliano José and Arcadio respectively.<ref name="Gordo"/> Pilar reads the future with cards, and every so often makes an accurate, though vague, prediction.<ref name="Gordo"/> She has close ties with the Buendías throughout the whole novel, helping them with her card predictions. She dies some time after she turns 145 years old (she had eventually stopped counting),<ref name="Gordo"/> surviving until the last days of Macondo.

She plays an integral part in the plot as she is the link between the second and the third generations of the Buendía family. The author highlights her importance by following her death with a declaratory "it was the end."<ref name="Gordo"/>

===Third generation===
;'''Arcadio'''
Arcadio is José Arcadio's illegitimate son with Pilar Ternera, although he never learns about his origins.<ref name="Gordo"/> He is a schoolteacher who assumes leadership of Macondo after Colonel Aureliano Buendía leaves.<ref name="Gordo"/> He becomes a tyrannical dictator and uses his schoolchildren as his personal army and Macondo soon becomes subject to his whims. When the Liberal forces in Macondo fall, Arcadio is shot by a Conservative firing squad.<ref name="Gordo"/>

;'''Aureliano José'''
Aureliano José is Colonel Aureliano Buendía's illegitimate son with Pilar Ternera.<ref name="Gordo"/> He joins his father in several wars before deserting to return to Macondo upon hearing that it is possible to marry one's aunt. Aureliano José is obsessed with his aunt, Amaranta, who raised him since birth and molested him as a child, and who rejects the marriage proposal he makes as an adult. He is eventually shot to death by a Conservative captain midway through the wars.<ref name="Gordo"/>

;'''Santa Sofía de la Piedad'''
Santa Sofía is a beautiful virgin girl and the daughter of a shopkeeper.<ref name="Gordo"/> She is hired by Pilar Ternera to have sex with her son Arcadio, her eventual husband.<ref name="Gordo"/> She is taken in along with her children by the Buendías after Arcadio's execution. After Úrsula's death she leaves unexpectedly, not knowing her destination.

;'''17 Aurelianos'''
During his 32 civil war campaigns, Colonel Aureliano Buendía has 17 sons by 17 different women, each named after their father.<ref name="Gordo"/> Four of these Aurelianos (A. Triste, A. Serrador, A. Arcaya and A. Centeno) stay in Macondo and become a permanent part of the family. Eventually, as revenge against the Colonel, all are assassinated by unknown assailants, who identified them by the mysteriously permanent [[Ash Wednesday]] cross on their foreheads. The only survivor of the massacre is A. Amador, who escapes into the jungle only to be assassinated at the doorstep of his father's house many years later.

===Fourth generation===
{{anchor|Remedios-the-Beauty}}'''Remedios the Beauty'''<br />Remedios the Beauty is Arcadio and Santa Sofía's first child.<ref name="Gordo"/> It is said she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, and unintentionally causes the deaths of several men who love or lust over her.<ref name="Gordo"/> She appears to most of the town as naively innocent, and some come to think that she is mentally delayed. However, Colonel Aureliano Buendía believes she has inherited great lucidity: "It is as if she's come back from twenty years of war," he said. She rejects clothing and beauty which has the opposite effect and makes her more beautiful. Too beautiful and, arguably, too wise for the world, Remedios ascends to heaven one afternoon, while folding Fernanda's white sheet.

;'''José Arcadio Segundo'''
José Arcadio Segundo is Aureliano Segundo's twin brother, and one of Arcadio and Santa Sofía's three children.<ref name="Gordo"/> Úrsula believes that the two were switched in their childhood, as José Arcadio begins to show the characteristics of the family's Aurelianos, growing up to be pensive and quiet. He plays a major role in the banana worker strike, and is the only survivor when the company massacres the striking workers.<ref name="Gordo"/> Afterward, he spends the rest of his days studying the parchments of Melquíades, and tutoring the young Aureliano. He dies at the exact instant that his twin does.<ref name="Gordo"/>

;'''Aureliano Segundo'''
Aureliano Segundo is José Arcadio Segundo's twin brother, and one of Arcadio and Santa Sofía's three children. Of the two brothers, Aureliano Segundo is the more boisterous and impulsive, much like the José Arcadios of the family.<ref name="Gordo"/> He takes his first girlfriend Petra Cotes as his mistress during his marriage to the beautiful and bitter Fernanda del Carpio.<ref name="Gordo"/> When living with Petra, his livestock propagate wildly, and he indulges in unrestrained revelry. After the long rains, his fortune dries up, and the Buendías are left almost penniless. He turns to a search for a buried treasure, which nearly drives him to insanity. He dies of an unknown throat illness at the same moment as his twin. During the confusion at the funeral, the bodies are switched, and each is buried in the other's grave (highlighting Úrsula's earlier comment that they had been switched at birth).

{{anchor|Fernanda-del-Carpio}}'''Fernanda del Carpio'''<br />Fernanda comes from a ruined, aristocratic family that kept her isolated from the world.<ref name="Gordo"/> She was chosen as the most beautiful of 5,000 girls. She is brought to Macondo to compete with Remedios the Beauty for the title of Queen of the local carnival; however, her appearance turns the carnival into a bloody confrontation. After the fiasco, she marries Aureliano Segundo, who despite this maintains a domestic relation with his concubine, Petra Cotes. Nevertheless, she soon takes the leadership of the family away from the now frail Úrsula. She manages the Buendía affairs with an iron fist. She has three children by Aureliano Segundo: José Arcadio; Renata Remedios, a.k.a. Meme; and Amaranta Úrsula. She remains in the house after her husband dies, taking care of the household until her death.

Fernanda is never accepted by anyone in the Buendía household for they regard her as an outsider, although none of the Buendías rebel against her inflexible conservatism. Her mental and emotional instability is revealed through her paranoia, her correspondence with the "[[Psychic surgery|invisible doctors]]", and her irrational behavior towards Meme's son Aureliano, whom she tries to isolate from the world.

;'''Petra Cotes'''
Petra is a dark-skinned mulatto woman with gold-brown eyes similar to those of a panther. She is Aureliano Segundo's mistress and the love of his life. She arrives in Macondo as a teenager with her first husband. After her husband dies, she begins a relationship with José Arcadio Segundo. When she meets Aureliano Segundo, she begins a relationship with him as well, not knowing they are two different men. After José Arcadio decides to leave her, Aureliano Segundo gets her forgiveness and remains by her side. He continues to see her, even after his marriage. He eventually lives with her, which greatly embitters his wife, Fernanda del Carpio. When Aureliano and Petra make love, their animals reproduce at an amazing rate, but their livestock is wiped out during the four years of rain. Petra makes money by keeping the lottery alive and provides food baskets for Fernanda and her family after the death of Aureliano Segundo.

===Fifth generation===
;'''José Arcadio'''
José Arcadio, named after his ancestors in the Buendía tradition, is Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda's oldest child and follows the trend of previous Arcadios.<ref name="Gordo"/> He is raised by Úrsula, who intends for him to become Pope. After Fernanda's death, he returns from Rome without having become a priest. He spends his days pining for Amaranta, the object of his obsession. Eventually, he discovers the treasure Úrsula had buried under her bed, which he wastes on lavish parties and escapades with adolescent boys. Later, he begins a tentative friendship with Aureliano Babilonia, his nephew. José Arcadio plans to set Aureliano up in a business and return to Rome, but is murdered in his bath by four of the adolescent boys who ransack his house and steal his gold.

;'''Renata Remedios (a.k.a. Meme)'''
Renata Remedios, or Meme, is Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda's second child and first daughter.<ref name="Gordo"/> While she doesn't inherit Fernanda's beauty, she does have Aureliano Segundo's love of life and natural charisma. After her mother declares that she is to do nothing but play the [[clavichord]], she is sent to school where she receives her performance degree as well as academic recognition. While she pursues the clavichord with "an inflexible discipline" to placate Fernanda, she also enjoys partying and exhibits the same tendency towards excess as her father.

Meme meets and falls in love with Mauricio Babilonia, but when Fernanda discovers their affair, she arranges for Mauricio to be shot, claiming that he was a chicken thief. She then takes Meme to a convent. Meme remains mute for the rest of her life, partially because of the trauma, but also as a sign of rebellion. Several months after arriving at the convent, she gives birth to a son, Aureliano. He is sent to live with the Buendías. Aureliano arrives in a basket and Fernanda is tempted to kill the child in order to avoid shame, but instead claims he is an orphan in order to cover up her daughter's promiscuity and is forced to "tolerate him against her will for the rest of her life because at the moment of truth she lacked the courage to go through with her inner determination to drown him".

;'''Amaranta Úrsula'''
Amaranta Úrsula is Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda's third child.<ref name="Gordo"/> She displays the same characteristics as her namesake who dies when she is only a child.<ref name="Gordo"/> She never knows that the child sent to the Buendía home is her nephew, the illegitimate son of Meme. He becomes her best friend in childhood. She returns home from Europe with an older husband, Gastón, who leaves her when she informs him of her passionate affair with Aureliano. She dies of a [[hemorrhage]] after she has given birth to the last of the Buendía line.<ref name="Gordo"/>

;'''Mauricio Babilonia'''
Mauricio is a brutally honest, generous and handsome mechanic for the banana company.<ref name="Gordo"/> He is said to be a descendant of the Gypsies who visit Macondo in the early days. He has the unusual characteristic of being constantly swarmed by yellow butterflies, which follow even his lover for a time. Mauricio begins a romantic affair with Meme until Fernanda discovers them and tries to end it. When Mauricio continues to sneak into the house to see her, Fernanda has him shot, claiming he is a chicken thief. Paralyzed and bedridden, he spends the rest of his long life in solitude.

;'''Gastón'''
Gastón is Amaranta Úrsula's wealthy, Belgian husband. She marries him in Europe and returns to Macondo leading him on a silk leash. Gastón is about fifteen years older than his wife. He is an aviator and an adventurer. When he moves with Amaranta Ursula to Macondo he thinks it is only a matter of time before she realizes that her European ways are out of place, causing her to want to move back to Europe. However, when he realizes his wife intends to stay in Macondo, he arranges for his airplane to be shipped over so he can start an airmail service. The plane is shipped to Africa by mistake. When he travels there to claim it, Amaranta writes to him of her love for Aureliano Babilonia Buendía. Gastón takes the news in stride, only asking that they ship him his [[velocipede]].

===Sixth generation===
;'''Aureliano Babilonia (Aureliano II)'''
Aureliano Babilonia, or Aureliano II, is Meme's illegitimate child with Mauricio Babilonia. He is hidden from everyone by his grandmother, Fernanda. He is strikingly similar to his namesake, the Colonel, and has the same character patterns as well. He is taciturn, silent, and emotionally charged. He barely knows Úrsula, who dies during his childhood. He is a friend of José Arcadio Segundo, who explains to him the true story of the banana worker massacre.

While other members of the family leave and return, Aureliano stays in the Buendía home. He only ventures into the empty town after the death of Fernanda. He works to decipher the parchments of Melquíades but stops to have an affair with his childhood partner and the love of his life, Amaranta Úrsula, not knowing that she is his aunt. When both she and her child die, he is able to decipher the parchments. "...Melquíades' final keys were revealed to him and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man's time and space: 'The first in line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by ants'." It is assumed he dies in the great wind that destroys Macondo the moment he finishes reading Melquíades' parchments.

With his death, the Buendía line ends.

===Seventh generation===
;'''Aureliano'''
Aureliano is the child of Aureliano and his aunt, Amaranta Úrsula.<ref name="Gordo"/> He is born with a pig's tail, as the eldest and long dead Úrsula had always feared would happen (the parents of the child had never heard of the omen).<ref name="Gordo"/> His mother dies after giving birth to him, and, due to his grief-stricken father's negligence, he is devoured by ants.<ref name="Gordo"/>

===Others===
;'''Melquíades'''
Melquíades is one of a band of Gypsies who visit Macondo every year in March, displaying amazing items from around the world.<ref name="Gordo"/> Melquíades sells José Arcadio Buendía several new inventions including a pair of [[magnets]] and an [[alchemy|alchemist]]'s lab. Later, the Gypsies report that Melquíades died in [[Singapore]], but he, nonetheless, returns to live with the Buendía family,<ref name="Gordo"/> stating he could not bear the solitude of death. He stays with the Buendías and begins to write the mysterious parchments, which are eventually translated by Aureliano Babilonia, and prophesy the House of Buendía's end. Melquíades dies a second time from drowning in the river near Macondo and, following a grand ceremony organized by the Buendías, is the first individual buried in Macondo. His name echoes [[Melchizedek]] in the Old Testament, whose source of authority as a high priest was mysterious.

;'''Pietro Crespi'''
Pietro is a very handsome and polite Italian musician who runs a music school.<ref name="Gordo"/> He installs the [[pianola]] in the Buendía house. He becomes engaged to Rebeca, but Amaranta, who also loves him, manages to delay the wedding for years. When José Arcadio and Rebeca agree to be married, Pietro begins to woo Amaranta, who is so embittered that she cruelly rejects him. Despondent over the loss of both sisters, he kills himself.

;'''Mr. Herbert''' and '''Mr. Brown'''
Mr. Herbert is a [[gringo]] who shows up at the Buendía house for lunch one day. After tasting the local bananas for the first time, he arranges for a banana company to set up a plantation in Macondo. The plantation is run by the dictatorial Jack Brown. When José Arcadio Segundo helps arrange a workers' strike on the plantation, the company traps the more than three thousand strikers and machine guns them down in the town square. The banana company and the government completely cover up the event. José Arcadio is the only one who remembers the slaughter. The company arranges for the army to kill off any resistance, then leaves Macondo for good. The event is likely based on the [[Banana massacre]] that took place in [[Ciénaga, Magdalena]] in 1928.

;'''Colonel Gerineldo Márquez'''
He is the friend and comrade-in-arms of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. He fruitlessly woos Amaranta.

;'''Gabriel (Márquez)'''
Gabriel is only a minor character in the novel but he has the distinction of bearing almost the same name as the author. He is the great-great-grandson of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez. He and Aureliano Babilonia are close friends because they know the history of the town, which no one else believes. He leaves for Paris after winning a contest and decides to stay there, selling old newspapers and empty bottles. He is one of the few who is able to leave Macondo before the town is wiped out entirely.

==Symbolism and metaphors==
A dominant theme in the book is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history in Macondo. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel the characters are visited by ghosts. "The ghosts are symbols of the past and the haunting nature it has over Macondo. The ghosts and the displaced repetition that they evoke are, in fact, firmly grounded in the particular development of Latin American history", writes Daniel Erickson. "Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions."<ref name="Erickson">{{cite book |title=Ghosts, Metaphor, and History in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years off Solitude |last=Erickson |first=Daniel |year=2009 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-61348-5 }}</ref>

The fate of Macondo is both doomed and predetermined from its very existence. "Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence, by locking the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities. The narrative seemingly confirms fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can performatively create."<ref name="Erickson"/>

García Márquez uses colours as symbols. Yellow and gold are the most frequently used and symbolize imperialism and the Spanish [[Siglo de Oro]]. Gold signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death, change, and destruction.<ref>Some Implications of Yellow and Gold in García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude": Color Symbolism, Onomastics, and Anti-Idyll" by John Carson Pettey Citation Revista Hispánica Moderna, Año 53, No. 1 pp. 162–178 Year 2000</ref>

The glass city is an image that comes to José Arcadio Buendía in a dream. It is the reason for Macondo's location, but also a symbol of its fate. Higgins writes, "By the final page, however, the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages. Macondo thus represents the dream of a brave new world that America seemed to promise and that was cruelly proved illusory by the subsequent course of history."<ref name="Bell"/> Images such as the glass city and the ice factory represent how Latin America already has its history outlined and is therefore fated for destruction.<ref name="Erickson"/>

There is an underlying pattern of Latin American history in the book. It has been said that the novel is one of a number of texts that "Latin American culture has created to understand itself."<ref name="Gonzalez Echevarria p. 358-80">"Cien años de soledad: the novel as myth and archive" by Gonzalez Echevarria. p. 358-80 Year 1984</ref> In this sense, the novel can be conceived as a linear archive that narrates the story of a Latin America discovered by European explorers, which had its historical entity developed by the printing press. The Archive is a symbol of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument. Melquíades, the keeper of the archive, represents both the whimsical and the literary.<ref name="Gonzalez Echevarria p. 358-80"/> Finally, "the world of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' is a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain."<ref name="Wood"/>

The use of particular historic events and characters renders the book an exemplary work of [[magical realism]], wherein the novel compresses decades of cause and effect whilst telling an interesting story.<ref name="McMurray, George 1969 pp. 175-181">{{cite journal|last1=McMurray|first1=George R.|date=December 1969|title=Reality and Myth in Garcia Márquez' 'Cien anos de soledad'|journal=The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association|volume=23|issue=4|pages=175–181|doi=10.2307/1346518|jstor=1346518}}</ref>

==Major themes==
{{rquote|right|The rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical but intensely real Macondo, and the glories and disasters of the wonderful Buendía family; make up an intensely brilliant chronicle of humankind's [[Comedy (drama)|comedies]] and [[Tragedy|tragedies]]. All the many varieties of life are captured here: inventively, amusingly, magnetically, sadly, humorously, luminously, truthfully.<ref name = "PSinsights" />}}{{Essay-like|date=January 2022|section}}

===Subjectivity of reality and magic realism===
Critics often cite certain works by García Márquez, such as ''[[A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings]]'' and ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'', as exemplary of [[magic realism]], a style of writing in which the supernatural is presented as mundane, and the mundane as supernatural or extraordinary. The term was coined by German art critic [[Franz Roh]] in 1925.<ref>Franz Roh: Nach-Expressionismus. Magischer Realismus. Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1925.</ref>

The novel presents a fictional story in a fictional setting. The extraordinary events and characters are fabricated, yet García Márquez uses his fantastic story as an expression of reality. "In ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' myth and history overlap. The myth acts as a vehicle to transmit history to the reader. García Márquez's novel could also be referred to as anthropology, where truth is found in language and myth. The real and the fiction are indistinguishable. 

There are three main mythical elements of the novel: classical stories alluding to foundations and origins, characters resembling mythical heroes, and supernatural elements."<ref name="Gonzalez Echevarria p. 358-80"/>
Magic realism is achieved by the constant intertwining of the ordinary with the extraordinary. This magic realism strikes at one's traditional sense of naturalistic fiction. There is something clearly magical about the world of Macondo. It is a state of mind as much as, or more than, a geographical place. For example, one learns very little about its actual physical layout. Furthermore, once in it, the reader must be prepared to meet whatever the imagination of the author presents to them.<ref>[http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/marquez.HTM Ian Johnston (March 28, 1995) "On Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416051959/http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/marquez.htm |date=April 16, 2016 }}, Malaspina University College (now Vancouver Island University), Canada</ref>

García Márquez blends the real with the magical through the use of tone and narration. By maintaining the same tone throughout the novel, García Márquez makes the extraordinary blend with the ordinary. His condensation of events and lackadaisical manner in describing them causes the extraordinary to seem less remarkable than it actually is, further blending the real with the magical.<ref>Gullon, Ricardo. "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/464556 Review: Gabriel García Márquez & the Lost Art of Storytelling]". ''Diacritics'', Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 27–32.</ref> Reinforcing this effect is the unastonished tone in which the book is written. This tone restricts the ability of the reader to question the events of the novel. However, it also causes the reader to call into question the limits of reality.<ref name="Wood"/> Furthermore, maintaining the same narrator throughout the novel familiarizes the reader with his voice and causes them to become accustomed to the extraordinary events in the novel.<ref name="Wood"/>

Throughout the novel, García Márquez is said to have a gift for blending the everyday with the miraculous, the historical with the fabulous, and psychological realism with surreal flights of fancy. It is a revolutionary novel that provides a looking glass into the thoughts and beliefs of its author, who chose to give a literary voice to Latin America: "A Latin America which neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration."<ref>''The Dialectics of our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History Post-Contemporary Interventions'', by José David Saldívar, Duke University Press, 1991, {{ISBN|0-8223-1169-0}}, pg. 21</ref>

Although we are faced with a very convoluted narrative, García Márquez is able to define clear themes while maintaining individual character identities, and using different narrative techniques such as [[third-person narrator]]s, specific point of view narrators, and [[Stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|streams of consciousness]]. Cinematographic techniques are also employed in the novel, with the idea of the [[montage (filmmaking)|montage]] and the [[close-up]], which effectively combine the comic and grotesque with the dramatic and tragic. Furthermore, political and historical realities are combined with the mythical and magical Latin American world. Lastly, through human comedy the problems of a family, a town, and a country are unveiled. This is all presented through García Márquez's unique form of narration, which causes the novel to never cease being at its most interesting point.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>

===Solitude===

Perhaps the most dominant theme in the book is that of solitude. Macondo was founded in the remote jungles of the Colombian rainforest. The solitude of the town is representative of the colonial period in Latin American history, where outposts and colonies were, for all intents and purposes, not interconnected.<ref name="Bell"/> Isolated from the rest of the world, the Buendías grow to be increasingly solitary and selfish. With every member of the family living only for him or her self, the Buendías become representative of the aristocratic, land-owning elite who came to dominate Latin America in keeping with the sense of Latin American history symbolized in the novel.<ref name="Bell"/> This egocentricity is embodied, especially, in the characters of Aureliano, who lives in a private world of his own, and Remedios the Beauty, who innocently destroys the lives of four men enamored by her unbelievable beauty, because she is living in a different reality due to what some see as autism.<ref name="Bell"/> Throughout the novel it seems as if no character can find true love or escape the destructiveness of their own egocentricity.<ref name="Bell"/>

The selfishness of the Buendía family is eventually broken by the once superficial Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes, who discover a sense of mutual solidarity and the joy of helping others in need during Macondo's economic crisis.<ref name="Bell"/> The pair even find love, and their pattern is repeated by Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula.<ref name="Bell"/> Eventually, Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula have a child, and the latter is convinced that it will represent a fresh start for the once-conceited Buendía family.<ref name="Bell"/> However, the child turns out to be the perpetually feared monster with the pig's tail.

Nonetheless, the appearance of love represents a shift in Macondo, albeit one that leads to its destruction. "The emergence of love in the novel to displace the traditional egoism of the Buendías reflects the emergence of socialist values as a political force in Latin America, a force that will sweep away the Buendías and the order they represent."<ref name="Bell"/> The book's ending could be a wishful prediction by García Márquez, a well-known socialist, regarding the future of Latin America.<ref name="Bell"/>

===Fluidity of time===
The book contains several ideas concerning time. Although the story can be read as a linear progression of events, both when considering individual lives and Macondo's history, García Márquez allows room for several other interpretations of time:
* He reiterates the metaphor of history as a circular phenomenon through the repetition of names and characteristics belonging to the Buendía family.<ref>One Hundred Years of Solitude, Encyclopedia Beta.</ref> Over six generations, all the José Arcadios possess inquisitive and rational dispositions as well as enormous physical strength. The Aurelianos, meanwhile, lean towards insularity and quietude. This repetition of traits reproduces the history of the individual characters and, ultimately, the history of the town as a succession of the same mistakes [[ad infinitum]] due to some endogenous [[hubris]] in our nature.
* The novel explores the issue of timelessness or eternity even within the framework of mortal existence. A major [[Trope (literature)|trope]] with which it accomplishes this task is the alchemist's laboratory in the Buendía family home. The laboratory was first designed by Melquíades near the start of the story and remains essentially unchanged throughout its course. It is a place where the male Buendía characters can indulge their will to solitude, whether through attempts to deconstruct the world with reason as in the case of José Arcadio Buendía, or by the endless creation and destruction of golden fish as in the case of his son Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Furthermore, a sense of inevitability prevails throughout the text. This is a feeling that regardless of what way one looks at time, its encompassing nature is the one truthful admission.
* On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind that the book, while basically chronological and "linear" enough in its broad outlines, also shows abundant zigzags in time, both flashbacks of matters past and long leaps towards future events. One example of this is the youthful amour between Meme and Mauricio Babilonia, which is already in full swing before we are informed about the origins of the affair.<ref name="Bell"/> Another example is the often-praised first line of the novel, which already established shifting perspective between the past, present, and future:<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://lithub.com/on-the-iconic-first-line-of-one-hundred-years-of-solitude/ |title=On the Iconic First Line of One Hundred Years of Solitude |last=Adam |first=Claire |date=February 19, 2019 |website=Literary Hub|access-date=January 1, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/04/by-heart-mary-morris-gabriel-garcia-marquez/558803/ |title=How Gabriel García Márquez Created a World in a Sentence |last=Fassler|first=Joe|date=April 24, 2018 |website=The Atlantic|access-date=January 1, 2025}}</ref>
{{Verse translation|lang=es|Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
|Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.}}

===Incest===
A recurring theme in the book is the Buendía family's propensity towards [[incest]]. The patriarch of the family, Jose Arcadio Buendía, is the first of numerous Buendías to intermarry when he marries his first cousin, Úrsula. Furthermore, the fact that "throughout the novel the family is haunted by the fear of punishment in the form of the birth of a monstrous child with a pig's tail"<ref name="Bell"/> can be attributed to this initial act and the recurring acts of incest among the Buendías.<ref name="Bell"/>

===Elitism===
A theme throughout the book is the [[elitism]] of the Buendía family. Gabriel García Márquez shows his criticism of the Latin American elite through the stories of the members of a high-status family who are essentially in love with themselves, to the point of being unable to understand the mistakes of their past and learn from them.<ref name=":0">Elsey, Brenda. "One Hundred Years of Solitude." History of Latin America 1810-Present. Hofstra University. Adams Hall, Hempstead. 3 March 2020. Lecture.</ref> The Buendía family's literal loving of themselves through [[incest]] not only shows how elites consider themselves to be above the law, but also reveals how little they learn from their history.<ref name=":0" /> José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula fear that since their relationship is incestuous, their child will have animalistic features;<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=García Márquez, Gabriel, 1927-2014|title=One hundred years of solitude|others=Rabassa, Gregory|date=25 March 1970|isbn=0-06-011418-5|edition=First|location=New York|oclc=54659}}</ref> even though theirs does not, the final child of the Buendía line, Aureliano of Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula, has the tail of a pig, and because they do not know their history, they do not know that this fear has materialized before, nor do they know that, had the child lived, removing the tail would have resulted in his death.<ref name=":1" /> This speaks to how elites in Latin America do not pass down history that remembers them in a negative manner. The Buendía family further cannot move beyond giving tribute to themselves in the form of naming their children the same names over and over again. "José Arcadio" appears four times in the family tree, "Aureliano" appears 22 times, "Remedios" appears three times and "Amaranta" and "Ursula" appear twice.<ref name=":1" /> The continual references to the sprawling Buendía house call to mind the idea of a Big House, or ''[[hacienda]],'' a large land holding in which elite families lived and managed their lands and laborers.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Meade |first=Teresa A.|author-link=Teresa Meade |title=A history of modern Latin America : 1800 to the present |date=19 January 2016 |isbn=978-1-118-77248-5 |edition=Second |location=Chichester, West Sussex |oclc=915135785}}</ref> In Colombia, where the novel takes place, a Big House was known for being a grand one-story dwelling with many bedrooms, parlors, a kitchen, a pantry and a [[veranda]], all areas of the Buendía household mentioned throughout the book.<ref name=":2" /> The book focuses squarely on one family in the midst of the many residents of Macondo as a representation of how the poorest of Latin American villages have been subjugated and forgotten throughout the course of Latin American history.<ref name=":0" />

==Interpretation==
===Literary significance and acclaim===
[[File:Cien años de soledad.png|thumb|left]]
{{rquote|right|''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' is the first piece of literature since the [[Book of Genesis]] that should be required reading for the entire human race. Mr. García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life.| [[William Kennedy (author)|William Kennedy]], ''[[National Observer (United States)|National Observer]]'' <ref name = "All of Life, Sense and Nonsense/ Fills an Argentine’s Daring Fable.">''Riding the Yellow Trolley Car : Selected Nonfiction'', by William Kennedy, 1993, Viking: New York, {{ISBN|0670842117}}, post-script section entitled: 'All of Life, Sense and Nonsense/ Fills an Argentine’s Daring Fable.' p. 243</ref>}}

The book has received universal recognition. The novel has been awarded Italy's Chianciano Award, France's Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger, Venezuela's [[Rómulo Gallegos Prize]], and the United States' [[Neustadt International Prize for Literature|Books Abroad/Neustadt International Prize for Literature]]. García Márquez also received an honorary LL.D. from [[Columbia University]] in New York City. These awards set the stage for García Márquez's [[1982 Nobel Prize in Literature]]. The novel topped the list of books that have most shaped world literature over the last 25 years, according to a survey of international writers commissioned by the global literary journal ''[[Wasafiri]]'' as a part of its 25<small>th</small>-anniversary celebration.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.wasafiri.org/pages/news_01/news_item.asp?News_01ID=182 |title=25 acclaimed international writers choose 25 of the best books from the last 25 years|date=September 25, 2009|magazine=Wasafiri Magazine |access-date=October 2, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091005175839/http://www.wasafiri.org/pages/news_01/news_item.asp?News_01ID=182 |archive-date=October 5, 2009 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

The superlatives from reviewers and readers alike display the resounding praise which the novel has received. [[Chilean people|Chilean]] poet and [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Laureate]] [[Pablo Neruda]] called it "the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since ''[[Don Quixote]]'' of [[Cervantes]]", while [[John Leonard (critic)|John Leonard]] in ''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote that "with a single bound, Gabriel García Márquez leaps onto the stage with [[Günter Grass]] and [[Vladimir Nabokov]]."<ref name = "PSinsights" />

According to Antonio Sacoto, professor at the [[City College of the City University of New York]], the book is considered one of the five key novels in Hispanic American literature (together with ''[[El Señor Presidente]]'', ''[[Pedro Páramo]]'', ''[[The Death of Artemio Cruz|La Muerte de Artemio Cruz]]'', and ''[[La ciudad y los perros]]''). These novels are often considered representative of [[Latin American Boom|the boom]] that allowed Hispanic American literature to reach the quality of North American and European literature in terms of technical quality, rich themes, and linguistic innovations, among other attributes.<ref name="ReferenceB">Antonio Sacoto (1979) ''Cinco novelas claves de la novela hispano americana'' (''[[El señor presidente]]'', ''[[Pedro Páramo]]'',  ''[[La muerte de Artemio Cruz]]'', ''[[La ciudad y los perros]]'', ''Cien años de soledad''), Eliseo Torres & Sons, New York</ref>

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, García Márquez addressed the significance of his writing and proposed its role to be more than just literary expression:

{{quote|I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.<ref>Márquez, Gabriel Garcia. Nobel Lecture, Hispanic Heritage in the Americas. Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1982</ref>}}

[[Harold Bloom]] remarked, "My primary impression, in the act of rereading ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'', is a kind of aesthetic battle fatigue, since every page is rammed full of life beyond the capacity of any single reader to absorb... There are no wasted sentences, no mere transitions, in this novel, and you must notice everything at the moment you read it."<ref>Bloom, Harold. ''Bloom's Critical Interpretations'': Edited and with an Introduction by Harold Bloom: "Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude". Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003</ref> [[David Haberly]] has argued that García Márquez may have borrowed themes from several works, such as [[William Faulkner]]'s [[Yoknapatawpha County]], [[Virginia Woolf]]'s ''[[Orlando: A Biography]]'', [[Daniel Defoe|Defoe]]'s ''[[A Journal of the Plague Year]]'', and [[Chateaubriand]]'s ''[[Atala (novella)|Atala]]'', in an example of [[intertextuality]].<ref>Haberly, David T. (1990) ''Bags of Bones: A Source for Cien Años de Soledad'', The Johns Hopkins University Press</ref>

In 2017, Chilean artist Luisa Rivera illustrated a fiftieth anniversary special edition of the book published by [[Random House|Penguin Random House Group Editorial]], [[Spain]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=García Márquez|first=Garcia|date=2017|title=''Cien años de soledad (edición ilustrada)''|url=https://www.penguinlibros.com/es/literatura-contemporanea/36986-libro-cien-anos-de-soledad-edicion-ilustrada-9788439732471|publisher=[[Random House|Penguin Random House Group Editorial, Spain]]|lang=es}}</ref>

=== Relation to Colombian history ===
As a metaphoric, critical interpretation of Colombian history, from foundation to contemporary nation, the book presents different [[national myth]]s through the story of the Buendía family,<ref name="McMurray, George 1969 pp. 175-181" /> whose spirit of adventure places them amidst the important actions of Colombian historical events. These events include the inclusion of the Roma "Gypsies", the Liberal political reformation of a colonial way of life, and the 19th-century arguments for and against it; the arrival of the railway to a mountainous country; the [[Thousand Days' War]] (Guerra de los Mil Días, 1899–1902); the corporate [[hegemony]] of the [[United Fruit Company]] ("American Fruit Company" in the story); the [[film|cinema]]; the [[automobile]]; and the [[Banana massacre|military massacre of striking workers]] as government–labour relations policy.<ref name="Wood" />

==== Inclusion of the Roma ("Gypsies") ====
According to Hazel Marsh, a Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the [[University of East Anglia]], it is estimated that 8,000 [[Romani Colombians|Roma]] live in [[Colombia]] today. However, "most South American history books...exclude the presence of the Roma."<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Roma Gypsies of Colombia {{!}} Latino Life|url=https://www.latinolife.co.uk/node/289|access-date=2021-03-24|website=www.latinolife.co.uk|archive-date=2021-04-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210409070112/https://www.latinolife.co.uk/node/289|url-status=dead}}</ref> ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' differs from this tendency by including the traveling Roma throughout the story. Led by a man named Melquíades, the Roma bring new discoveries and technology to the isolated village of Macondo, often inciting the curiosity of José Arcadio Buendía.

==== Depiction of the Thousand Days War ====
The [[Thousand Days' War]] in Colombia was fought between [[Colombian Liberal Party|Liberals]] and [[Colombian Conservative Party|Conservatives]] from 1899 to 1902. The Conservatives had been "in control more or less constantly since 1867", and the Liberals, mainly coffee plantation owners and workers who had been excluded from representation, sparked a revolution in October 1899.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Minster|first=Christopher|date=January 2, 2020|title=The Thousand Days' War|url=https://www.thoughtco.com/the-thousand-days-war-2136356|access-date=2021-03-24|website=www.thoughtco.com}}</ref> The fighting continued for a few years, and it is estimated that over 130,000 people died.

In Chapters 5 and 6, the Conservative Army has invaded the town of Macondo, leading Aureliano to eventually lead a rebellion. The rebellion is successful – the Conservative Army falls – and, afterwards, Aureliano, now "Colonel Aureliano Buendía", decides to continue fighting. He departs Macondo with the band of people who helped him oust the Conservative Army to go continue fighting elsewhere for the Liberal side.

Because Macondo is a fictional town created by Gabriel García Márquez, the exact events of the Thousand Days' War as they occurred in the book are fictional. However, these events are widely considered to be metaphorical for the Thousand Days' War as experienced by the entire country of Colombia.

==== Martial law ====
In 1928, martial law was declared through Decree No.1, which prohibited the dissolution of any meeting of more than three individuals, allowed the military to shoot the strikers if necessary and prohibited the multitude to move after the military bugle sounds.<ref>Juanita Bernal Benavides, “[https://colombianistas.org/ojs/index.php/rec/article/view/67 La violencia del orden de lo maravilloso: Cien Años de Soledad y la ley de la masacre de las bananeras]” (2019) Arkansas State University, Revista de Estudios Colombianos No. 54, pg. 83.</ref>
Differently, the Decree read in front of the station of Macondo is Decree No. 4.<ref>Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, (first published as Cien Años de Soledad 1967, Penguin Group 2014, translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa), pg. 310.</ref>   However, the content of this decree corresponds to the one of Decree No.1, with regards to giving the power to the military to shoot to kill.<ref>Article 2 Decree No.1, 5th December 1928. Art. 2º: “Ordenase a la fuerza pública que, con las prevenciones legales de estricto cumplimiento de este Decreto, disparando sobre la multitud si fuere el caso”.</ref>  Furthermore, Decree No.1 corresponds almost exactly to the length of Decree No.4 read in Macondo, which García Márquez claims to be composed of three articles of eighty words in total. In reality, the official text of Decree No. 1 contains seventy-five words, and it is composed of three provisions in total as well.
Decree No. 4 which, according to García Márquez, called the strikers, a “bunch of hoodlums”,<ref>Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, (first published as Cien Años de Soledad 1967, Penguin Group 2014, translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa), pg. 310.</ref>  was in reality, adopted only the day after the massacre took place, i.e. on 7th December 1928.<ref>Decree No. 4, 7th December 1928, retrieved from: Andrés Pérez Velasco, La Constitución tiene a quien la escriba, Implicancias de la literatura en la definición de los límites al ejercicio del poder, pg. 206.</ref>  This Decree was also composed by three provisions and the first article declared the strikers a “cuadrilla de malhechores”, i.e. group of criminals.<ref>Article 1, Decree No. 4, 7th December 1928.</ref>  Additionally, it allowed the army to prosecute any person correlated to the strike and accused the strikers of setting fire to building, looting, cutting communications and attacking peaceful citizens.<ref>Art. 3 Decree No. 4, 7th December 1928.</ref>

==== Representation of the "Banana Massacre" ====
The "[[Banana Massacre]]" occurred December 5–6, 1928, in [[Ciénega, Boyacá|Ciénega]] near [[Santa Marta|Santa Marta, Colombia]]. Banana plantation workers had been striking against the [[United Fruit Company]] to earn better labor conditions when members of the local military fired guns into crowds.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Caro|first=Jorge Enrique Elías|date=2012|title=The worker's massacre of 1928 in the Magdalena Zona Bananera - Colombia. An unfinished story|url=http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/memor/n18/n18a03.pdf|journal=Revista digital de Historia y Arqueología desde el Caribe colombiano|via=Memorias}}</ref>

This event, which occurs in Chapter 15, was depicted with relative accuracy, minus a false sense of certainty about the specific facts surrounding the events. For instance, although García Márquez writes that there must have been "three thousand...dead", the true number of victims is unknown. However, the number likely was not far off, because it is considered that the "number of killings was over a thousand", according to Dr. Jorge Enrique Elias Caro and Dr. Antonino Vidal Ortega.<ref name=":3" /> The lack of information surrounding the "Banana Massacre" is thought to be largely due to the "manipulation of the information as registered by the Colombian Government and the United Fruit Company".<ref name=":3" />
This uncertainty is also reflected in the novel’s portrayal of the aftermath, where official denial is emphasized through a fictional legal response where “ six lawyers argue that ‘the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service,’ and the court establishes ‘in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist’”.<ref name="bellvillada">Bell-Villada, Gene H. (2010). ''García Márquez: The Man and His Work''. University of North Carolina Press.</ref> This moment illustrates how the novel mirrors the historical ambiguity and conflicting narratives that surrounded the real event.
==Internal references==
In the novel's account of the civil war and subsequent peace, there are numerous mentions of the pensions not arriving for the veterans, a reference to one of García Márquez's earlier works, ''El coronel no tiene quien le escriba''. In the novel's final chapter, García Márquez refers to the novel ''[[Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar novel)|Hopscotch]]'' (Spanish: ''Rayuela'') by [[Julio Cortázar]] in the following line: "...in the room that smelled of boiled cauliflower where Rocamadour was to die" (p.&nbsp;412). Rocamadour is a fictional character in ''Hopscotch'' who indeed dies in the room described. He also refers to two other major works by Latin American writers in the novel: ''[[The Death of Artemio Cruz]]'' (Spanish: ''La Muerte de Artemio Cruz'') by Carlos Fuentes and ''[[Explosion in a Cathedral]]'' (Spanish: ''El siglo de las luces'') by [[Alejo Carpentier]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2021}}

==Adaptations==
[[Shūji Terayama]]'s play ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' ({{transliteration|ja|Hyakunen no godoku}} {{lang|ja|百年の孤独}}; originally performed by the [[Tenjō Sajiki]] theater troupe) and his film ''[[Farewell to the Ark]]'' ({{transliteration|ja|Saraba hakobune}} {{lang|ja|さらば箱舟}}) are loose (and unauthorized) adaptations of the novel transplanted into the realm of Japanese culture and history.

=== Television series ===
{{Main article|One Hundred Years of Solitude (TV series)}}

On March 6, 2019, García Márquez's son Rodrigo García Barcha announced that [[Netflix]] was adapting the book into [[One Hundred Years of Solitude (TV series)|a TV series]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eltiempo.com/cultura/cine-y-tv/netflix-hara-una-serie-de-la-novela-cien-anos-de-soledad-de-gabriel-garcia-marquez-334516 |date=March 6, 2019 |access-date=6 March 2019 |title=''Cien años de soledad' se convertirá en una serie de Netflix'' |last=Hoyos Vargas |first=Andrés |publisher=El Tiempo |language=es}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/07/netflix-to-adapt-one-hundred-years-of-solitude-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez|title=''Netflix to adapt One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez''|work=[[The Guardian]] |date=7 March 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/08/colombians-await-one-hundred-years-of-solitude-screen-adaptation-with-joy-and-fear|title= ''Colombians await One Hundred Years of Solitude screen adaptation with joy and fear''|work=[[The Guardian]]|first=Joe Parkin|last=Daniels |date=8 March 2019}}</ref>

On October 21, 2022, Netflix commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the announcement of García Márquez's Nobel Prize in Literature with an exclusive preview of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''.<ref>{{Cite web|title = ''One Hundred Years of Solitude: Special Announcement from Netflix''|date = October 21, 2022|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2_QybaXvJo|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}</ref>

On the tenth anniversary of García Márquez's death, Netflix released the official teaser for ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' and revealed that the series will run for sixteen episodes. The cast includes Claudio Cataño (Colonel Aureliano Buendía), Jerónimo Barón (young Aureliano Buendía), Marco González (Jose Arcadio Buendía), Leonardo Soto (José Arcadio), Susana Morales (Úrsula Iguarán), Ella Becerra (Petronila Iguarán), Carlos Suaréz (Aureliano Iguarán), Moreno Borja (Melquiades), and Santiago Vásquez (teenage Aureliano Buendía).<ref>{{Cite web|title = ''One Hundred Years of Solitude: Official Teaser''|date = April 17, 2024|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG45GfgD2JU|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date = April 17, 2024|url=https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-presents-a-first-look-at-scenes-from-one-hundred-years-of-solitude|title=''Netflix Presents a First Look at Scenes From One Hundred Years of Solitude''|publisher=[[Netflix]]}}</ref>

The book is considered by fans to be García Márquez's masterpiece yet he himself refused to sell the screening rights to his novel because he did not want it to be adapted in any language other than Spanish and felt a film adaptation would not cover the entire plot due to its length. For its TV adaptation, Netflix worked with Rodrigo and Gonzalo García who served as the show's executive producers. The episodes were all shot in the late writer's native Colombia and directed by Alex García Lopez, and all the characters' lines are spoken in Spanish. Barbara Enriquez, who had previously worked on Netflix's ''[[Roma (2018 film)|Roma]]'', served as the show's production designer. The TV series is Netflix's most expensive Latin American-made project to date, with Colombian groups and indigenous communities making and providing props, and a total of four hundred fifty locals building three different versions of Macondo for the progression of the series.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Chang|first=Emily|date=April 25, 2024|title=''The Circuit: Why Netflix Is Betting Big on Latin America''|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzILJXKa66I|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}</ref>

In García Márquez's birthplace of Aracataca, the locals were disappointed that the TV series was not shot there, yet they still hope that it will draw people in.<ref>{{Cite web|date=May 18, 2024|last=Taylor|first=Luke|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/18/netflix-gabriel-garcia-marquez-colombian-one-hundred-years-of-solitude|title=''Netflix's One Hundred Years of Solitude brings fame to Gabriel García Márquez's Colombian hometown''|work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref>

The series premiered on December 11, 2024.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hudspeth|first=Christopher|date=November 25, 2024|title=Everything You Need to Know About ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''|url=https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/one-hundred-years-of-solitude-release-date-news-cast-trailer|publisher=[[Netflix]]}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century|''Le Monde''{{'s}} 100 Books of the Century]]
* [[List of best-selling books]]
* [[One Hundred Years of Solitude (TV series)|''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (TV series)]]
* ''[[What Remains of Edith Finch]]''

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

== Further reading ==
* {{Cite news |last=Kiely |first=Robert |date=March 8, 1970 |department=Books |title=Memory and Prophecy, Illusion and Reality Are Mixed and Made to Look the Same |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/marque-solitude.html |work=[[The New York Times]]}}
* {{cite web |last=Soame |first=Sally |date=December 2015 |title=The Secret History of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/12/gabriel-garcia-marquez-one-hundred-years-of-solitude-history |work=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}

=== Reading curriculum ===
* [http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Synopsis-of-One-Hundred-Years-of-Solitude Oprah's Book Club's Guide to ''One Hundred Years of Solitude''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928095038/http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Synopsis-of-One-Hundred-Years-of-Solitude |date=2011-09-28 }}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20170131162524/https://edsitement.neh.gov/curriculum-unit/magical-realism-one-hundred-years-solitude-common-core Magical Realism in "One Hundred Years of Solitude"]

=== Lectures and recordings ===
* [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture.html "The Solitude of Latin America"], Nobel lecture by Gabriel García Márquez, 8 December 1982
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20160416051959/http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/marquez.htm "On Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude"] – a lecture by Ian Johnston
* {{cite web |author=García Márquez, Gabriel |title=Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez reading the first chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude |year=1967 |url=http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/32972 |language=es}}

{{Gabriel García Márquez}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:One Hundred Years Of Solitude}}
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[[Category:20th-century Colombian novels]]
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[[Category:Fiction about incest]]
[[Category:Novels by Gabriel García Márquez]]
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