Analysis of Gabriel Garcia's One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Analysis of Gabriel Garcia's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Historical roots of Macondo and the Buendia family.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is about on imagined mythical town which is named as Macondo. Its foundation, rise, development and death throughout the history of its founders; Buendia family is narrated. It is the evolution and eventual decadence of a small Latin American town and its inhabitants. The novel is dominated by Colombian settings and the Buendia family is a Colombian family of those times that the story takes places. At that point, the reader may question the position of the book. Is the story of the fictional town Macondo and Buendia family simply about the failure of that particular town and family or is there something beyond. Did Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, spend three years to write this book that then became his master piece, only because he wanted to talk about an imagined town, an imagined family and their failure. Or, is the book a metaphor for Latin America's, specifically Colombia's and her peoples history. Did Marquez write this book to paste it on history as an example of a

history not to be repeated again, to paste it as a warning. As the second part of this assay, I want to focus on gypsies since they construct an other culture other than the inhabitants of Macondo. To find out the importance of this distinct, nomadic gypsy culture will enable the reader to make a comparison between gypsies and their contact with civilization, and Buendia family and their failure within their solitude. In other words, by comparing gypsies and Buendias, the reader will be able to get some important clues about Buendias' failure.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the Nobel Prize wining author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" of 1982. The ambiguity, aesthetic genius and the usage of the technique, 'magical realism' that is the connection between the fantasy and reality brought that success. The reader does not have to think too hard to enjoy the book. This is the beauty of Third World writing, that it deals with both specific and international issues. Third World and multi-cultural writers are describing, reproducing and addressing a heterogeneous and international (and this is often what passes for post-colonial) readership. Third world is a useful term which makes it possible to talk about this...

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.... Buendias overlooked the beauty of the heterogeneous thinking and behaving and stacked with the useless homogenous way of living that ended their aimless existence. Their aimless living left its place to a tabula rasa, a new fresh start at the end of the novel. Famous Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, by creating this new page, by eliminating the Buendia family, is preparing a new chance for other peoples, in fact for Latin Americans. His book is now pasted on history with the help literature and the intended readers may look at it and learn a lot from it. The story of Macondo and Buendias is not simply a story of a fictional town and its inhabitants. Marquez uses Aureliano's method, pasting names on objects to remember their names and functions. By pasting this book as a warning, Marquez names the true history of Colombia. He retells the civil war; the War of One Thousand Days and the banana massacre that is denied by the Colombian Government and erased from history books. Marquez pasted his book to show some overlooked parts of Colombia's history and the dangers of circularity and repetitions and he wants his book to be a guide, a warning at least for a better future.

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