Daily Books - One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters

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Gabriel Garcia Marquezs

One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Copyright 2015 by dailyBooks.All Rights Reserved.

First Published in the United States of America 2015

We hope you enjoy this complementary guide from dailyBooks . We aim to provide quality, thought provoking material to assistin your discovery and discussions on some of todays favorite books.

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O NE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE WAS WRITTEN BY Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book is considered to be a magical realism novel. Marquez uses the Buendia family to tell the stories of Colombian myths. The Buendia family finds themselves in the middle of the reformation of the political system, the Thousand Days' War, and the inventions of the railway system, the automobile, and the cinema.

The story of the Buendia family spans many generations, beginning with Jose Aracadio Buendia, who founded Macondo with his wife, Ursula. Jose and Ursula live in Riohacha, Colombia, where they are unhappy. They leave Riohacha to find a better way of living. As they are on their journey to a new home, Jose dreams of the land of Macondo, a city of mirrors in Jose's dreams. The next day, Jose decides to build Macondo next to the river.

Jose builds Macondo as an island. The Buendia family continues to live in Macondo for many generations. However, the Buendia family finds themselves involved in many unusual events. Many of these events are misfortunes, and the Buendia family is not able or willing to escape them. One day, a hurricane rips through Macondo and destroys the city. At the novel's end, one of the Buendia family members cracks a code that had been unsolved for many years. The code revealed a secret message that listed everything, good and bad, that happened to the Buendia family for generations.

The characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude are frequently visited by ghosts. The ghosts symbolize the past and the haunting nature that the past has on Macondo. Other symbols in the story are colors. The color gold is often used to signify wealthy while yellow is used as a symbol for change, destruction, or death. The city of mirrors, Macondo, represents illusions. Historically speaking, the brave new world of the Americas proved to be nothing more than an illusion or dream for many people. The glass city and ice factory can be easily broken, and they are, therefore, symbols of the destruction of Latin American history and culture.

I N ARACATACA, COLOMBIA, IN 1927, GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born. Soon after, Gabriel Eligio Garcia moved with his wife to Barranquilla, Colombia, after becoming a pharmacist. They left baby Gabriel to be brought up by his mother's parents. Eventually, Gabriel's father came back after his grandfather died in 1937. Gabriel's father and mother moved Gabriel to Barranquilla with them. Later, they moved to Sucre where his father opened his own pharmacy.

Because Gabriel Garcia Marquez was raised by his grandparents, their ideologies influenced him greatly. His grandfather, Colonel Marquez was a strong Liberal. He was in the Thousand Years War and was looked at as a hero by other Liberals in Colombia. When the banana massacres took place in Colombia, Colonel Marquez refused to be quiet about the matter. He became well known for this. Gabriel Garcia Marquez learned how to tell a story from his grandfather, who also taught him that the greatest burden in life was to have killed another human. Gabriel Garcia Marquez would use his grandfather's words in future novels. Gabriel Garcia Marquez credits his grandfather for his own political ideologies. He said his grandfather never told him fairy tales, but rather, he told him about his memories of civil war between the Liberals and Conservatives in Colombia.

On the other hand, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's father was a Conservative. Colonel Marquez was not pleased with his daughter's decision to marry a Conservative. He and his wife tried to keep them apart in any way they could. Gabriel Garcia Marquez would later use his parents relationship as the basis for his fourth novel, Love in the Time of Cholera .

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's grandmother, Dona Tranquilina Iguaran Cotes, also influenced the person he became. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said she would accept extraordinary things in life as everyday occurrences. She would often tell stories about ghosts and omens, which Colonel Marquez always ignored. She would tell these stories in a way that they seemed like the absolute truth. She inspired Gabriel Garcia Marquez's interest in the supernatural and magical view of life. Her style of storytelling also influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez to write One Hundred Years of Solitude .