100 Years of Solitude is a book by Gabriel García Márquez, a Columbian author of many books. I decided to start the literature series with this book because of how unique and praised this book is. I also decided to start it off with that book because it’s my favorite one. For a quick summary, the book follows the Buendía family over seven generations in the fictional town of Macondo. It is one of the most famous books on magical realism. Magical realism is when many fantastical events are described in a matter-of-fact way, which is sometimes humorous. For example, one time the family, and town, beauty floated to heaven, and when José Arcadio Buendía died, tiny yellow flowers rained down. You could look at this book as a history book almost. It describes the daily episodes of many characters over 100 years in a condensed way.

I don’t want to spoil the book for you, so I won’t talk about certain aspects of it, but I will mention three interesting things this book touches on. Before I do that, I want to say that this is a longer read. It’s not super long or anything, but as I said before, it’s very condensed. There are so many characters and plot points that you would miss a lot if you skipped one page. One time towards the end of the book, there was a multi-page sentence. This book can also be confusing because the Buendía family often reuses names. There are a lot of Josés and Aruelianos, and one Aureliano had 17 sons named Aureliano. So if you do read the book, please buy one with a family tree in the front.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is the motif of repetition in the story. The most common repetition is of mistakes. New generations repeat the mistakes of their ancestors over and over and over again. Úrsula, the mother, thought it might have something to do with the repetition of names. She had good reason to believe this, after all, people with the name José Acardio tended to be impulsive and enterprising, and the Aruelianos are withdrawn with lucid minds. I think the main thing that could’ve saved these characters is an understanding of the past. I think this is an integral idea for every society and family. Many people question why history matters, and it matters because understanding the past will keep you from repeating it.

Another thing this book emphasizes is isolation, and it’s consequences. Solitude not only appears in the title but appears on almost every page of the book. Many of the characters keep to themselves, or they don’t listen to anyone but themselves. The town they live in was mostly removed from reality too. I do not want to spoil too much, so I’ll say this, Márquez thinks staying to yourself is the quickest way to destruction.

The third thing is the bleakness of this book. Towards the end of the book, a banana company comes to Macondo, and long story short, a lot of people die for protesting workers’ rights. The banana company legally got out of claiming it had any humans working for it, and it doesn’t look good when a company can prove that people aren’t people. This part was based on a real-life event that happened in Columbia. This represents truth because the book didn’t at all sugarcoat or make a happy ending to the problems of Macondo. It’s hard to say how the reader is supposed to feel about the characters and their problems. The characters make many mistakes, including violence, pedophilia, and lying. The ending of most plot lines and the ending of the book is anything but hopeful as well. I think because of the way Márquez wrote this book, he could hit some bleak, but interesting, truths about people, history, fate, and time.

Even though the ending was bleak, Márquez said something really hopeful when he accepted his Nobel prize for the book. “...A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”