Buendia Family In One Hundred Years Of Solitude By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The members of the Buendia family constantly find themselves feeling alone in the world, whether that solitude is physical or emotional depends on the person. For Colonel Aureliano, for a great portion of his life, his solitude was physical as he locked himself away from the world for the majority of his day to make his golden fishes (Marquez 263). This solitude is self-imposed and reflects how, after the fighting, he wants nothing more than to be left alone. For another Aureliano, the solitude he feels is emotional as, when he is younger, he does not feel a connection to the outside world and says “I have nothing to do outside” (Marquez 372). He is not interested in anything outside of the papers he reads, and that causes him to not connect with people emotionally. From this, it can be seen that much of the solitude that the Buendia family feels is self-imposed and created by the way they spend their lives. By making this family the cause of their own solitude, Marquez shows that man frequently makes life harder than really necessary. Being able to rely on people for help and being social can improve a person’s life as they have people to turn to when the real problems of life occur, but this is something the Buendia family denies themselves when they create their own solitude. By the Buendia family making their own solitude, Marquez illustrates how man has a habit of making life harder than it needs to be.
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, Marquez shapes each character’s individual state of solitude through the way they choose to reminisce in their past which then reflects on their future. For Rebeca, the death of her husband, Jose Arcadio, leaves her left in the past only, “As soon as they took the body out, Rebeca closed the doors of her house and buried herself alive, covered with a thick crust of disdain that no earthly temptation was ever able to break” (Marquez 133), Rebeca chooses to only think of her friends in the past rather than recognize the present or future. Rebeca’s solitary life is created through her decision to only recognize her memories from the past which then detaches her from present reality and leaves her locked in her house. Differing from Rebeca, is Colonial Aureliano Buendia, who views life in the opposite way by forgetting the past, only to focus on the present in total confinement. Colonial Aureliano Buendia’s focused and smart manner may seem beneficial when considering his leadership role, but as a character, his lack to remember the past and focus solely on the never-ending cycle of goldsmithing and the war, leads him into his life of solitude, unable to interact with humans, “He worked all day in his workshop and Remedios would bring him a cup of black coffee in the middle of the morning” (Marquez 87), consolidating his solitary life. Through these two characters’ different abilities to interpret the past, Marquez reveals her idea on the nature of man as one who leads their life based on the way they view it, meaning their outlook on life either can lead them into a life of solitude or a life of companionship.
