One Hundred Years Of Solitude Biblical Allusions

In Marquez’ story, One Hundred Years of Solitude, there are frequent allusions to the bible or even real events, like the massacre of the banana plantation workers, but what do they allude to? They are open to the reader’s interpretation but many are openly seen to be to Genesis. One example is the metaphor between the new, untouched, and uncorrupted Macondo with Eden before Adam and Eve ate the apple. The five year flood that destroys Macondo alludes to the biblical flood of Noah that wiped the face of the earth.
The nearly five-year flood that deluges Macondo, practically erasing all trace of the banana company from the land, parallels the Biblical flood that covered the earth in the time of Noah. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the world

had become full of wicked people, so similarly to the bible, the flood came to wipe the world of people’s sins. “GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5-7). In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the banana plantation came to Macondo when the railroads were built. It provided people with work, but no healthcare, and forced them to work on Sundays, so the workers planned to go on strike. During the protest, military men with machine guns surrounded the demonstrators, and all the men, women, and children, were gunned down. After the clearly wicked act, the five years of rain descended upon Macondo and its people to cleanse the land. “He went through the small square by the station and he saw the fritter stands piled one on top of the other and he could find no trace of the massacre. The streets were deserted under the persistent rain” (Marquez 308). The rest of the town had no clue that a massacre had even occurred, further proving the washing and cleansing of the town and its people’s memories.
Another similarity between the two floods is the unmatchable power of God.

In the biblical flood it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and in One Hundred Years of Solitude, it rained for nearly five years. The length of time emphasizes that humans cannot attain God’s power no matter how much knowledge or technology we obtain. Before the flood, Noah, who was told by God that he would flood the earth, tried to warn people of the flood. Due to the people’s hubris that God’s power was negligible, God descended the 40 days and 40 nights of rain upon them. "Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, standing more than twenty-two feet above the highest peaks. All the living things on earth died – birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all kinds of small animals, and all the people...They were all destroyed..." (Genesis 7:19-23). In Macondo, people had just built the railroad that exposed them to the outside world. They were bringing in new technology that the people of Macondo had never experienced before. They were in wonder, but also losing sight of how the town was before the plantation and the railroad. “The sky crumbled into a set of destructive storms and out the north came hurricane that scattered roofs about and knocked down walls and uprooted every last plant of the banana groves." (Marquez 315). Just like in Genesis, the rain came and in this way reset the town to before the banana plantation and foreigners intruded and imposed their evil

ways.
The biblical flood that wiped the earth was seen as a cleansing of the land. The people had been evil and God saw them as needing to be vanquished from the earth. Just as in the bible, the people of Macondo were becoming nefarious. The rain brought upon the town, nearly washed away the entire spiteful plantation with all of its sins. The town of Macondo was falling apart due to the intrusion of foreigners and their imposing rules, laws, technology, and arrogance. The five year flood was the attempt at cleansing the town and ridding it of all evil, just like God had intended with the biblical flood of Noah in Genesis.