The Doomed Buendia Family in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

People do not pride themselves on being like their mother or father. But ancestors traits pass down through families, tying them together. The Buendia family, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, is a perfect example of the mystical doom that follows through generations. Nobel Prize Winner, Marquez weaves a tale about life in Macadona and the strange and twisted Buendia family line. The story addresses mysterious dark magic, death, and horrifying tales of incest, debauchery, and love. Throughout the story, Marquez creates Macadona as if time was repeating itself. Each generation making the same fateful choices as their relatives. In this story the protagonists have many differences in their fates. However; they all share unifying facts that tie them together in the hundred years of solitude.

The men of the Buendia family all originated from Jose Arcadio Buendia I. Marquez describes his character as a charismatic, stubborn, and imaginative man. Macadona was founded by him after and argument with Prudencio Aguilar. This led to Jose to spearing him through the throat. Haunted by the ghost of Aguilar, Jose has a dream and goes in search of Macadona.

Jose Arcadio Buendia was obsessed with magic. After meeting gypsy Melquiades, Jose slowly loses his touch on reality trying to decipher a Sanskrit manuscript left to him. After a while, Ursula,his wife and cousin, ordered “twenty men to drag him to the chestnut tree in the courtyard, where they left him tied up”(Marquez,78). Ursula made this decision for his safety and the safety of her family. He remained there until his death, shouting wildly in perfect Latin. Jose's sons, also followed a similar tragic fate. Jose Arcadio II was like his father in attitude b...

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...ed to solitary lifestyles.

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, the characteristics of each family member resemble another. They may start differently, but their fates follow the same tragic conclusion. The Buendia men suffer from their own macho pride and recklessness. The women are subjected to the will of the men, and are burdened with tragedy that follows them. This book is locked in a time circle for 100 years, doomed to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. The Buendia family all share unifying facts that tie them together creating their own solitude. Marquez describes the life and fate of the Buendia's struggle with madness, incest, and 100 years of solitude that is wiped out in he end of the book.

Works Cited

García, Márquez Gabriel, and Gregory Rabassa. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Print.