The most important presence in the novel outside of the major Buendia male and female characters is the gypsy Melquiades, whose manuscript turns out to be the narrative of the Buendias. He is the gypsy friend of Jose Arcadio Buendia I, and he introduces Macondo to a host of fabulous […]
Read more Character Analysis Melquiades, the GypsyCharacter Analysis Jose Arcadio II
Conceived and born before the founding of Macondo, Jose Arcadio II is the oldest child of Jose Arcadio and Ursula Buendia. If he has none of the imagination of his younger, swashbuckling brother, he nonetheless has passion and machismo equal to that of the Colonel. At the age of fourteen, […]
Read more Character Analysis Jose Arcadio IICharacter Analysis Colonel Aureliano Buendia
The longest shadow in the novel is cast by Jose Arcadio’s son Colonel Aureliano Buendia. As the most outstanding member of the second generation, so it is through his triumphs and failures that we come to understand the theme of solitude. He fulfills the novel’s requirements of circular myth and […]
Read more Character Analysis Colonel Aureliano BuendiaCharacter Analysis Jose Arcadio Buendia
The Buendia males are all enterprising, passionate dreamers, but Jose Arcadio Buendia is at once the most notable and the most eccentric. Forever fascinated by the unknown, he is a man for whom no form of reality will ever live up to what he imagines can be further discovered. Hardly […]
Read more Character Analysis Jose Arcadio BuendiaSummary and Analysis Section 16-20
In retaliation for the threatening workers’ strike, Mr. Brown, we are told, “unleashed a torrential rain” that lasts for four years, eleven months, and two days. In addition, the duration of the storm makes the Yankees single-minded, irrational, and vengeful. The rains fill the lustful glutton Aureliano Segundo “with the […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Section 16-20Summary and Analysis Section 15
In characteristic Buendia fashion, Meme’s affair with Mauricio Babilonia leads to a child. In addition, the infection of Yankee progress has brought with it a strong sense of bourgeois scandal and shame. Fernanda takes the pregnant Meme off to a convent in Cracow. After the boy is born, the nuns […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Section 15Summary and Analysis Section 13-14
Macondo prospers with the rise of the banana company and increased commerce. The Buendias settle into decline. Their household suffers increasing disruption and alienation from the town. Ursula loses her eyesight, but she heroically compensates for its loss with her uncanny memory and sense of hearing. Jose Arcadio V is […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Section 13-14Summary and Analysis Section 10-12
The next generation of Buendias moves to the center of the action. Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda del Carpio are married and have a son, Jose Arcadio V. Ursula nurses the wild fantasy that the young boy will someday become Pope. Her preposterous whim shows us a stark disproportion between false […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Section 10-12Summary and Analysis Section 5-9
In some degree, tragedy is the fate of all the Buendias. Aureliano marries Remedios, but his happiness is cut short when she dies after her unborn twins become twisted in her womb. The patriarch becomes senile. He now “sees” Prudencio Aguilar so vividly that the ghost becomes a real person. […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Section 5-9Summary and Analysis Section 1-4
100 Hundred Years of Solitude has twenty unnumbered chapters. For the sake of convenience, these CliffsNotes have numbered the sections 1 through 20. The novel begins in the retrospective present — that is, as Colonel Aureliano Buendia faces a firing squad, he remembers the first time that his father took […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Section 1-4