Hey everyone
One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques is the most famous novel, not only from
Columbia but from the entire Latin America. Also it has the catchiest novel title ever.
In this video I will tell you about the author, summarise the novel, tell you what it is about,
its major themes, and the reason why you should read it. I will also tell you why this novel is
a little more than that. It is a novel about one grandmother and the homo sapiens species.
First let me tell you a little about the country. Columbia is named after
an Italian boy who got lost on his way to India. Christopher Columbus
believed he had found a shortcut to India. People say women are bad with direction.
Columbia is a country of 50 million people, mostly catholic and close to the equator.
AS we will see in this novel, I think grandmas are the most important people in Columbia.
Columbia is also known for its coffee, very good-looking people, and great literature.
Okay, who is Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most famous
Latin American writer. He was born in 1927 and died in 2014. He won the Nobel Prize in 1982.
A socialist and a close friend of Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader,
in 1976, he was punched in the face by another Latin American Nobel Prize winner from Peru,
the politically conservative Mario Vargas Llosa. Their political difference didn't help,
but Llosa punched him because Mr Marquez had actually slept his wife.
Marqueze’s other popular novel is Love in the Time of Cholera, based on his parents’ love
story. His parents 11 kids, but his father had 15 kids, so Mr Marquez was raised by his grandma who
gave us the most important character in this book. In Latin America he was known as Gabo.
One hundred years of solitude was first published in Spanish in 1967 and translated in English in
1971. It’s about 420 pages, so will take you 8 hours of solid reading. A short Mexican novel
called Pedro Paramo, which I review in another video, inspired Marquez to write this masterpiece.
It’s not an easy novel to summarise as it covers too many characters and a long period of time,
but it is a story of 7 generation of Buendia family in a town in a the middle of a jungle.
It all starts when José Arcadio Buendía kills a man for insulting him, he and his wife
Úrsula have to leave their home. They wander for a long time until one night Jose dreams about a city
of mirrors that reflect the world, they found a new city called Macondo, which is the setting
for this novel. In a way, this town represents the entire world. Macondo, believed to be surrounded
by water on all sides, is isolated and they think they’re the only inhabitants of the known world.
The couple, Jose and Ursula have kids, and their kids have kids, and their kids have more kids
until 7th generations of this same family. But soon other people show up. First the Gypsies,
then soldiers of the civil wars, the railway and capitalism. Columbia appears out of the nowhere
to claim sovereignty over Macondo, and this brings politics, warfare, revolution, violence
and strange happenings like years of insomnia. At the end Macondo is ruined and abandoned and only
one person remains of the once huge Buendia family and he is isolated and about to die.
The novel is full of sex, violence, infidelity, murders, executions,
strange happenings, until the town falls like a fallen empire. Soon everything is
wiped out completely. The first generation die of natural causes, the 2nd to 4th due to wars,
5th generation are killed by their kids and last ones are eaten by ants.
The novel has so many characters who are prominent at some point in the
novel until they die and replaced by someone else. So it is really hard to
know who or what the novel is about. Or who are the real heroes in this novel.
The main hero I think is Ursula, who’s the wife at the beginning, then becomes a mother, grandmother,
great grandmother and great great grandmother and lives to be over a hundred years old, as she
witnesses her husband, children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren die one by one,
due to old age, violence, stupidity etc. She doesn't lead men to their death or make any
scientific discoveries or invent anything, but she remains alive for 80% of the novel
to care for them. The title of one hundred years of solitude refers to her lonely life
after every death or disappearance in her family. The story goes on for more than one hundred years,
but she suffers a lot because she outlives almost everyone. This is a good example of long life
means more suffering. She is a religious woman, a matriarch and despite most of the events in the
novel not directly involve her, she watches the madness as the men in her life do stupid things
for money, power and sex yet she remains to feel the pain in solitude. She is also very funny.
At the end she dies alone. Not many people were at her funeral because not many had left. Her death
brings the demise of the family altogether. In a way, it is a metaphor that when the women die,
so does the village, town, or civilisation. I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez paid homage
to his own grandma who raised him as a child as his father had 14 other kids to look after.
What is this novel about? Two things. First, history is cyclical.
If there is one thing that this novel does brilliantly, it is the stupidity of men
repeated in every generation. Not women, but men. The novel also suggests that since men
are quite predictable in their actions, they are also dispensable. Men kill each other for power,
money and women. Almost too predictable. And you know who suffers the most? Women. Some suggested
that this novel is somewhat sexist, but I have to disagree. If anything this novel exposes how
terrible men are. The novel evokes sadness as you witnesses one generation comes and the other one
goes. The cyclical nature of time. We think we are new on earth but we are part of a cycle and
recycle. Millions of people have come and gone before us and we are next to go and more are
coming. The only continuity is the grandmas. They stay behind to safeguard traditions.
The second important theme of this novel is Solitude
We humans are alone on earth for 100, or 200 thousand years. No god to hold our hands.
Humans have discovered and invented everything on earth in order to survive, thrive and rule.
In that sense we are alone on earth. The only species who is aware of its own death. Aware
of its own existence. The only species asking the question why or what purpose. We are So alone that
we have invented gods, religions and stories like security blankets to cope with our solitude. Also,
on an individual level, are born alone, live alone and die alone. This novel is like a miniaturized
history of humanity condensed into a single town and at the heart of it the rise and fall of a
single family. Macando is a synthesis of human history from the time when things had no names
to the arrival of capitalism. The novel covers everything from Large to small, the passage of
time, as it slows down and speeds up, expands and contracts throughout the novel.. One could
say it’s a human-centred view of the world, so it doesn't include animals and plants as part
of human story. Solitude as a concept is human invention and based on the idea of individualism.
I’m not a bit fan of magic realism but in this novel Gabriel Garcia Marquez has done a brilliant
job as he uses magic realism to create comedy, enhance storytelling, and condense and expand
time. For example to collapse a long period of history into a single event, like the
year of insomnia, or a woman so beautiful that men literally die, create a really beautiful illusions
that are more powerful than the real. Men do kill each other for women. Also he has used magic
realism very sparingly and cleverly that the entire narrative doesn't depend on it.
On the verge of death, characters remember their childhood, discovery of ice, or their first born,
to create a really powerful contrast or perspective of one’s life in its entirety.
In memory time collapses to create two contrasting events side-by-side. When life is condensed it
becomes funny because sometimes some decisions don’t make sense or seem bizarre when seen through
the lens of their outcomes. This is more true in politics and wars. The funniest and most tragic
hero is of course, Ursula as she lives so long to understand the absurdity of human actions.
There are other funny bits in the novel. For example the town prostitute, where men
apparently go for therapy. Or at birth, babies are checked if they have a tale as people are worried
they are turning into monkeys. Also, the narrator uses hyperbole to exaggerate the length of time,
number of people and size of things to make the narrative very funny.
It has so many good things that talking about its weakness seems trivial. But
one thing that makes it unique is also it weakness. The narrative is very choppy,
which is makes it hard to follow sometimes. For the most part it’s told in linear method, but the
events are given a lot of details so there are a lot jump-cuts like in a choppy movie. Another
issue I felt was the repetitiveness of the events, people and stories. As generations come and go,
they pretty much do the same things over and over. Human life is for the most part pretty boring.
So the middle of the novel isn’t very interesting to read. I think a lot of
people get there and lose interest. A more ideological criticism, it’s euro-centric .
You don't read this novel for the plot. You read it for the experience, the insights and dramas of
human existence, and the beautiful language. Reading this feels like sitting on a hilltop
and watching people appear, live their lives and then disappear. But with the corner of your eyes
you always see one person sticking around, just like you the reader. It is Ursula, the grandma,
the fiercest, the kindest and funniest person in Macondo, or even in Columbia. So by reading it
you make sure she isn’t in solitude anymore. She has you the reader for company. She’s amazing.
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sharing and commenting on the video. I’m on a journey to read fiction from every country on
earth, so please make suggestions for books from your country. Thank you!