FL 380: An Archaeology of the "Boom":
Modern Latin American Prose Fiction
Reading Guide to García Márquez #1
One Hundred Years of Solitude
- 1 Narrative Time, Space, & Tone: "Many years later as
he faced the firing squad. . . was to remember that distant afternoon .
. . At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe..."
- 1 "The world was so recent that many things lacked names..."
a. Time
b. Foundational Myths
c. Language
- 1 Magical Realism: "First they brought the magnet."
- 2 The patriarch: "José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled
imagination..."
a. Characteristics: ???
i. Imaginative
ii. Excessive: Beyond the natural and the
supernatural
iii. A "monster of nature"
- 2 The matriarch: "Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who
relied..."
a. Characteristics: ???
i. Enterprising
- 2 Magical Realism: "The only thing he succeeded in doing..."
- 3 Melquíades premonition: "In a short time, man will be
able..."
- 4 Space: "...a messenger who crossed the mountains, got lost..."
- 4 Another Space: "When he became an expert in the use..."
- 4 Yet another Space: "Úrsula and the children broke their
backs..."
- 5 The Earthly Space: "The earth is round, like an orange."
a. Magical Realism: Time, Science, Remoteness, Ignorance.
- 5 Úrsula's patience: "Úrsula lost her patience..."
a. Her strength.
- 6 Melquíades: "That prodigious creature, said to possess..."
a. The Supernatural and the Human
b. Metafiction: "The children were startled by his fantastic stories."
- 6 Magical Realism: "José Arcadio, his older brother, would
pass on..."
- 7 Superstition (Religion) and Knowledge (Melquíades' Science)
on Satan:
a. "It's the smell of the devil," she said...
b. "Not at all," Melquíades corrected her...
- 8 Magical Realism: "The fear turned into panic..."
- 8 Macondo and the world: "Incredible things are happening..."
- 9 The foundation: "At first José Arcadio Buendía
had been..."
a. A youthful patriarch in the company of an active, small, severe woman
of unbreakable nerves.
b. José Arcadio's Arcadia: "had set up the placement of the
houses..."
c. "A truly happy village where no one was over thirty..."
- 10 Macondo's Geographical, Historical, Epistemological isolation.
- 11-12 Nature and Time: "The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed..."
- 12 Magical Realism: "Before them, surrounded by ferns and palm
trees..."
- 13 "The ideal of a peninsular Macondo prevailed for a long time..."
- 14 Úrsula's will: "If I have to die for the rest of you..."
- 15 The children
a. José Arcadio: supernatural strength but no imagination
b. Aureliano: silent, withdrawn but para-psychologically endowed
- 16 A prodigious education: "In the small separate room..."
- 18 Magical Realism: "It's ice."
- 19 Pre-Macondian times: "When the pirate Sir Francis Drake..."
a. History's irruption in a community ignorant of time..
- 20 A bond that was more solid than love: "They were cousins."
- 22 A murder: "You go home and get a weapon, because..."
- 22 Asserting a will against solitude: "If you bear iguanas..."
a. A will against the fear of God and Nature.
- 23 A visit from the dead: "You go to hell..."
- 24 A dream: "a noisy city with houses having mirror walls..."
- 25 Pilar Ternera: "a merry, foul-mouthed, provocative woman..."
a. 26 "Suddenly she reached out . . . "Lordy!"...
- 28 Virginity lost: "a bottomless darkness . . . he tried to remember
her face but found before him the face of Úrsula..."
a. 31 "It's like an earthquake."
- 31 Amaranta was born.
- 31 Magical Realism: "This time, along with many other artifices..."
- 32 The first bastard son: "You're going to be a father."
- 34 Leaving father and mother: "On Saturday night, José
Arcadio..."
- 37 "Úrsula had not caught up with the gypsies, but she..."
- 38 Arcadio: Pilar Ternera and José Arcadio's son.
a. Visitación: a Guajiro Indian woman.
b. 39 Amaranta and Arcadio: "came to speak the Guajiro language..."
- 39 The first "boom" in Macondo's history: "it changed
into an active town with stores and workshops..."
- 40 Time: "Many years later, when Macondo was a field of wooden
houses..."
- 41 A hint: Úrsula-"convinced that the wild behavior of
her children was something as fearful as a pig's tail."
- 41 Rebeca's arrival.
- 45 "It was the insomnia plague."
- 48-49 "Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping
away..."
a. 49 "many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented
by themselves, which was less practical for them but more comforting."
b. 49 Pilar Ternera's mystification.
- 50 "His eyes became moist . . . It was Melquíades."
- 55 "One night he though he had found a prediction..."
a. Our present Colombia v. José Arcadio Buendía's dream.
- 57-58 José Arcadio Buendía v. Don Apolinar Moscote: "In
that way he carried him through the middle of the street..."
- 60 Civil politics: "The word of your enemy."
- 62 "Pietro Crespi was young and blond..."
- 66 Love strikes: Rebeca and Pietro Crespi, Aureliano and Remedios Moscote.
- 67 Aureliano's poetry.
- 69 A family that sleeps together...: "I've come to sleep with
you."
- 71 "Love is a disease," he thundered...
- 74 "Years later, facing the firing squad, Arcadio would remember
the trembling with which Melquíades made him listen to several pages
of his impenetrable writing..."
- 79 The dead and their solitude: "Prudencio," he exclaimed...
- 80 A patriarch's collapse: "This is a disaster. . . Today is Monday
too."
- 82 "Aureliano Buendía and Remedios Moscote were married..."
- 85 Magical Realism: "Just a moment. . . Now we shall witness..."
a. 86 Hoc est simplicissimus...
b. 86 Nego. . . Factum hoc existentiam Dei...
- 92 "It was José Arcadio."
- 94 A prodigal son: "And there was so much of a home..."
- 95 A family that sleeps together: "Oh, little sister..."
a. 96 "Fuck nature two times over..."
- 100 Civil politics: "If I have to be something I'll be a Liberal
because..."
- 105 "Not madness. . . War. And don't call me Aurelito any more.
Now I'm Colonel Aureliano Buendía."