One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Unfortunate Buendia Family Vice

International Baccalaureate World Literature

The Unfortunate Buendia Family Vice

Candidate #: 001054104

Any average person is accustomed to occupying him/herself with something to do when in a state of ennui. It is a cause of several different factors and plays a key role in what one chooses to do to keep him/herself busy. An individual may choose to pace back and forth around the whole house for a number of reasons. He/she may be bored and simply have nothing else to do, or anxious and expecting something shocking or he/she may be trying to avoid something. These various examples are some of the many causes of what the individual will do, which, in this case is, pace back and forth. This ties into the book, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where the characters “fall into the vice of building to take apart” (321). Nevertheless, it is elicited by different reasons and the characters merely seem to reach the same conclusion. The characters in the book approach distinct situations in the course of their life but all fall into the same vice in order to assuage their dilemma.

In an effort to stall time, Amaranta repeats the cycle where she sews a shroud and places buttons on them to take them off again and continues on. This is brought on by the delay in Rebeca’s death, in which she hopefully waits for it to arrive before her own. Amaranta blocks the penetrating love from her former love, Pietro Crespi, and Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, who wish to marry her, and closes herself in to a life of bitterness against Rebeca. She wraps a black bandage around her hand, symbolizing her chastity. She does not wish to be married, yet, remain a virgin. Amaranta dedicates her life to hatred and solitude, in which she meticulously sews a shroud to lay on Rebeca’s corpse at her expected funeral. However, this aversion turns into obsession; after planning the details out, she begins the cycle of buttoning and unbuttoning the shroud, “so that inactivity would not make the wait longer and more anxious” (283). She hopes to avoid the old memories of living with Rebeca and being compared to her in almost every way. As a solution to her problem, Amaranta comes to the conclusion of perfecting the shroud with the continuous stitching of the buttons, until the death of her enemy appears before her.

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Colonel Aureliano Buendia is a commemorating individual of Macondo who lives a long and active life, although, spends the latter half of it in solitude. His only concern in life soon becomes the business of making little gold fishes. He remains in his workshop, absorbed in the work in which he works on non-stop. He puts a ton of effort into the intricate details of “linking scales, fitting minute rubies into the eyes, laminating gills, and putting on fins” (204). This focus limits Colonel Aureliano Buendia from thinking about anything else, such as the disillusionment of the war. Another way in which he avoids the thought of war and his military years is by melting down the fishes he has created to start creating them again. This illustrates the cycle of solitude that the Buendia family members are destined to. Colonel Aureliano Buendia chooses this life of solitude by dedicating all of his time into making little gold fishes. This impacts him in numerous ways, for example, by making his back crooked from focusing too much to the miniature details and it isolates him from everyone and everything in his life. He leaves the workshop only to urinate by the chestnut tree, get a haircut every three weeks and his food is brought to him by his mother, Ursula. As a result, Colonel Aureliano Buendia falls into the same vice as Amaranta where melting gold fishes becomes the only prevention of reminiscing about the effects of the war.

Jose Arcadio Segundo is devoted to interpreting the meaning behind Melquiades’ parchments. He, too, wishes to be alone and stays in the chamber pot room, in solitude. Jose Arcadio Segundo and Colonel Aureliano Buendia parallel each other due to the fact that they remain enclosed in a small room, rarely ever leaving, and having their meals brought to them by their mothers. Santa Sofia de la Piedad routinely brings Jose Arcadio Segundo his food and leaves it by the windowsill of the room so as not to disturb his reading. He constantly reads and rereads the “unintelligible parchments” without ever establishing their intended meaning (319). In addition, he falls out of the vice for some time, but goes back into it after witnessing the mass murder of approximately three thousand people at the railroad station. It further presents the cycle of how he falls out of the vice but, readily, returns to it. Jose Arcadio Segundo reaches the point in his life where, generally, building to take apart is the only lasting way to occupy oneself for the remainder of life. Aureliano Segundo soon begins to show signs of this domestic vice. He goes around the house repairing things that are broken and he constantly puts in latches and repairs clocks. This provokes Fernanda into discovering the inherited trait and a motif of the book, of falling into the vice of building to take apart. She realizes the other members of the Buendia family have been affected by it and she fears Aureliano Segundo, too, may be falling into it. However, falling into the vice refers to coming to a dead end in the person’s life. Many members of the family reach this dead end, including Amaranta, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and Jose Arcadio Segundo. They conclude the entirety of their life in this cycle of repetition.

Overall, the characters each fall into a cycle where they repeat the same actions over and over as a result of a lingering and persistent issue. These cycles are embodied throughout the book, with different members of the Buendia family and in different generations. They devote their life to solitude, which references to the title of the book. This means that they live one hundred years in solitude just to repeat it again and the characters are unable to escape from it. They take refuge in this vice of building to take apart. Also, it only causes harm to the individual who wish to remain in confinement. However, rather than being unoccupied, Amaranta, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and Jose Arcadio Segundo come to a conclusion where they repeat a certain action monotonously in an effort to avoid something that is bothering them.