English Immersion

Name: Muhammad Abdullah

ID: F2019005044

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Summary: One Hundred Years of Solitude is the history of the isolated town of Macondo and
of the family that founded it, the Buendas. With the exception of gipsies who occasionally stop
by to sell items like ice and telescopes, the village has had no interaction with the outside world
for years. The family patriarch, José Arcadio Buenda, is impulsive and curious. He continues to
be a leader who is also extremely solitary and isolates himself from other men through his
obsessional research into enigmatic issues. In the course of the book, his progeny picks up on
these qualities. José Arcadio, his older child, inherited his enormous physical strength and his
impulsiveness. Aureliano, his younger child, carries on his intriguing focus and fierce
concentration. As it makes contact with other communities in the area, the village gradually loses
its pristine, isolated nature. Aureliano becomes the leader of the Liberal rebels and becomes
famous as Colonel Aureliano Buenda as the civil conflicts break out, bringing bloodshed and
death to calm Macondo, which had previously known neither. Through the fame of Colonel
Buenda, Macondo transforms from an idyllic, mysterious, and protected sanctuary into a town
that is inextricably linked to the outside world. Throughout and after the war, Macondo's
governments underwent numerous changes. At one point, Arcadio, the cruellest of the Buendas,
ruled in a totalitarian manner before being executed by firing squad. Later, a mayor is chosen,
and during his administration, there is peace until he is assassinated during another civil revolt.
With the signing of a peace treaty after his passing, the civil war is finally over.

The majority of the events that Garca Marquez depicts are significant turning points in the lives
of the Buendas, including births, deaths, marriages, and romantic relationships. Since more than
a century passes during the course of the novel, these events are mostly described. Some of the
Buenda men are savage and sexually voracious, frequenting brothels and seducing women.
Others are isolated and silent, preferring to stay in their rooms alone to craft miniature golden
fish or study old books. From plain-clothed maids to the proper Fernanda del Carpio, who wears
a hole-in-the-cock to consummate her marriage, the rules vary.

The indomitable matriarch of the family, Ursula Iguarán, works tirelessly to maintain the family's
unity despite its divisions because she still believes in the family's tremendous destiny. However,
the centrifugal forces of modernity are disastrous for the Buenda family and the entire
community of Macondo. As a banana plantation enters the area and begins to abuse the people
and the soil, imperialism-style capitalism reaches Macondo. The Americans who own the
plantation also move into a fenced-off area of the city. In the end, the banana workers go on
strike because they are fed up with being treated so cruelly. The army, which supports the
proprietors of the plantations, massacres thousands of them. After the remains are dropped into
the water, five years of nonstop rain begin, causing a deluge that causes Macondo to fall to its
death. The Buenda family also starts its process of final erasure as the city, worn down by years
of violence and false growth, starts to fade away, overtaken by nostalgia for bygone times. The
town is once more alone and remote toward the book's conclusion. Being cut off from the outer
world and destined for a lonely existence, the few surviving Buenda family members turn in on
themselves incestuously. In the last scene of the novel, the last surviving Buenda deciphers a
series of old prophecies and discovers that all had been foretold: the hamlet and its residents had
just been following a predetermined cycle that combined tremendous beauty and huge,
devastating grief.