Talk:One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Assessment comments The following comments were left by the assessors: (edit · refresh) Due to the nature of the novel, it is extremely difficult for readers of the article to tell all the José's and Aureliano's apart. This causes the reader to look back (or even worse) forward, to see if the name is explained there. A brief description of the historical context would help. A reference to the history of Colombia is definitely not enough here, nor are the links to the Conservatives. Which parts are real, which parts are fictional? Article is not balanced. There is too much attention on the characters (which does not mean that this information should be discarded, but rather that the rest of the article should be expanded). Article lacks sources.

WikiProject Echo has identified One Hundred Years of Solitude as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the Spanish language Wikipedia.

Can somebody tell me how to use foreign characters (accent marks, Chinese letters, etc.)? I would be grateful. --Beelzebubs 19:31, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Chinese (and Hebrew, and Arabic, etc.) are a more complicated matter, but if you want to start easy with the accented letters you need for articles like this one, there's several things you can do:

• Change your keyboard overlay from US English to US International. That'll let your apostrophe do double duty as an acute accent, and other similar neat tricks -- á, ñ, î, à, ë, ã, etc. (Assuming you're on a standard Windows machine.)
• Cut-and-paste them from other parts of the article / other articles.
• Learn the ALT+xxxx codes that let you key them in. Eg, ALT+0226 = â.
• Check out Wikipedia:Special characters and either cut-and-paste the characters from there or learn to type the HTML-entities: so, to write Buendía, you actually type Buendía. But that's kind of laborious, and it makes articles uglier / more complicated for other editors (though probably not as much as Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc).

Whatever you decide, keep up the good work like you've been doing on this article! –Hajor 01:02, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

• • Thánks, Hájor. I will táke that under considerátion.Beelzebubs 01:05, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

• LÕL --Tagishsimon

Contents 1 Historic range of the novel... 2 Prudencio Aguilar 3 "considered by many"? 4 (File under themes) 5 Merging Macondo 6 Colombia 7 Remidios 8 Bad Jokes & Other Deleted Nonsense 9 Magical Realism in Latin America 10 Family Tree 11 Include a synopsis? 12 Allegory, Characters and Main Themes Sections

[edit] Historic range of the novel...

In the introduction it is stated that the novel "metaphorically encompassing all of human history", this statement is 100% wrong! The novel does metaphorically encompasses the history of the northern part of South America from the 1700s to the 1900s. It magnificently encompasses Bolívar's War and the Republic of Gran Colombia and gives an artistic image of the people of that time and of their success and more importantly their failure to modernize South America (José Arcadio Buendía laments at the start of the novel the fact that they are cut-off from modern science). To really appreciate the novel one does not need to inflate it, human history is a great and wonderful thing beyond encompassing.

The Themes section is greatly lacking; I personally doubt that The subjectivity of reality and The fluidity of time are even themes of the novel.

Not sure how you can realistically argue those aren't themes but I'm interested in hearing you try. As for further themes, I would love to see a write-up on "forgetfulness" -- from the insomnia plague to the complete re-writing of history (by the end, there never even was a banana company) of most of Macondo's residents. Pariah23 11:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree and believe that both of those themes are valid. The book is also about far more than 100 years of Latin American history.

I also believe, after reading the novel, that it is absurd to call 'The Subjectivity of Reality' and 'The fluidity of time' the MAIN themes. They are minor elements that are incidental, not intrinsic, to the story. Palpably the main theme of the novel is the confluence and presence of ancestors in the evolution of a family. I am not sure how to word it, but the story obviously develops around that seed. 24.215.152.57 02:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)24.215.152.57 02:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Does it just refer to 1700's to 1900's, I thought part of might be about La Violencia? --Horses In The Sky 20:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The novel refere literally to the 1700s and the 1900s. But methaporically it does also refer to the whole history of men. This is a very common interpretation, and there are countless points in the novel that support it. For instance, the parallelisms with the bible, the story starts with Macondo's Genesis, "when things were so new that they didnt yet have names", it has its own patriarcs period, deluge, etc, and it ends with an apocalyse. Buendia, the family's surname is the Spanish expression for "good morning", and it's usually related to the dawn of men. The story does go methaphorically from the dawn of men till the fall. And of course, subjetivity of reality is and the fuidity of time are indeed some of the main themes of the novel. The first one is common to every magic realism novel, and to most latinoamerican literature during "the boom", and the second (which is also linked to the first one) is common to most of Marquez's novels.--Rataube 09:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prudencio Aguilar

I thought that Prudencio Aguilar was a noteworthy part of the novel. In the spanish article, he is mentioned in the other characters section, as are other unmentioned characters. Maybe they should be added? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.1.85 (talk) 21:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "considered by many"?

I changed, in the introduction, "The book is considered by many to be García Márquez's masterpiece" to "The book is considered García Márquez's masterpiece."

The notion that it is his most important work is, I find, indisputable. --DanielNuyu 05:46, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. The weasel wording often comes from people who imagine that there might be oddballs who disagree, but a small minority of disputants should not deter us from stating what is obvious to everybody else. Stan 16:45, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agreed aswell. Rekov 01:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (File under themes)

Apparently, Gabriel García Márquez wrote himself as a minor character at the end of the novel. When the last Aureliano starts visiting the town after Fernanda's death, he becomes fast friends with several young men. One of them is called Gabriel, and he is said to be a descendant of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, one of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's closest partners during the Civil War. The character of Gabriel goes to live in Paris, and holds some brief correspondence with Aureliano. García Márquez spent time in Paris and parts of Europe, and his grandfather was a colonel himself, Ricardo Márquez. The author doesn't explicitly state if the character of Gabriel's second surname is Márquez. However, the coincidence of the character's name, potential surname and period of stay in Europe seems too poignant to have escaped the author's attention. In fact, much of the background of this latter part of the book ties loosely with García Márquez's life as a young writer. Iguarán, the last name of the character of Úrsula is the last name of García Márquez's grandmother, Tranquilina, wife of Colonel Márquez. García Márquez grew up in their house.

Note that the "Gabriel" in the story is also said to have had a girlfriend named "Mercedes". It seems quite obvious that it's an author cameo. 69.140.12.199 23:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Macondo

There is a short stub about Macondo. It could be merged in this article. What about that? User:Gala.martin

I disagree, Macondo appears in many other works by Marquez, some of them were written before "Cien Años de Soledad".--Rataube 09:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colombia

I have removed the word "Colombia" from this sentence: 'The novel chronicles a family's struggle, and the history of their town, Macondo, Colombia, for one hundred years.' There is never a mention of what country Macondo is in. Macondo is pretty much 'anytown' South America. That's part of the point of the fictional town existing in the first place. Please advise if you think 'Colombia' should be added again and why. ~

[edit] Remidios

Since when is it implied she was poisoned? They say she died with twins crossed in her belly: pregnancy complications. Czolgolz 13:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Spoiler alert: Recall in the subplot[s]of passionate love, Amaranta and Rebeca were fighting with each other over an Italian man. As Amaranta was the less attractive girl, she was rejected. She grew so jealous that she poured laudanum [the "poison"] into a coffee cup intended for her rival. Amaranta believed she unintentionally killed Remedios who was pregnant with twins. After Remedios's death Amaranta is forever wracked with guilt.--Pragmatic.fool 07:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but only because she thought of poisoning her, she had absolutely nothing to do with the death.

Spoiler alert: Remidios was killed when accidentally drinking the coffee meant for Rebeca, not complications from the birth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.173.135.119 (talk) 05:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

No, she didn't. Amaranta was so desperate to stop the wedding that she was planning on poisoning Rebeca. When Remidios coincidentally died, and Amaranta felt horribly guilty because the wedding was stopped, just like she wanted, but but not in the way she wanted. The book says she was 'poisoned by her own blood,' which I took to mean poisoned by an infection from her ruptured guts. Czolgolz (talk) 11:54, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Jokes & Other Deleted Nonsense

A version of the novel's opening line has been proposed as the title for the next WP:BJAODN page. Please click on this link to express your support or opposition.

[edit] Magical Realism in Latin America

I'm glad to see the work that has gone into starting this page on this great novel. Some friendly feedback: It is problematic to associate Latin American literature in general with magical realism. This is a stereotype fostered by the popularity of García Márquez and Isabel Allende in the United States. It is also historically and aesthetically off-base to compare magical realism with surrealism. Each of them has a different historical context, different effects and different ideological implications. Consider, for example, the following: Is any fiction that challenges realism to be called magical realism? If you read the stories of Borges and Cortázar you see that they are not realistic, but they are quite different from what García Márquez does in 100 Years. This is why their literature is considered 'fantastic' and not 'magical realist.' So there's alot more to do here, to situate this novel historically and aesthetically. Magical realism was a term first used at the beginning of the 20th century by Franz Roh to describe painting, and then taken up, very loosely, in Latin America, to describe certain authors. Apart from García Márquez himself, who theorized his critique of magical realism in his Nobel lecture, his predecessor Alejo Carpentier wrote seminal essays defining Latin American reality as marvelous or magical. Expanding these articles to address these issues would be very helpful.

A lucid description of a slippery subject. In terms of this article, should the genre of the novel be changed from "Novel" to something reflecting it's surreal/fantasy aspect? Rhetth 02:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Family Tree

Comparing the family trees included in the English article "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and in the Spanish article "Cien anos de soledad," I find the latter to be far superior, with the caveat that the letter font is too small and obscured by the color shading. Since having access to a good family tree is indispensable to the reading and discussion of this novel, I suggest importing the family tree from the Spanish-language article to the English-language article, enlarging the font and eliminating the colors if possible. I lack the technical capacity to carry this out but strongly urge someone else to do so. --Alex Ross —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.19.55.130 (talk) 12:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Include a synopsis?

Should a synopsis be included for those wishing to read the book for the first time, who don't want any spoilers? The following is my own which I wrote for a book report when I was in the ninth grade[!]. I hope this is more than satisfactory.

José Arcadio Buendía dreamt that “a noisy city with houses having mirror walls rose up.” This man asked for the name of the city and heard the name “Macondo”. He and his wife Úrsula will be the eventual founders of Macondo where generation after generation of their family will live and die. From its origins as a humble little village, Macondo will become a bustling city and with it, during a hundred-year period, the members of the Buendía family will face episodes of political strife, tragedy and forbidden love. Macondo and the Buendía family are inexplicably tied together, from prosperity to ruin.

Is this considered original research? I would like to add this but right now I have no time to read the entire article for propriety. --Pragmatic.fool 07:47, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Just a note, but the synopsis is wholly lifted from the Sparknotes Plot Overview. --Mgold4me (talk) 06:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Allegory, Characters and Main Themes Sections

The above three sections reflect the points of views & individual judgement of the article's authors. Sources are supposed to be cited for the "Allegory" and "Main Themes" Sections. Also, to chronicle the characters from this particular book in a few sentences is an unwise thing.

I suggest deletion of these three sections in order to keep Wikipedia users free from being entangled in the individual and arguable judgements of the article's authors on this highly complex masterpiece. TathD 13:25, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I concurr, one of the sections even implies that red ants symbolize communism (!). Thats one Reader's Digest review of one hundred years of solitude alright. It also implies rather strange things, like for example that the daguerrotype is tradition (i dont believe Garcia Marquez would write about a concept so related to Europe or the US as "tradition") or that Macondo is in fact Colombia, when in fact it is written to portray any small town in latin america.

How is Macondo not Columbia? I don't think Marquez would write about ANY small town in Latin America. Unless all countries share the same history. Which they don't. And how is tradition only related to Europe and the US? That doesn't make sense. Other countries can't have traditions? I think the "Allegory" section is well put together. TathD just wants to remove these sections so that the future readings of this masterpiece won't become spoiled and busied just with the characters. Have you even read the book? It's not supposed to be a literary meaning at all. Jaylaw 04:19, 24 August 2007 (UTC)