INTRODUCTION One Hundred Years of Solitude, mainly depicts a town which started from scrap which is founded
by Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula from them came up generations of the Buendia which in time will turn to be like their ancestors only different in some aspects. The novel also shows how time moves in circles and cycles because of reoccurrence of events, names and attitudes. It concentrates on how a newbie civilization, an innocent paradise, started, propagated and progressed with the Buendias, which helped the town reached it climax and also to its downfall in the end. Modernity enters with devastating effects, of how modernity helped the town to its uprising and eventually of how “modernity” brought madness, strife, civil war concluding to the towns destruction without proper ethics and people to handle it.One Hundred Years of Solitude blends fact and fiction, a magic realism through which both real and fantasy meets - - - Levitating priest, Ascension of Remedios the Beauty to heaven, Flowers falling from the sky, Ghosts talking to people, Civil War, Exploitation and the Banana Plantation Massacre, which creates a truly profound, meaningful novel of time.
BODY :For the characters it seems that time moves quickly during their peek age and slows gradually during their adulthood. It seems that time abandons them like what happened to Rebecca whom locked herself up in her house after the death of Jose Arcadio and was left living in solitude. Time also abandons Colonel Aureliano Buendia after the civil war like Jose Arcadio Segundo both locked up in Melquiades’ Laboratory refusing to join, to interact with the living world, also with the Patriarch of the family, Jose Arcadio Buendia, whom was tied up to a tree when he lost his mind and was only untied before his death, time in the novel moves in cycles, not only that but also in circles. It is shown by Gabriel Marquez through the repetition of names which can sometimes confuse the reader .There is also the reoccurrence of events like what happened to Colonel Buendia which is the same to Jose Arcadio Buendia’s faith. Ursula realizes this when she observed that the younger generations turn out to be like their ancestors, having the same faith and direction in life, but instead of expanding outward, time leaves the family as their end draws near leaving them on the state of solitude one by one. The town Macondo which started as a rigid, dirty town with the help of the Buendias became modernized in a span of only short years. It was transformed into a modern town with the influence of technology and foreign invasion which started when the town became acquainted with the outside world. There Macondo started to change not for the better but in fact changed for the worse. Foreign personas came and invade the town and seem to act as gods, infesting the town with their foreign traditions and rituals. Technology only makes the matters worst when the Banana Plantation was set up that exploited the residents of Macondo and when the people organized to have a strike, they were all gathered up and there happened the Government sponsored massacre in which was only known by Jose Arcadio Buendia for it was erased in the town’s history. There was rain after the Banana massacre which lasted for five years, washing away all traces of technology and modernity which leaves the town to its original setting, being filthy and rigid. The rain symbolizes a near end to the town and the family. If we are to conclude that after the rain comes new life like to the story of Noah’s Arc, we are misleading ourselves, for there will be no second chance in the town and the family Buendia, for after the rain the town will have lost its importance and its connection to the outside world. The rain will be the sign for the decline of the family, because after it they will be lost in nostalgia and solitary isolation.At the end of the chapter the last generation of the Buendias will die a tragic death, he will be eaten by ants, ignored by both Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula each concentrating on their solitary state that even the death of their own baby is meaningless. When we think of it and see that people is brought to this kind of state, its perfectly clear, perfectly understandable why such generation should also come to an end.
CONCLUSION modernity is meaningless without good ethics and progress is dangerous without the proper reason to why we make progress - to make our lives better. At the very end of the book he brings to us that too much solitude is bad, it can be destructive both to a person and the whole society. Time passes, whether we like it or not, whether we accept it, everything must and will come to an end someday, like the little town Macondo, like the Buendias in which they favored to be stuck in their old house, keeping tradition. We need to make a choice; we need to make a difference, for time won’t wait. We need to appreciate life itself.One Hundred Years of Solitude a magic realism, in which fantasies meets realities and in which we are left with a question which is which? One Hundred Years of Solitude a truly profound novel of life.