100 Years of Solitude (Sparknotes Literature Guide)

by Josh Perry, Margaret Miller, SparkNotes

Book Overview

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586634542
• ISBN13: 9781586634544
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Sparknotes
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

This is not here

'One Hundred Years Of Solitude' is a fascinating book, full of symbols and allusions, a book that is easy to read and the strange and fragile surreality of which is truly outstanding.However, there is quite a huge number of people who dislike it - and after reading some negative reviews I think I might have understood why it's like that. First of all, many object to the immoral things described in the book (especially incest). I myself don't read exclusively books by authors whose morals I agree with, but I understand that can differ. That is not the case with the second possible reason for people disliking this novel, however - and the reason is: people try to find traditional characters and a traditional storyline in the book. That is, naturally, impossible, because Marquez is very much of a postmodernist - thus there are no characters you can 'care for' and no real plot to follow - because these things simply do not matter, they have little or nothing to do with the meaning, the essence of the book.The main character of modern novels is usually an individual who doesn't fit in with the world, and Marquez certainly stretches the concept of that - in this case, the individual is the whole family. It matters not what each of the characters says, feels or does, because all the events are not meant to illustrate the characters' life, but rather the whole family's life - that is emphasized by the fact the names in the family as well as whole scenes from the family history continuously repeat in the novel. Marquez destroys the barriers of time, no such thing exists for him, everything was meant to happen long before it happened and thus time has no meaning, he freely moves events and characters in time, it seems. In other words, the whole book is not a history of a family - it is a history of an individual, really (you can see the birth of the family, its childhood, youth etc. and then death) or - perhaps - even the whole civilization (many classical themes have been used - from the Bible, for example).Marquez's language is immensely interesting - it is lively and changes throughout the book. He is also extremely good at exploring seemingly insignificant details (they can usually be taken as symbols - for example, butterflies have long been considered the symbol of the short life of happiness). Another thing that cannot be left unmentioned is the truly mesmerizing way he merges the real with the unreal, thus rising a question - what IS real? I think 'One Hundred Years Of Solitude' is one of the most important novels in the history of literature. It is open to interpretations - and if you are willing to try, you will find very much in this book.

A Strange and Beautiful Book...

This is one of the strangest and most powerful books I have ever read. I usually read European classics but had read "Love in the Time of Cholera" years ago and decided to try Garcia Marquez again. I can honestly say that "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is by far the most miraculously incredible, fast-paced, confusing, and magical novel I have ever read. I wasn't sad when it ended, because it simply HAD to end where it did; Garcia Marquez has a perfect sense of time.You find things in this novel that you simply cannot find if you're tied to the European tradition like I am (was). People who live to be 144. Rain that lasts over four years. Women so beautiful they cause death. A man whose presence is marked by swarms of yellow butterflies. People taken up to heaven. An "immaculate" suicide. These things happen all the time in this book, and the remarkable thing is that, for Garcia Marquez, they are perfectly unremarkable. They are an integral, wholly normal part of the world of his imagination, and the reader is fully engrossed in that world until the very last page. My one piece of advice for those wishing to read this book: read slowly, even when the pace of the plot begs you to flip the page. Things happen suddenly in this book -- people die in a sentence and are reborn in the next. The paragraphs are usually long, but they contain thousands of literary treasures you will miss if you blink. This is a book I will not soon forget.

Mesmerizing and Marvelous

There are relatively few books that I've had to read for my college classes and truly enjoyed. This was one of them.Now, be warned: this is not a clear-cut story; the prose can be confusing, and the repetition of names makes it more difficult by far to keep track of who is who. The novel does indeed cover one-hundred years, so expect to see favorite characters die if they first appear early on. There is no one protagonist. The family is the protagonist--the family, and the town.Perhaps despite these potential confusions and perhaps because of them, Marquez has woven in this book a shroud of mysteriousness and magical realism that make reading it something like stepping into a dream; his Macondo is like nowhere else on Earth (or at least nowhere I have ever heard of), and things at once comic, tragic, and unreal can happen there. You will find dreamers and would-be scientists, layabouts and soldiers, matriarchs and wantons in this enchanted household. Enchantment of a murky sort hovers over the land like a haze, touching everything and separating the descendants of Jose Arcadio from the world as we know it.You may not want to read it in one sitting; you may find yourself putting it down for awhile, confused or exasperated by the latest turn of events, but it is quite likely that you will pick it up again in due course with curiousity drawing you back into the realm Marquez has created. As classics go, this is one worthy of the title, and it is a story to be savored.

Tragi-Comic Masterpiece of Epic Proportions

One Hundred Years of Solitude, the greatest of all Latin American novels is the magic and multi-layered epic of the Buendia family and the story of their jungle settlement, Macondo.Like many other epics, this book has deeply-rooted connections with historical reality, i.e., the development of Colombia since its independence from Spain in the early 19th century. The story of the Buendia family is obviously a metaphor for Colombia in the neocolonial period as well as a narrative concerning the myths in Latin American history.The finest example of magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a wonderfully comic novel, yet the book also exudes a pervading sense of irony; a strong undercurrent of sadness, solitude and tragic futility. The intermingling of the fantastic with the ordinary keeps readers in a state of constant anticipation, especially where the generations of Buendia men are concerned.Some of this extraordinary novel's most important effects are achieved through the interplay of time as both linear and circular. The founding of Macondo and its narrative, for the most part, follow time in a linear sense, as does the history of the Buendia family, who form a series of figures symbolizing the particular historical period of which they are a part.The book, however is almost obsessively circular in its outlook, as characters repeat, time and again, the experience of earlier generations. The book's fatalism is underscored by this circular sense of time. Even a name a person is given at birth predetermines his or her life and manner of death, e.g., the Aurelianos were all lucid, solitary figures, while the Jose Arcadios were energetic and enterprising, albeit tragic.The characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude represent the purest archetypes; they are two dimensional and are used to convey certain thematic points. This enhances the beauty of the novel rather than detracting from it, for One Hundred Years of Solitude is thematic and metaphorical in nature rather than psychological.The male figures are obsessive, and full of ambitious projects and passionate sexuality. They are, however, given to extreme anger, irrational violence and long periods of self-imposed solitude.The female characters also lend themselves to categorization. With the exception of the Remedios, the women in the book exhibit either common sense and determination or passionate eroticism. But while the men are dreamy and irrational, the women are firmly rooted in reality. Both sexes, however, embody a similar fatal flaw; they lack the ability to relate to the world outside of Macondo. They fall victim to their own constructions, plunging them into a harsh and long-lasting solitude.Macondo is fated to end the moment one of its inhabitants deciphers Melquiades the Gypsy's manuscripts regarding the town's history. In a sense, however, Macondo does survive. One of the few who take the advice of the Catalan bookseller and lea

A masterpiece. Classic

The beginning of the book contains a family tree of the Buendia family, and if you're like me you'll surely mangle and dog-ear this page as you work your way though the book, trying to keep track of the Aurelianos, Remedios, and Ursulas. But the struggle is worth it. This was truly the great novel that Garcia Marquez was meant to write; to me everything of Marquez that followed seems like recycled material. I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude years ago before moving to Latin America. Now that I here and have read it again, many of the messages that before were inaccessible now reveal themselves. The Story of Macondo is the story of Colombia and, to a larger extent, of Latin America. The reviewers tell us this, but it is amazing to see it with my own eyes.The literal and the fantastic are interwoven with a seamlessness that amazes. One compares his style with Kafka before and Kundera after, literary voice established in this novel has withstood the test of time. It remains unique.The book is at once funny, sad, tragic; it's history and fantasy. But overall it is a marvelous read. Clearly one of my all time favorites. There are very few books that I recommend as highly as this one. A true classic.