First generation

Jose Arcadio Buendía

The founder of the Buendía family is strong-willed, stubborn and unshakable. Founder of the city of Macondo. He had a deep interest in the structure of the world, sciences, technical innovations and alchemy. Jose Arcadio Buendía went crazy looking for the philosopher's stone and eventually forgot native language by starting to speak Latin. He was tied to a chestnut tree in the courtyard, where he met his old age in the company of the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom he had killed in his youth. Shortly before his death, his wife Ursula removes the ropes from him and frees her husband.

Ursula Iguaran

The wife of José Arcadio Buendía and the mother of the family, who raised most of the members of the clan, right up to the great-great-grandchildren. Firmly and strictly managed the family, earned money making candy large amount money and rebuilt the house. At the end of her life, Ursula gradually goes blind and dies at the age of about 120 years. But besides the fact that she raised everyone and earned money, including baking bread, Ursula was almost the only family member who had a sound mind, business acumen, the ability to survive in any situation, rallying everyone and boundless kindness. If not for her, who was the core of the whole family, it is not known how and where the life of the family would turn.

Second generation

Jose Arcadio

Jose Arcadio is the eldest son of Jose Arcadio Buendía and Ursula, who inherited his stubbornness and impulsiveness from his father. When the gypsies come to Macondo, the woman from the camp who sees naked body Jose Arcadio, exclaims that she has never seen such a large male penis like Jose's. The friend of the family, Pilar Turner, becomes the mistress of Jose Arcadio, who becomes pregnant with him. Ultimately, he leaves the family and goes after the gypsies. José Arcadio returns after many years, during which he was a sailor and made several round-the-world voyages. Jose Arcadio has become a strong and sullen man, whose body is covered with tattoos from head to toe. Upon his return, he immediately marries a distant relative, Rebeca (who was brought up in his parents' house, and managed to grow up while he sailed the oceans), but for this he is expelled from the Buendía house. He lives on the outskirts of the city near the cemetery, and, thanks to the machinations of his son - Arcadio, is the owner of all the land in Macondo. During the seizure of the city by the conservatives, Jose Arcadio saves his brother, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, from being shot, but soon he himself mysteriously dies.

Soldiers of the times civil war in Colombia

Colonel Aureliano Buendía

Second son of José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula. Aureliano often cried in the womb and was born with open eyes... From childhood, his predisposition to intuition manifested itself, he accurately felt the approach of danger and important events... Aureliano inherited thoughtfulness and a philosophical nature from his father, studied jewelry. He married the young daughter of the Mayor of Macondo - Remedios, but she died before reaching the age of majority. After the outbreak of the civil war, the colonel joined the Liberal Party and rose to the post of commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces of the Atlantic coast, but refused to accept the rank of general until the overthrow of the Conservative party. Over the course of two decades, he raised 32 armed uprisings and lost all of them. Having lost all interest in the war, in the year he signed the Neerlandic Peace Treaty and shot himself in the chest, but miraculously survived. After that, the Colonel returns to his home in Macondo. From his brother's mistress, Pilar Ternera, he had a son, Aureliano José, and from 17 other women who were brought to him during military campaigns, 17 sons. In his old age, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was involved in the mindless manufacture of goldfish and died while urinating by the tree under which his father, José Arcadio Buendía, had been bound for many years.

Amaranta

Third child of José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula. Amaranta grows up with her second cousin Rebeca, they simultaneously fall in love with the Italian Pietro Crespi, who reciprocates Rebeca, and since then she has become Amaranta's worst enemy. In moments of hatred, Amaranth even tries to poison her rival. After Rebeca marries Jose Arcadio, she loses all interest in the Italian. Later, Amaranta also rejects Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, remaining in the end old maid... The nephew of Aureliano José and the great-grand-nephew of José Arcadio were in love with her and dreamed of having sex with her. But Amaranta dies a virgin at a ripe old age, exactly as the gypsy predicted to her - after she finished embroidering the burial shroud.

Rebeca

Rebeca is an orphan who was adopted by José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula. Rebeca came to the Buendía family at the age of about 10 with a sack containing the bones of her parents, who were first cousins ​​of Ursula. At first, the girl was extremely timid, hardly spoke and had the habit of eating earth and lime from the walls of the house, as well as sucking her thumb. As Rebeca grows up, her beauty captivates the Italian Pietro Crespi, but their wedding is constantly postponed due to many mourning. As a result, this love makes her and Amaranta, who is also in love with the Italian, bitter enemies. After José Arcadio's return, Rebeca goes against Ursula's will to marry him. For this, a couple in love is expelled from the house. After the death of Jose Arcadio, Rebeca, embittered by the whole world, locks herself in a house alone under the care of her maid. Later, Colonel Aureliano's 17 sons try to renovate Rebeca's house, but they only manage to renovate the façade. front door they are not opened. Rebeca dies at a ripe old age, with her finger in her mouth.

Third generation

Arcadio

Arcadio is the illegitimate son of José Arcadio and Pilar Turner. He - school teacher, however, takes over the leadership of Macondo at the request of Colonel Aureliano when he leaves the city. Becomes an oppressive dictator. Arcadio is trying to uproot the church, and persecution of the conservatives living in the city begins (in particular, Don Apolinar Moscote). When he tries to execute Apolinar for a malicious remark, Ursula whips him and seizes power in the city. Having received information that the forces of the Conservatives are returning, Arcadio decides to fight them with the forces that are in the city. After the defeat of the liberal troops, he was executed by the conservatives.

Aureliano Jose

The illegitimate son of Colonel Aureliano and Pilar Ternera. Unlike his cousin Arcadio, he knew the secret of his origin and communicated with his mother. He was brought up by his aunt, Amaranta, with whom he was in love, but could not achieve it. At one time he accompanied his father on his campaigns, participated in hostilities. Returning to Macondo, he was killed as a result of disobedience to the authorities.

Colonel Aureliano's other sons

Colonel Aureliano had 17 sons by 17 different women, which were sent to him during his campaigns "to improve the breed." All of them bore the name of their father (but had different nicknames), were baptized by their grandmother, Ursula, but were brought up by their mothers. For the first time, everyone gathered together in Macondo, having learned about the anniversary of Colonel Aureliano. Subsequently, four of them - Aureliano Sad, Aureliano Rzhanoy, and two others - lived and worked in Macondo. 16 sons were killed in one night as a result of government intrigues against Colonel Aureliano. The only brother who managed to escape is Aureliano Lovers. He hid for a long time, in extreme old age he asked for asylum from one of the last representatives of the Buendia family - Jose Arcadio and Aureliano - but they refused him, because they did not find out. After that, he was killed too. All brothers were shot at the ashen crosses on their foreheads, which Padre Antonio Isabel had painted for them, and which they could not wash off until the end of their lives.

The book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was included in world literature as a cult masterpiece of the thought of a genius writer, who was not afraid to illuminate without embellishment the origin, heyday and decline of the Buendia family clan.

Who is Gabriel Marquez?

In March 1928, a literary volcano was born in a small Colombian city - the talented and eccentric writer Gabriel Marquez. There are not enough pages in any book to tell about this person! He, like no one else, knew how to live every day of his life, like the last, and enjoy the smallest detail of life. For him, each person was worthy of writing a separate novel, and each event fit into the recesses of the subconscious, in order to later find its place among the interweaving of the fate of the heroes of the book.

All the magic of the writer's words originated from his journalistic career. He printed bold and even daring materials, revealing the most intimate facts as if events were subjected to surgical intervention. His creative legacy has become a symbol of literature throughout South America putting it on a pedestal among writers.

The first story of Márquez was created in 1947, at a time when the writer did not even think about the literary field, but was already oppressed by his current job as a lawyer. Wanting to delve into more details human destinies, as well as to disarm social injustice with the help of words, Gabriel began working as a journalist in 1948.

Political turmoil in his homeland expelled the writer to France, where he wrote his first novel, Nobody Writes to the Colonel. Returning after a while to home country Marquez worked as a correspondent for local newspapers. He often traveled to European countries to make reports, and he used the accumulated knowledge with interest in his stories and novels. However, most significant work in his work, as well as in literature in general, was the book by Marquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

A novel that captures the essence of Latin American history

When it comes to Gabriel García Márquez's most fundamental work, One Hundred Years of Solitude is definitely worth mentioning. Reviews of the book are very controversial, although not a single critic has dared to refute the invaluable depth of artistic expression.

From a literary point of view, this novel is a multifaceted work, where the author, using the example of six generations from the Buendía clan, reflected the entire socio-historical process of development Latin America... Here facts from the folk epic are intertwined, questions of the existence of bourgeois civilization, the history of world literature are touched upon. The novel shows well soul path heroes, leading them to alienation, and then loneliness.

Time is the main character of the novel

Time moves in a spiral for the Buendía family, constantly returning all its members to previous situations. It is easy to get confused in the characters, since Marquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude" created in the image and likeness of the ancestral traditions that existed before: boys from family to family were named after their father, which led to the fact that sooner or later all members of the same family were called the same. All characters are locked in one temporary space, in which nothing happens for a long time. The illusions and loneliness of each member of the Buendía clan are so clearly traced against the background of the current time, which, like a tornado, whirls them in a circle, not letting go beyond its limits.

This book symbolizes the important crucial moment, which sooner or later happens in every civilization, and people have to get out of their shells and succumb to the inevitable changes. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" Gabriel dedicated to each individual and the entire city as a whole, because it is a mosaic of destinies.

The artistic identity of the novel

The book describes the most pressing problems of the Colombian people, which were ubiquitous in other countries of Latin America. The name, which the author chose not by chance, symbolizes the painful loneliness that was characteristic of the turning point, where feudal exploitation went alongside a developed form of capitalism. Márquez is everywhere ironic to brighten up the corners of hopelessness. He presents to the readers the hereditary loneliness that has been passed down from generation to generation in the Buendía family. An interesting fact is that it did not manifest itself immediately, and the heroes did not receive a "closed" appearance from birth, but only after encountering certain circumstances, which, obviously, were also inherited.

The writer picturesquely displays folk epic in the form of fairy tales, coming up with unreal and very poetic storylines... Many of the characters in the novel are endowed with the features of werewolves, ghosts, and multi-headed dragons. The artistic originality of the novel lies in the fact that Marquez masterfully combines acute social and psychological problems with fairy-tale motives, introducing a mystical charm into his work.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude": content

In this allegorical work, Marquez describes the events of one small town called Macondo. This is an absolutely real village, which is even present on the map of Colombia. However, since light hand the author, this place has lost its geographic value and turned into a mythical city in which traditions hailing from the childhood of the writer have been rooted forever.

The event line develops against the background of acute socio-economic changes from the middle of the 17th century to the 30s of the 19th century. The main characters, on whose shoulders Márquez shouldered all the hardships of life of that period - the generation of the Buendía clan. The summary of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" can be expressed in just a few phrases, while the greatest value to the reader is represented by individual dialogues, heroes' love stories and mystical digressions.

The novel is based on a consistent description of the life of members of the same clan. Them family tree begins with the birth of the family of Ursula Iguaran and José Arcadio Buendía. Further, their life is closely intertwined with the description of the activities of their grown children (second generation) - named after the father of Jose Arcadio, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, Amaranta and Rebeca.

The third generation - illegitimate children of previous family members, it was the most significant in number. Colonel Aureliano alone had 17 children from different women!

The fourth and fifth generations of the genus do not participate in events as clearly as the first three. By that time, it is increasingly difficult for the reader to distinguish between the characters, since they are all named after each other.

The founders of the Buendia clan

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” - what is this book about? This question torments everyone who has read it. The symbolism of the work is hidden inside the smallest details everyday life of individual characters in the novel. In order to get closer to solving this phenomenon, let's try to understand the personalities of the founders of the genus, which Gabriel Marquez tells about. One Hundred Years of Solitude begins with the marriage of José Arcadio and the inimitable Ursula, who was his first cousin.

Their union was crowned with fears of relatives that their children could be born like piglets, because it is not customary to create a union within an existing family.

Ursula, aware of the consequences of incest, was determined to remain innocent. Jose Arcadio does not want to hear anything about such nonsense, but his young wife is adamant. For a year and a half they have been fighting at night for the right to keep their vows. An unfortunate incident changed the situation dramatically. Once they began to mock Jose Arcadio as a man, hinting at his marital failure. The proud representative of Buendía kills the abuser with a spear and, having come home, forces Ursula to fulfill her marital duty. But since then, the spirit of the offender begins to haunt them, and Jose Arcadio decides to settle in a new place. Having left the place they have acquired with their wife, they set off in search of a new home. So over time, the emergence of a new town of Macondo takes place in front of the reader.

Jose and his Ursula represent two opposite poles. He is eaten from the inside by a passion for knowledge of the world, attracted by the mystical teachings of wizards and healers. Trying to combine science and magic in his mind, he never copes with this task and goes crazy. Ursula is like the core of this kind. She unquestioningly performs the same tasks as her ancestors, not wanting to change her views on the current situation.

Jose Arcadio Jr.

A summary of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is impossible without mentioning the representatives of the second generation. The firstborn of Ursula and José Arcadio is named after his father. He inherited from him a quarrelsome character and emotional soul. Because of his passion, he leaves his father's house after the nomadic gypsies. Returning many years later, he marries his distant relative, who managed to grow up by this time. He turned into a secretive and sullen youth. According to the plot of the novel, Jose Arcadio manages to save his younger brother at the hands of the invaders of the city, whose name is Aureliano Buendía. The hero died under mysterious circumstances.

Rebeca and Amaranta

The saga "One Hundred Years of Solitude", the content of which, of course, can confuse an inexperienced reader, would look stingy if there were no descriptions of these two charming girls... Amaranta is the third child of Ursula and José Arcadio. Since the orphan Rebeca came to their house, they have become friends. Having reached adulthood, the girls fall in love with the same guy - the Italian Pietro.

The girls lose friendship due to competitive hostility, but the Italian chooses Rebeca. After that, Amaranta is obsessed with the idea of ​​revenge on her sister and even tries to poison her. The long-awaited wedding between Pietro and Ursula's third daughter never took place due to constant mourning. Rebeca, frustrated by the unrequited love, finds solace in the arms of Jose Arcadio, the eldest son of the founder of the family. Contrary to Ursula's evil prophecies and the promise to expel them from the family, the young couple decides to get married. At this time, Amaranta realizes that she has lost all interest in Pietro. She renounces love and decides to die innocent, despite the numerous harassment from her fans. After the death of her husband, Rebeca decides to live locked up and never leave the house.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía

In his novel, the writer did not neglect his second son, Jose Arcadio, the eldest. Marquez endows this hero with pensiveness and a philosophical nature. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" tells of Colonel Aureliano Buendía as a very sensitive person who spent her entire life in search of herself. His fate was twisty, but he left behind a generous legacy in the form of 18 children.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude": reviews

The irrefutable merit of the book is its timeless relevance. This novel does not lose its depth even at the peak of global changes in society, since the entire socio-psychological implication of this phenomenon is masterfully captured on its pages.

Readers say that while reading the book, one should not be distracted, since Marquez, with his inherent irony, managed to simplify things that are difficult to understand and complicate stupid details as much as possible. The narrative takes place on the borderline between reality and fiction. According to reviews, the lack of dialogues complicates the reading process. The repeated names of the main characters, as well as the consistent intertwining of their destinies in similar situations, sometimes baffle even the most vigilant and attentive readers.

People advise reading the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" when they are in adulthood. This will avoid misunderstanding of the described processes.

Who might like Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude?

This work is imbued with subtle humor and inimitable irony. The writer clearly pursued the goal of not only sanctifying historical events of the described period, but also to endow their heroes with the features of people who are able to cope with any changes. How much they succeeded is an open question, but one should not deny the fact that each character is spelled out with breathtaking accuracy, and his behavior masterfully conveys the character assigned to him. A summary of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" can simultaneously fit into one sentence and at the same time not enough days to tell what it is specifically about. This novel is rightfully located in the golden treasury of the literary fund and claims to be a solid top five.

It is impossible to answer unequivocally who would like this work. This is a fundamental historical novel with elements of Latin American folklore, the interweaving of mythical characters and a strictly observed chronological sequence. He is on the verge between the words of a madman and the thoughts of a philosopher. The main idea of ​​the novel is that a person can cope with all the vicissitudes of fate, but he should never give up in the face of the fear of defeat and his own powerlessness. For those who know how to see beyond letters and can open their imagination towards feelings, the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude will seem like an undeniable diamond in a box of literary jewels. You now know what this book is about, and we hope that you have a desire to read it yourself.

Gabriel Jose de la Concordia "Gabo" Garcia Marquez

Colombian prose writer, journalist, publisher and politician. Laureate of the Neustadt literary award and Nobel Prize on literature. Representative literary direction"Magic realism".

Born in the Colombian town of Aracataca (Magdalena department) in the family of Eligio Garcia and Luisa Santiago Marquez.

In 1940, at the age of 13, Gabriel received a scholarship and began his studies at a Jesuit college in the town of Zipaquira, 30 km north of Bogotá. In 1946, at the insistence of his parents, he entered National University Bogota to the Faculty of Law. Then he met his future wife, Mercedes Barcha Pardo.

From 1950 to 1952 he wrote a column for the local newspaper “ El heraldo»In Barranquilla. During this time, he became an active member of the informal group of writers and journalists known as Barranquilla Group who inspired him to start a literary career. In parallel, García Márquez is engaged in writing, writing stories and screenplays. In 1961, he published the story "Nobody Writes to the Colonel" ( El coronel no tiene quien le escriba).

World fame was brought to him by the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" ( Cien anos de soledad, 1967). In 1972 he was awarded the Romulo Gallegos Prize for this novel.

"Since the years of loneliness"

One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by García Márquez over a period of 18 months, between 1965 and 1966, in Mexico City. Original idea of this work appeared in 1952, when the author visited his home village Aracataka in the company of his mother. His short story "The Day After Saturday," published in 1954, introduces Macondo for the first time. Mine new romance García Márquez planned to name it "Home", but eventually changed his mind to avoid analogies with the novel "Big House", published in 1954 by his friend Alvaro Zamudio.

“... I had a wife and two little sons. I worked as a PR manager and edited film scripts. But to write a book, you had to give up work. I pawned the car and gave the money to Merce? Dess. Every day, in one way or another, she got me paper, cigarettes, everything that was needed for work. When the book was finished, it turned out that we owe the butcher 5,000 pesos - a lot of money. There was a rumor in the neighborhood that I was writing very important book and all the shopkeepers wanted to take part. It took 160 pesos to send the text to the publisher, and there were only 80 pesos left. Then I put in a mixer and a Mercedes hairdryer. Upon learning of this, she said: "It was not enough that the novel was bad."

From an interview with García Márquez magazine Esquire

"Since the years of loneliness" summary of the novel

The founders of the Buendía family, José Arcadio and Ursula, were cousins and sister. The relatives were afraid that they would give birth to a child with a pig's tail. Ursula knows about the danger of incestuous marriage, and José Arcadio does not want to take such nonsense into account. Over the course of a year and a half of marriage, Ursula manages to maintain her innocence, the nights of the newlyweds are filled with a painful and brutal struggle, replacing love joys... During cockfighting, the rooster Jose Arcadio defeats the rooster Prudencio Aguilar, and he, annoyed, mocks the opponent, questioning him male dignity because Ursula is still a virgin. Angered by José Arcadio, he goes home for the spear and kills Prudencio, and then, shaking the same spear, forces Ursula to fulfill her marital duties. But from now on there is no rest for them from the bloodied ghost of Aguilar. Deciding to move to a new place of residence, Jose Arcadio, as if offering a sacrifice, kills all his roosters, buries a spear in the courtyard and leaves the village with his wife and villagers. Twenty-two brave men overcome an impregnable mountain range in search of the sea, and after two years of fruitless wanderings, they found the village of Macondo on the banks of the river - that José Arcadio had a prophetic indication in his dream. And now, in a large clearing, two dozen huts of clay and bamboo grow.

Jose Arcadio burns a passion for knowledge of the world - more than anything else he is attracted by various wonderful things that gypsies who appear once a year bring to the village: bars of a magnet, a magnifying glass, navigation devices; from their leader Melquíades, he learns the secrets of alchemy, torments himself with long vigils and feverish work of an inflamed imagination. Having lost interest in another extravagant undertaking, he returns to measured working life, together with its neighbors, equips the village, demolishes the land, lays roads. Life in Macondo is patriarchal, respectable, happy, there is not even a cemetery here, since no one dies. Ursula starts profitable production animals and birds from candy. But with the appearance in the house of Buendía, who came from nowhere, Rebeca, who becomes his adopted daughter, an epidemic of insomnia begins in Macondo. The inhabitants of the village diligently redo all their affairs and begin to toil with painful idleness. And then another attack falls on Macondo - an epidemic of forgetfulness. Everyone lives in a reality that is constantly eluding them, forgetting the names of objects. They decide to hang signs on them, but they fear that after the lapse of time they will not be able to remember the purpose of the objects.

Jose Arcadio intended to build a memory machine, but the wandering gypsy, the magician Melquiades, with his healing potion, helps out. According to his prophecy, Macondo will disappear from the face of the earth, and in its place will grow a sparkling city with large houses made of transparent glass, but there will be no trace of the Buendia clan in it. Jose Arcadio does not want to believe this: there will always be Buendías. Melquiades introduces Jose Arcadio to yet another wonderful invention, which is destined to play fateful role in his destiny. Jose Arcadio's most audacious idea is to capture God with the help of daguerreotype in order to scientifically prove the existence of the Almighty or disprove it. In the end, Buendía goes mad and ends up chained to a large chestnut tree in the yard of his house.

The firstborn Jose Arcadio, named after his father, embodied his aggressive sexuality. He spends years of his life on countless adventures. The second son, Aureliano, absent-minded and lethargic, masters jewelry making. Meanwhile, the village grows, turning into provincial town, acquires a corregidor, a priest, Catarino's establishment - the first breach in the wall of "good-naturedness" of the Makondians. Aureliano's imagination is shocked by the beauty of the daughter of the Corregidor Remedios. And Rebeca and another daughter of Ursula Amaranta fall in love with the Italian piano master Pietro Crespi. There are violent quarrels, jealousy seethes, but in the end Rebeca gives preference to the "super-male" Jose Arcadio, who, ironically, is overtaken by a quiet family life under the heel of his wife and a bullet fired by an unknown person, most likely the same wife. Rebeca decides to retreat, burying herself alive in the house. Out of cowardice, selfishness and fear, Amaranta still refuses love, in her declining years she begins to weave a shroud for herself and fades away, having finished it. When Remedios dies of childbirth, Aureliano, oppressed by disappointed hopes, is in a passive, dreary state. However, the cynical machinations of his father-in-law corregidor with ballots during the elections and the arbitrariness of the military in his hometown force him to leave to fight on the side of the liberals, although politics seems to him to be something abstract. War forges his character, but devastates his soul, since, in essence, the struggle for national interests has long since turned into a struggle for power.

The grandson of Ursula Arcadio, a school teacher appointed during the war as the civil and military ruler of Macondo, behaves like an autocratic proprietor, becoming a local tyrant, and with the next change of power in the town he is shot by conservatives.

Aureliano Buendía becomes the supreme commander of the revolutionary forces, but gradually realizes that he is fighting only out of pride, and decides to end the war in order to free himself. On the day of the signing of the truce, he tries to commit suicide, but is unsuccessful. Then he returns to the ancestral home, refuses a life pension and lives apart from his family and, locked in splendid isolation, is engaged in the manufacture of goldfish with emerald eyes.

Civilization comes to Macondo: Railway, electricity, cinema, telephone, and at the same time an avalanche of foreigners falls, establishing a banana company on these fertile lands. And now there is no time paradise turned into a hot spot, a cross between a fair, a shelter and a brothel. Seeing disastrous changes, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, long years Deliberately fencing himself off from the surrounding reality, he experiences a dull rage and regret that he did not bring the war to a decisive end. His seventeen sons, from seventeen different women, the eldest of whom was under thirty-five, were killed in one day. Doomed to remain in the desert of loneliness, he dies by the old mighty chestnut growing in the courtyard of the house.

Ursula watches with concern the extravagances of the descendants. War, fighting cocks, bad women and delusional undertakings - these are the four disasters that led to the decline of the Buendía clan, she believes and laments: the great-grandchildren of Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo collected all family vices, not inheriting a single family virtue. The beauty of the great-granddaughter Remedios the Beautiful spreads around the destructive spirit of death, but here is a girl, strange, alien to all conventions, incapable of love and not knowing this feeling, obeying free attraction, ascends on freshly washed and hung out to dry sheets, picked up by the wind. The dashing reveler Aureliano Segundo marries the aristocrat Fernanda del Carpio, but spends a lot of time outside the house, with his mistress Petra Cotes. Jose Arcadio II breeds fighting cocks, prefers the company of French heterosexuals. The turning point in him occurs when he miraculously escapes death by shooting the striking workers of the banana company. Driven by fear, he hides in the abandoned room of Melquíades, where he suddenly finds peace and plunges into the study of the sorcerer's parchments. In his eyes, the brother sees a repetition of the irreparable fate of his great-grandfather. And it starts to rain over Macondo, and it pours for four years, eleven months and two days. After the rain, lethargic, slow people cannot resist the insatiable gluttony of oblivion.

In recent years, Ursula has been clouded by a struggle with Fernanda, a cruel bigot who has made lies and hypocrisy the basis of family life. She brings up her son as a loafer, imprisoning her daughter Meme, who has sinned with the artisan, in a monastery. Macondo, from which the banana company has squeezed all the juices, is reaching its limit of launch. After the death of his mother, Jose Arcadio, the son of Fernanda, returns to this dead town, covered with dust and exhausted by the heat, and finds the illegitimate nephew Aureliano Babilone in the devastated family nest. Retaining languid dignity and aristocratic manners, he devotes his time to lascivious games, and Aureliano in Melquiades' room is immersed in the translation of the encrypted verses of old parchments and makes progress in the study of Sanskrit.

Coming from Europe, where she was educated, Amaranta Ursula is obsessed with the dream of reviving Macondo. Smart and energetic, she tries to breathe life into the haunted local human society, but to no avail. A reckless, destructive, all-consuming passion connects Aureliano with his aunt. A young couple is expecting a child, Amaranta Ursula hopes that he is destined to revive the clan and cleanse it of fatal vices and a vocation for loneliness. The baby is the only one of all Buendías born over a century, conceived in love, but he is born with a pig's tail, and Amaranta Ursula dies of bleeding. The last one in the Buendía family is destined to be eaten by red ants that have flooded the house. With the ever-increasing gusts of wind, Aureliano reads the history of the Buendía family in the parchments of Melquíades, learning that he was not destined to leave the room, for according to the prophecy the city will be swept off the face of the earth by a hurricane and erased from the memory of people at the very moment when he finishes deciphering the parchments.

Source - Wikipedia, Briefly.

Gabriel García Márquez

"One Hundred Years of Solitude"

The founders of the Buendía clan, José Arcadio and Ursula, were cousins ​​and cousins. The relatives were afraid that they would give birth to a child with a pig's tail. Ursula knows about the danger of incestuous marriage, and José Arcadio does not want to take such nonsense into account. Over the course of a year and a half of marriage, Ursula manages to maintain her innocence, the nights of the newlyweds are filled with a painful and cruel struggle that replaces love joys. During cockfighting, the rooster Jose Arcadio defeats the rooster Prudencio Aguilar, and he, annoyed, mocks his rival, questioning his manhood, since Ursula is still a virgin. Angered, José Arcadio goes home for the spear and kills Prudencio, and then, shaking the same spear, forces Ursula to fulfill her marital duties. But from now on there is no rest for them from the bloodied ghost of Aguilar. Deciding to move to a new place of residence, Jose Arcadio, as if offering a sacrifice, kills all his roosters, buries a spear in the courtyard and leaves the village with his wife and villagers. Twenty-two brave men overcome an impregnable mountain range in search of the sea, and after two years of fruitless wanderings, they found the village of Macondo on the banks of the river - that José Arcadio had a prophetic indication in his dream. And now, in a large clearing, two dozen huts of clay and bamboo grow.

Jose Arcadio burns a passion for knowledge of the world - more than anything else he is attracted by various wonderful things that gypsies who appear once a year bring to the village: bars of a magnet, a magnifying glass, navigation devices; from their leader Melquíades, he learns the secrets of alchemy, plagues himself with long vigils and feverish work of an inflamed imagination. Having lost interest in another extravagant undertaking, he returns to a measured working life, together with his neighbors he equips the village, unfolds the land, lays roads. Life in Macondo is patriarchal, respectable, happy, there is not even a cemetery here, since no one dies. Ursula starts a lucrative production of animals and birds from candy. But with the appearance in the house of Buendía, who came from nowhere, Rebeca, who becomes his adopted daughter, an epidemic of insomnia begins in Macondo. The inhabitants of the village diligently redo all their affairs and begin to toil with painful idleness. And then another attack falls on Macondo - an epidemic of forgetfulness. Everyone lives in a reality that is constantly eluding them, forgetting the names of objects. They decide to hang signs on them, but they fear that after the lapse of time they will not be able to remember the purpose of the objects.

Jose Arcadio intended to build a memory machine, but the wandering gypsy, the magician Melquiades, with his healing potion, helps out. According to his prophecy, Macondo will disappear from the face of the earth, and in its place will grow a sparkling city with large houses made of transparent glass, but there will be no trace of the Buendia clan in it. José Arcadio does not want to believe this: there will always be Buendías. Melquiades introduces Jose Arcadio to yet another wonderful invention, which is destined to play a fatal role in his fate. The most audacious idea of ​​Jose Arcadio is to capture God with the help of daguerreotype in order to scientifically prove the existence of the Almighty or disprove it. In the end, Buendía goes mad and ends up chained to a large chestnut tree in the yard of his house.

The first-born Jose Arcadio, named after his father, embodied his aggressive sexuality. He spends years of his life on countless adventures. The second son, Aureliano, absent-minded and lethargic, masters jewelry making. In the meantime, the village is expanding, turning into a provincial town, acquiring a corregidor, a priest, Catarino's establishment - the first breach in the wall of "good-naturedness" of the Macondians. Aureliano's imagination is shocked by the beauty of the daughter of the Corregidor Remedios. And Rebeca and another daughter of Ursula Amaranta fall in love with the Italian piano master Pietro Crespi. There are violent quarrels, jealousy seethes, but in the end Rebeca gives preference to the "super-male" Jose Arcadio, who, ironically, is overtaken by a quiet family life under the heel of his wife and a bullet fired by someone unknown, most likely the same wife. Rebeca decides to retreat, burying herself alive in the house. Out of cowardice, selfishness and fear, Amaranta still refuses love, in her declining years she begins to weave a shroud for herself and fades away, having finished it. When Remedios dies of childbirth, Aureliano, oppressed by disappointed hopes, is in a passive, dreary state. However, the cynical machinations of his father-in-law corregidor with ballots during the elections and the arbitrariness of the military in his hometown force him to leave to fight on the side of the liberals, although politics seems to him to be something abstract. War forges his character, but devastates his soul, since, in essence, the struggle for national interests has long since turned into a struggle for power.

The grandson of Ursula Arcadio, a school teacher appointed during the war as the civil and military ruler of Macondo, behaves like an autocratic proprietor, becoming a local tyrant, and with the next change of power in the town he is shot by conservatives.

Aureliano Buendía becomes the supreme commander of the revolutionary forces, but gradually realizes that he is fighting only out of pride, and decides to end the war in order to free himself. On the day of the signing of the truce, he tries to commit suicide, but is unsuccessful. Then he returns to the ancestral home, refuses a life pension and lives apart from his family and, locked in splendid isolation, is engaged in the manufacture of goldfish with emerald eyes.

Civilization comes to Macondo: the railway, electricity, cinema, telephone, and at the same time an avalanche of foreigners falls, establishing a banana company on these fertile lands. And now the once paradise has been turned into a hot spot, a cross between a fair, a hostel and a brothel. Seeing the disastrous changes, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who has been deliberately fencing off from the surrounding reality for many years, feels a dull rage and regret that he did not bring the war to a decisive end. His seventeen sons, from seventeen different women, the eldest of whom was under thirty-five, were killed in one day. Doomed to remain in the desert of loneliness, he dies at the old mighty chestnut growing in the courtyard of the house.

Ursula watches with concern the extravagances of the descendants. War, fighting roosters, bad women and delusional undertakings - these are the four disasters that led to the decline of the Buendía clan, she believes and laments: the great-grandchildren of Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo collected all family vices, without inheriting a single family virtue. The beauty of the great-granddaughter of Remedios the Beautiful spreads around the destructive spirit of death, but here is a girl, strange, alien to all conventions, incapable of love and not knowing this feeling, obeying free attraction, ascends on freshly washed and hung out to dry sheets, picked up by the wind. The dashing reveler Aureliano Segundo marries the aristocrat Fernanda del Carpio, but spends a lot of time outside the house, with his mistress Petra Cotes. Jose Arcadio II breeds fighting cocks, prefers the company of French heterosexuals. The turning point in him occurs when he miraculously escapes death by shooting the striking workers of the banana company. Driven by fear, he hides in the abandoned room of Melquíades, where he suddenly finds peace and plunges into the study of the sorcerer's parchments. In his eyes, the brother sees a repetition of the irreparable fate of his great-grandfather. And it starts to rain over Macondo, and it pours for four years, eleven months and two days. After the rain, lethargic, slow people cannot resist the insatiable gluttony of oblivion.

In recent years, Ursula has been clouded by a struggle with Fernanda, a cruel bigot who has made lies and hypocrisy the basis of family life. She brings up her son as a loafer, imprisoning her daughter Meme, who has sinned with the artisan, in a monastery. Macondo, from which the banana company has squeezed all the juices, is reaching its limit of launch. After the death of his mother, Jose Arcadio, the son of Fernanda, returns to this dead town, covered with dust and exhausted by the heat, and finds the illegitimate nephew Aureliano Babilone in the devastated family nest. Retaining languid dignity and aristocratic manners, he devotes his time to lascivious games, and Aureliano in Melquiades' room is immersed in the translation of the encrypted verses of old parchments and makes progress in the study of Sanskrit.

Coming from Europe, where she was educated, Amaranta Ursula is obsessed with the dream of reviving Macondo. Smart and energetic, she tries to breathe life into the haunted local human society, but to no avail. A reckless, destructive, all-consuming passion connects Aureliano with his aunt. A young couple is expecting a child, Amaranta Ursula hopes that he is destined to revive the clan and cleanse it of fatal vices and a vocation for loneliness. The baby is the only one of all Buendías born over a century, conceived in love, but he is born with a pig's tail, and Amaranta Ursula dies of bleeding. The last one in the Buendía family is destined to be eaten by red ants that flooded the house. With the ever-increasing gusts of wind, Aureliano reads the history of the Buendía family in the parchments of Melquíades, learning that he was not destined to leave the room, for according to the prophecy the city will be swept off the face of the earth by a hurricane and erased from the memory of people at the very moment when he finishes deciphering the parchments.

Jose Arcadio and Ursula were cousins. Everyone was afraid that they would give birth to a freak. Ursula knows about the danger of incest, but Jose considers it stupid. Ursula is innocent. At the cockfighting, the rooster Jose won a victory over the rooster of Aguilar. The loser laughs at Jose: Ursula is still a virgin! Jose kills Aguilar and, shaking his spear, achieves Ursula. They have no rest from the ghost of Aguilar. Moving, Jose Arcadio kills all the roosters, buries the spear in the yard, leaves with his wife and villagers. 22 brave men cross the mountain range in search of the sea, after 2 years of wandering they founded Macondo.

Jose is attracted by the wonderful things brought by the gypsies: a magnet, a magnifying glass, navigation devices. The hero learns alchemy, tortures himself with vigils. Then he returns to ordinary life, equips the village, makes roads. Life in Macondo is respectable, patriarchal and happy. There is no cemetery, because nobody dies. Ursula is busy making candy. But Rebeca appears at Buendía's house. In Macondo, there is widespread insomnia. Then another misfortune - forgetfulness. They even forget the names of things.

Jose Arcadio wants to build a memory machine. The Gypsy Wanderer Melquíades prophesies: Macondo must disappear, and in its place there will be a city with transparent houses. But there will be no traces of the Buendia clan. Jose doesn't want to believe. Jose's most daring undertaking is to capture God on a daguerreotype. He wants to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God. He goes mad, ending his life chained to a chestnut.

First-born Jose Arcadio with the same name repeats his father's aggressive sexuality, wasting himself on adventures. Aureliano, second son, listless, absent-minded. He is a jeweler. The village becomes a city. Rebeca and Amaranta, daughter of Ursula, fell in love with the piano maker. Violent quarrels, jealousy, but Rebeca chose the male Jose. Life awaits him "under the thumb" and a bullet from an unknown person, perhaps from his wife. Rebeca buries herself alive in the house. Amaranta refuses love, weaves a shroud for herself and, having finished it, dies. When his wife dies during childbirth, Aureliano grieves. Then he goes to fight and the character is forged, but the soul is empty.

Ursula Arcadio's grandson, a teacher, became the ruler of Macondo during the war years. Behaves like a tyrant. When the government changes, he is shot.

Aureliano Buendía was the commander-in-chief of the revolution. However, he realizes that he is fighting for glory and wants to kill himself. The attempt fails, and now he lives alone, making goldfish with emerald eyes.

Railroad, electricity, cinema, telephone come to Macondo. An avalanche of aliens establishes a banana company. Colonel Aureliano is furious. 17 of his sons by 17 wives were killed. He dies alone by the chestnut tree.

Ursula's descendants inherited all vices and no virtues. Their interests are: cock-fighting, fallen women, games, drunkenness and delusional ventures.

Only Amaranta Ursula, educated in Europe, dreams of reviving Macondo. Unsuccessfully. Reckless passion binds Aureliano to his aunt. They are expecting a child, hoping that he will revive the family. The only baby born in the centuries Buendía is conceived in love. However, he was born with a pork tail. Amaranta Ursula dies in childbirth. And the last from Buendía is finishing the parchment of Melquíades and already knows: according to the prophecy, the hurricane will sweep away the city, erase it from memory at the moment when he deciphers the last lines.

Essays

“100 Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez is an incomprehensible book for me. Everyone admires it, but I still don't understand why I read it? Yes, it is written beautifully. In places it is just as fun to read as, for example, or “” with his inventions and mysticism. But damn it, either I'm not a connoisseur, or I don't understand anything at all in literature.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad) is a novel by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most characteristic and popular works towards magical realism. The first edition of the novel was published in Buenos Aires in June 1967 with a circulation of 8,000. The novel was awarded the Romulo Gallegos Prize. To date, sold over 30 million copies, the novel has been translated into 35 languages.

35 languages ​​of the world! Millions of books sold! How many samples of Gabriel García Márquez's 100 Years of Solitude have been downloaded? I've downloaded it too. It's good that I didn't buy! It would be a pity for the money spent.

Composition of the book "100 Years of Solitude"

The book consists of 20 unnamed chapters, which describe a story that is looped in time: the events of Macondo and the Buendía family, for example, the names of the heroes, are repeated over and over again, combining fantasy and reality. IN first three The chapters deal with the resettlement of a group of people and the founding of the village of Macondo. From 4 to 16 chapters tells about the economic, political and social development of the village. The final chapters of the novel show its decline.

Almost all sentences of the novel are built in indirect speech and are rather long. Direct speech and dialogues are almost never used. An interesting sentence from chapter 16, in which Fernanda del Carpio laments and pity herself, is two and a half pages long in print.

2.5 pages one sentence! Things like that are annoying too. The key theme of the entire book is loneliness. Here, they all have different things. In Wikipedia, everything is even clearly described.

Throughout the novel, all of its heroes are destined to suffer from loneliness, which is a congenital "vice" of the Buendía family. The village where the novel takes place, Macondo, also lonely and separated from the world of his day, lives in anticipation of the visits of the gypsies who bring new inventions with them, and in oblivion, in constant tragic events in the history of the culture described in the work.
Loneliness is most noticeable in Colonel Aureliano Buendía, as his inability to express his love forces him to go to war, leaving his sons from different mothers in different villages. In another case, he asks to draw a three-meter circle around him so that no one approaches him. Having signed a peace treaty, he shoots himself in the chest so as not to meet with his future, but due to his unluckiness he does not achieve his goal and spends his old age in the workshop, making goldfish in honest harmony with loneliness.
Other characters in the novel also endured the consequences of loneliness and abandonment:

• founder of Macondo Jose Arcadio Buendía(spent many years alone under a tree);
• Ursula(she lived in the solitude of her senile blindness);
• Jose Arcadio and Rebecca(went to live in a separate house so as not to disgrace the family);
• Amaranta(she was unmarried all her life and died a virgin) (here I would add - because it wasn’t good to fool everybody, she was a fool herself! :);
• Gerineldo Marquez(all my life I have been waiting for the pension and love of Amaranta that have not yet been received);
• Pietro Crespi(rejected by Amaranta a suicide);
• Jose Arcadio II(after the execution he saw he never entered into a relationship with anyone and spent his last years, locked in Melquiades' office);
• Fernanda del Carpio(was born to become a queen and left her home for the first time at the age of 12);
• Renata Remedios "Meme" Buendía(she was sent to a monastery against her will, but completely resignedly after the misfortune with Mauricio Babylonia, having lived there in eternal silence);
• Aureliano Babilonia(lived locked in Melquíades's room).

One of the main reasons for their lonely life and detachment is the inability to love and prejudice, which were destroyed by the relationship between Aureliano Babylonia and Amaranta Ursula, whose ignorance of their relationship led to the tragic ending of the story in which the only son, conceived in love, was eaten by ants. This family was not capable of love, so they were doomed to loneliness. There was an exceptional case between Aureliano II and Petra Cotes: they loved each other, but they did not and could not have children. The only way a member of the Buendía family can have a child of love is in a relationship with another member of the Buendía family, which happened between Aureliano Babilonia and his aunt Amaranta Ursula. In addition, this union was born in a love destined for death, a love that ended the Buendía family.
Finally, we can say that loneliness manifested itself in all generations. Suicide, love, hatred, betrayal, freedom, suffering, craving for the forbidden are secondary themes that throughout the novel change our views on many things and make it clear that in this world we live and die alone.

Novel… great romance and Gabriel Garcia Marquez! Ooooooo yeah. Am I the only one in my judgments? I tried to look for reviews of the book.