Magical Realism: The World of Macondo
A very basic reading will give the impression that One Hundred Years of Solitude is simply the story of the history of the Buendia family. They are the founders of Macondo, the fictional town that has many times appeared in Marquez’s other works. On a basic level, this is true. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran are cousins who marry and with twenty other families move out of their native village to found a town near the ocean. What starts as a family of five grows into a long lineage spanning more than one hundred years. The plot of the novel revolves around the interactions of the Buendias and the various personages of what is at first a small town. This is not the whole story, however.
It has been said that Solitude is a retelling of Latin American history. It begins with allusions to the Spanish and English conquest as we are told of an attack by Sir Francis Drake on the town of Ursula’s great-great-grandmother. We later see the transition of Macondo from an isolated, sovereign town to one racked with civil war brought upon the conflicting politics of an intruding federal government. The once united and peaceful citizens of Macondo begin to divide according to the arbitrary labels of “Liberals” and “Conservatives.” Macondo in its last stages finds its demise after its exploitation and ensuing chaos caused by an American transnational corporation.
The inhabitants of Macondo change as continuously as the society’s politics. Adding to the few founding families, its people are made of native Indians, visiting by gypsies, those from the Caribbean, Europeans, and Americans. Each of these people bring to Macondo a piece of their own culture making it a vast manage of the traditional and modern, domestic and exotic, the “rational” and the mystic. Because of this blending, magical realism, and by extension dream narratives, are effective in capturing this seemingly contradictory world.
Paintings: Pinturas de Castas, Miguel Cabrera, 18th Century
Read more:
Considering Dreams in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Fictional Space
Dreams and Narrative
Magical Realism: The World of Macondo
Meaningful Bizarreness
Marquez and Jung
Concluding Thoughts
Further Reading
About the Author