English 11H Peter Straubinger

Godinho: 100 Years of Solitude Period 7

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, is a complex

masterpiece whose unique, convoluted style of storytelling sets it apart from other

novels, both in the adeptness of its prose and in the depth of its thematic messages. Far

from being immediately obvious, One Hundred Years of Solitude’s most important

themes gradually reveal themselves through the actions of its characters. Each character

is important in shedding light on some aspect of the novel’s message, and Colonel

Aureliano Buendía is no exception. A soldier first and foremost, the Colonel is

representative of two of the novel’s most important themes: the solitude that men create

within themselves, and the circuitous, unfastened nature of time. It is through his life of

war, and his subsequent role in the village of Macondo, that he is able to embody these

themes.

From the very first minutes of his life, Colonel Aureliano Buendía seems

destined to live a life of loneliness. Born with eyes open, after having wept in utero, the

young Aureliano seems to be wholly without the capacity to love. He has inherited the

introverted, obsessive nature that runs throughout the entire Buendía line, carrying a “…

strange intuition for alchemy” (Marquez 25). His affliction of loneliness is obvious

through his childhood, with his solitary nature serving to separate him from his fellow

villagers. Aureliano does not come into his own right until, as a young man, the town of

Macondo is occupied by military forces. With the country in a state of martial law, the

military oppresses the village’s inhabitants. A mere two weeks following the

occupation, Aureliano takes action. Leading not two dozen young, unarmed men,
Aureliano is able to defeat the occupying force, and takes it upon himself to bring the

fight out of Macondo and against the conservative government of the country. As he

ventures from the town, the long-present conservative administrator of the village seeks

to reason with him. However, Aureliano simply responds “ [This is] War. And don’t call

me Aurelito anymore. Now I’m Colonel Aureliano Buendía” (Marquez 101). Having

shed himself of his childhood name, Aureliano has completed his ascent into the man he

was destined to become.

As a military leader, Colonel Aureliano Buendía proves adept, though not from

his battle record. Though every one of his thirty-two armed uprisings ends in failure, he

cares for his men, holding their lives in high esteem. Nonetheless, this quality proves to

be a meager replacement for his lack of true emotion. Though this cold, calculating

intellect results in skill not only in battle but in art, as the Colonel’s life progresses he

appears more and more troubled by his emptiness, with his gifts doing little to ease his

torment. He seems to avoid death in a supernatural manner, with sudden premonitions

warning him of approaching danger. In this manner he survives ambushes, firing

squads, assassination attempts, and “…a dose of strychnine in his coffee that was

enough to kill a horse” (Marquez 103). At the war’s end, the Colonel attempts to take

matters into his own hands; following his signature of a peace treaty, he turns a pistol on

himself, yet emerges wounded but quite alive. It is this act of desperation which drives

home the terrible futility that engulfs Colonel Aureliano Buendía. He has realized that

the civil war to which he dedicated his mind, body, and soul is wholly devoid of

meaning. It is simply a conflict of pride, under the guise of political idealism. When he

is stripped of his illusions, Aureliano is rendered unable to continue his life in any
meaningful capacity. From his birth, to the death of his childhood wife Remedios

Moscote, to his military service and onwards, the Colonel remains eluded by any

emotion which could lend meaning to his life.

The life of Colonel Aureliano Buendía contains numerous clues to the circular

nature of time in Macondo. His apparent powers of precognition and premonition can

be interpreted in two different ways; they are either some sort of mystical gift, or they

are a slight nod to the non-continuous path that time takes in Macondo. Rather than

seeing into the future by magic, Aureliano instead seems to be feeling the effects of an

interwoven fourth dimension. On a far grander scale, the war to which Colonel

Aureliano Buendía dedicates the majority of his life to is a massive, broad

demonstration of time’s circuity. Buendía’s notoriety as a rebel leader serves to connect

Macondo to the outside world, as it becomes more and more embroiled in the country’s

civil war. This event serves to mimic the initial arrival of Melquiades and the gypsy

tribes, which Marquez acknowledges with the novel’s first words: “Many years later, as

he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant

afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” (Marquez 1). Even Macondo’s

relevance is proven to be circular. Following this period of intermingling with the

outside world, Macondo draws into itself again, and then expands, swaying pendulously

until it is left, by the novel’s end, as it began; solitary and isolated, forgetting and

forgotten by the outside world.

It is Aureliano’s time following the war which serves best to illustrate the theme

of time as a circuitous, uncertain, and cyclical construct. Though his time at war seemed

at first as if it could be an escape from the village’s time-swallowing nature, the

overwhelming ineffectuality of the conflict only serves to drive the point deeper home.

The first inkling of the past coming to life again begins with Colonel Aureliano

Buendía’s choice of activity upon his return. He re-adopts metallurgy, a hobby he had

long ago partaken and shown promise in, before leaving to fight. As memory, sanity,

and the last vestiges of emotion abandon him, Aureliano’s sole desire seems to be

creating small, intricately crafted gold fishes. These creations do not, however, grow in

number. Aureliano crafts 25 of the ornate trinkets, at which point he melts them down

and begins anew. This cycle is repeated ad infinitum. Having burned all of the poetry he

had previously written when he returned to the town, the Colonel’s weathered memory

and isolation from family leave him with knowledge of nothing but his immediate,

present world. Past and future cannot exist, and Aureliano’s life becomes a simple

vessel for the futile practice of sculpting, destroying, and re-sculpting the small gold

fish, living his life according to the whim of time’s recursive flow. Even his death

harkens to this theme; he passes away whilst relieving himself upon the very chestnut

tree that his father, José Arcadio Buendía, was tied to so many years ago. The final nod

to the past that the Colonel is host to occurs when his body is prepared for burial.

Marquez mentions briefly that Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s sister, Amaranta, “…

dressed him in his soldier’s uniform, shaved him, combed his hair, and waxed his

mustache better than he had ever done in his days of glory” (Marquez 276).

Gabriel García Márquez’s ability is such that one could pluck nearly any

character from the pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude and quite easily tie them to

the book’s broad, overarching themes. However, as a particularly intriguing and

complex character, Colonel Aureliano Buendía presents a tantalizing choice for

analysis. With lives as both soldier and artist, the Colonel’s tragic sub-epic paints a

brilliant display of the themes of inner solitude and circular time. Whether it is during

his prime as a soldier, or his slow decline into total isolation afterwards, Colonel

Aureliano Buendía must play tragic host to forces far greater than he.
 Works Cited:

Márquez, Gabriel García. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericanos, 1967.