Novel Hundred Years of Solitude

Categories: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Essay, Pages 6 (1430 words)

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García Márquez includes a number of motifs in his novel 100 Years of Solitude. One of the most prominent ones in the book is the motif of productivity, or more accurately, unproductivity. Many times, characters become trapped in an unescapable cycle that leads to nowhere. They are either forced into it by an outside force or they fall into it as a result of their own flaws. Once ensnared, the character is unable to find a way to free themselves from the circle.

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A vicious cycle of unproductivity can only be broken from the outside, as seen through Ursula’s influence on Jose Arcadio Buendia, Melquiades curing the insomnia plague, and Pilar Ternera continuing the bloodline through Jose Arcadio.

Jose Arcadio Buendia’s obsession with his fantasies is one of the earliest examples of a cycle of unproductivity. He started as an industrious young man, founding the town of Macondo, which seems to be as close to a utopia as possible.

“Within a few years, Macondo was a village that was more orderly and hardworking than and known until then by its three hundred inhabitants” (9). However, as a result of Melquiades, a gypsy who introduced marvelous feats of science from the outside world to Jose, he lost the motivation to be productive. Jose became possessed by the new technology. “That spirit of social initiative disappeared in a short time, pulled away by the fever of the magnets, the astronomical calculations, the dreams of transmutation, and the urge to discover the wonders of the world” (9).

If he could recognize what was happening, he would have found himself chasing the same dream in circles, all the while accomplishing nothing. All of his exploits and expeditions that Jose attempted in his own little world led to nothing but despair. The last project he took on was to come into contact with another civilization, which ended in a crushing failure. “His dreams ended as he faced that ashen, foamy, dirty sea, which had not merited the risks and sacrifices of the adventure” (12). Such defeats still could not cause Jose to realize that he was the problem. Only a strong outside force could release him from his cyclical prison. That came in the form of his wife, Ursula. As Jose was packing up their house, getting ready to move out of Macondo, she finally put her foot down. Ursula compelled Jose to get out of his own head and see what harm he had done to his family. “‘Instead of going around thinking about your crazy inventions, you should be worrying about your sons,’ she replied. ‘Look at the state they’re in, running wild just like donkeys’” (14).

During the first experiments, Ursula merely sat by and watched as Jose became lost in his daydreams, such as when she gave into his alchemy visions. If she had not eventually put a stop to his fairy-tale ideas, Jose would have continued in his unproductive ways and led his family to their doom. Instead, he became a father again and started to contribute to the family. “he [Jose Arcadio Buendia] taught them [Aureliano and Jose Arcadio] to read and write and do sums, and he spoke to them about the wonders of the world” (15). This was a result of Ursula’s intervention. Jose could not free himself from the hole he fell in. It required Ursula to take a stand and throw down a rope so Jose could once more become a productive man.

The cycle of unproductivity was not strictly limited to one character, but to the entire town of Macondo. Rebeca was a little girl who showed up at the doorstep of the Buendia home, carrying nothing but her parent’s bones and a terrible plague. She brought insomnia into Macondo. An Indian woman in Macondo, Visitacion, had been exposed to insomnia before, and she knew the result of it. “She meant that when the sick person became used to his state of vigil, the recollection of his childhood began to be erased from his memory, then the name and notion of things, and finally the identity of people and even the awareness of his own being” (44). Soon, the entire town was affected, and the endless hours without sleep eventually trapped the population in an unproductive circle. They tried desperately to find any respite from the boredom. “They would gather together to converse endlessly, to tell over and over for hours on end the same jokes” (45).

The entire society could not find a way to apply their time to anything productive. Eventually, the circle became even tighter. They started to forget the names for basic household appliances. To temporarily remedy the situation, the residents labeled everything that they owned. “They went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters” (47). They could only remember the name of something by the nametag, and then forgot it immediately. This sequence continued to replay itself, unable to be stopped by the people of Macondo, despite their best efforts. However, an outsider came into town. Upon greeting Jose, a man he had already met, the stranger saw that Jose did not remember anything. He recognized the problem, and offered a medicine to Jose. “His [Jose’s] eyes became moist from weeping even before he noticed himself in an absurd living room where objects were labelled and before he was ashamed of the solemn nonsense written on the walls, and even before he recognized the newcomer… It was Melquiades” (49).

The town was doomed to collapse on its own. No one could have stopped the insomnia plague. The Melquiades shows up, and he has the cure with him. The citizens were able to return to their former lives and be productive again. Aureliano emerged even more productive than ever, having become an expert silversmith. “That dedication to his work, the god judgement in which he directed his attention, had allowed Aureliano to earn in a short time more money than Ursula had with her delicious candy fauna” (50). To return back to its former productive state, the town needed an outsider to end the cycle of unproductivity.

Finally, the Buendia family tree would not have continued passed Amaranta, Aureliano, and Jose Arcadio if they were left to their own devices. One of the most important forms of productivity is reproduction and the continuation of the bloodline. Amaranta dies a virgin, never having a child to continue the family tree. “Thereupon Amaranta lay down and made Ursula give public testimony as to her virginity” (282). By dying a virgin, she failed to be productive. Aureliano, although having children, was also not productive in the long run. His wife, Remedios, dies pregnant, his son Aureliano Jose is shot, and his seventeen illegitimate sons are all killed before they can reproduce. “During the course of that week, at different places along the coast, his seventeen sons were hunted down like rabbits by invisible criminals” (238).

The future generations of the Buendia family did not come from Aureliano either. The only one who continues the bloodline is Jose Arcadio. However, it is not with his wife. The only person who could provide a descendant that would pass on the Buendia name was a woman outside of the family, Pilar Ternera. “Pilar Ternera’s son was brought to his grandparents’ house two weeks after he was born. Ursula admitted him grudgingly, conquered once more by the obstinacy of her husband, who could not tolerate the idea that an offshoot of his blood should be adrift” (37). This child, Arcadio, was the only offspring of this generation to survive and reproduce himself. If Jose Arcadio did not have sex before he was married, the Buendia line would not have continued. The Buendias were unproductive in the confines of their family and marriages, so a woman not involved in the family was needed to bear a child.

With the reappearing motif of productivity, García Márquez shows how outside assistance is needed to end an unproductive cycle. This theme is exemplified by Ursula saving Jose Arcadio Buendia, Melquiades saving Macondo, and Pilar Ternera saving the Buendia bloodline. Every one of them was confined in an endless cycle, through their fault or through an unavoidable accident. They cannot break the chains that keep them from being productive alone. To escape from the deadly repeating unproductive habits, someone must come from the outside and save them so they may be productive once more.