RELATED TOPICS FOR One Hundred Years of Solitude

Garcia Marquez displays his unique style of creating his fictional world in his works, especially in one respect - his depiction of subjective states of mind reminiscent of surrealism. Many of his characters reappear under different circumstances in subsequent works, thus suggesting the entirety of his fictional universe. Generally speaking, the following subjects I discuss here are in fact all major themes of his works.

Time as Linear and Circular History

The interplay between these two senses of time creates an important effect throughout the novel. The linear development in this novel is related to the history of the town of Macondo. The readers can follow the story from its founding, growth and prosperity, and to its decadence. On the other hand, the response and fate of the people creates the circular sense of history. Their personalities constantly recur the experiences of earlier generations.

Solitude

As the novel's central theme, it knits personal destinies closely. Whatever their essence - solitude of power, madness, silence, or death, all the characters are born condemned to suffer it. It seems to be a universal law for them, that not even one person in the Buendias Family is spared. This theme is recurrent in his other novels, as in The Autumn of the Patriarch, which emerges from the Patriarch's lifelong inability to love and achieve communication.

Historical and Social Elements

These elements reflect the journalistic influences at work in Garcia Marquez's fiction. With its complex family relationships and extraordinary events, the novel indeed depicts Latin America's development in microcosm. Latin American life is a historical experience that creates magic realism: the reality of its political oppression and familial obligations easily complement the magic of strong beliefs in the divine and supernatural.

Political Elements

The author has somewhat touches the realities of political power through the history and wars of Col. Aureliano Buendia. With the arrival of political and party divisions, Macondo is plunged into the political status in Colombia, especially reflecting the civil wars known as the War of a Thousand Days and la violencia. These political elements again intensify the history of Latin America in his novels, including In Evil Hour and No One Writes to the Colonel.