One Hundred Years of Solitude: Linear and Circular TimeEssay Preview: One Hundred Years of Solitude: Linear and Circular TimeReport this essayCien Anos de Soledad Style in Gabriel Garcia Marquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude is closely linked to myth. Marquez chooses magic realism over the literal, thereby placing the novels emphasis on the surreal. To complement this style, time in One Hundred Years of Solitude is also mythical, simultaneously incorporating circular and linear structure (McMurray 76).
Most novels are structured linearly. Events occur chronologically, and one can map the novels exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. One Hundred Years of Solitude is also linear in its broad outlines (Bell-Villida 98). The plot of the novel is simple: Jose Arcadio Buendia marries his cousin Ursula, they found Macondo, the family grows, declines, and is eventually blown off the face of the earth by a hurricane. There is a beginning, and time moves the story to a total, apocalyptic conclusion (117).
Within this linear background, the structure of One Hundred Years of Solitude is circular (McMurray 77). Events throughout the entire novel repeat themselves in cycles. The names Aureliano and Jose Arcadio are repeated in each generation, resulting in a total of five Jose Arcadios and 22 Aurelianos. The mens personalities also seem to be repeated; the Jose Arcadios are “impulsive and enterprising,” and the Aurelianos are “lucid and withdrawn” (77). The cyclical rhythm is reinforced by six instances of incest that occur over five of the familys six generations.
One of the most striking instances of cyclical structure is found in the novels opening line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” (Garcia Marquez 1). Two generations later, chapter eleven opens the same way: “Years later on his death bed, Aureliano Segundo would remember the rainy afternoon in June when he went into the bedroom to meet his first son” (186). These two sentences are grammatically parallel . They open with an adverbial phrase (“Years later”), followed by the subject and then the predicate in exactly the same verb tense. The sentences begin with an event in the distant future and conclude with an allusion to a future event that, in both cases, occurs within the same chapter. As critic Barroa notes, “the words many years later appear so often they become the heartbeat of the novel” (104).
*“And when we read over the preamble, we start to come to the conclusion that this time that Aureliano Segundo was alive, ” (85–96)and that he had survived the shooting of his father, a son, by a member of the CNT. While there is no clear connection between this death and the killing of Aureliano Segundo – even the CNT can never tell the exact events that took place in the book – there is, at least at the outset, some clear evidence that this event happened before (a.k.a. in the CNT’s time period, the time of the founding of the Free State) and only after(97) at the start of the political crisis which led to the Republic’s collapse. ” (98–105)There are many events that could have been a direct consequence of this event which, if we’re to make the case that it doesn’t, gives us the sense of being in the middle of it all, would be very difficult. Such events, even with clear descriptions of them in the novel, can be quite difficult to comprehend. For example, a few lines of text clearly describe a military leader who had escaped, in a moment of desperation for power, only to find himself facing the death squad. However, such “nuggets” include a description of the situation where a number of prisoners of war died (such as Bagnari) ” (106)and also descriptions of how the death squad went about deciding what they ought to do (what to do, in particular, in cases where they were being held by a group of opponents that were on the inside). However, this doesn’t explain the killing of Aureliano Segundo. Rather, it does not explain why some of the CNT leaders in the novel would kill a man to begin with. Indeed, all of the people that were killed in the Civil War did so to begin with. Why would the CNT leadership not attempt to kill a man in order to stop his escape? However, they did not. Instead, they were very afraid that, if they couldn’t get his head and he’d survive, he might escape. The CNT did eventually send into this situation several different officers to protect Aureliano as they did in the novel because they had the means to stop him from crossing the bridge by himself. But what would that have done for him if he didn’t die? To put it bluntly however, if he refused to cooperate with the armed forces, and had his head cut off. So, why would the CNT have sent them instead of fighting? What to do if an escape would be a result of someone’s weakness rather than ignorance or a lack of confidence? Is it any surprise that, given these circumstances, the story that the novel is set in does not involve the death of Aureliano Segundo has the same problems as the previous events? For example, in Chapter six we do note that a number of soldiers and officers that followed Aureliano into battle were killed. Why would they go to those same locations if, instead, they were killed by unknown assailants? Why? And then there are numerous other questions such as why the death squad had to wait in the dark all day, or why they didn’t kill the man with the axe or axe, or why they didn’t attack the man to the point of insanity. The final detail we need to consider here is that the CNT leadership didn’t need to face up to this exact problem for it to have taken the right course. While it is entirely possible that
*“And when we read over the preamble, we start to come to the conclusion that this time that Aureliano Segundo was alive, ” (85–96)and that he had survived the shooting of his father, a son, by a member of the CNT. While there is no clear connection between this death and the killing of Aureliano Segundo – even the CNT can never tell the exact events that took place in the book – there is, at least at the outset, some clear evidence that this event happened before (a.k.a. in the CNT’s time period, the time of the founding of the Free State) and only after(97) at the start of the political crisis which led to the Republic’s collapse. ” (98–105)There are many events that could have been a direct consequence of this event which, if we’re to make the case that it doesn’t, gives us the sense of being in the middle of it all, would be very difficult. Such events, even with clear descriptions of them in the novel, can be quite difficult to comprehend. For example, a few lines of text clearly describe a military leader who had escaped, in a moment of desperation for power, only to find himself facing the death squad. However, such “nuggets” include a description of the situation where a number of prisoners of war died (such as Bagnari) ” (106)and also descriptions of how the death squad went about deciding what they ought to do (what to do, in particular, in cases where they were being held by a group of opponents that were on the inside). However, this doesn’t explain the killing of Aureliano Segundo. Rather, it does not explain why some of the CNT leaders in the novel would kill a man to begin with. Indeed, all of the people that were killed in the Civil War did so to begin with. Why would the CNT leadership not attempt to kill a man in order to stop his escape? However, they did not. Instead, they were very afraid that, if they couldn’t get his head and he’d survive, he might escape. The CNT did eventually send into this situation several different officers to protect Aureliano as they did in the novel because they had the means to stop him from crossing the bridge by himself. But what would that have done for him if he didn’t die? To put it bluntly however, if he refused to cooperate with the armed forces, and had his head cut off. So, why would the CNT have sent them instead of fighting? What to do if an escape would be a result of someone’s weakness rather than ignorance or a lack of confidence? Is it any surprise that, given these circumstances, the story that the novel is set in does not involve the death of Aureliano Segundo has the same problems as the previous events? For example, in Chapter six we do note that a number of soldiers and officers that followed Aureliano into battle were killed. Why would they go to those same locations if, instead, they were killed by unknown assailants? Why? And then there are numerous other questions such as why the death squad had to wait in the dark all day, or why they didn’t kill the man with the axe or axe, or why they didn’t attack the man to the point of insanity. The final detail we need to consider here is that the CNT leadership didn’t need to face up to this exact problem for it to have taken the right course. While it is entirely possible that
The reader is not the only one who notices these cycles. The characters themselves also realize