One Hundred Years of Solitude

A detailed Summary of One Hundred Years of Solitude

Since the beginning of time, man has clung to the notion that

there exists some external force that determines his destiny. In

Grecian times, the epic poet Hesoid wrote of a triumvirate of

mythological Fates that supposedly gave "to men at birth evil and

good to have". In other words, these three granted man his destiny.

Clotho "spun the thread of life", Lacheis distributed the lots, and

Atropos with his "abhorred shears" would "cut the thread at

death"(Hamilton-43). All efforts to avoid the Fates were in vain. In

every case their sentence would eventually be delivered. And it

appears that once the Fates' ballot had been cast, the characters in

Greek myths had no chance for redemption. One must wonder if man, like

the Greeks portrayed, has any real choice in determining how he lives.

That issue of choice arises when comparing Gabriel Marquez's One

Hundred Years of Solitude and Yasunari Kawabata's Thousand Cranes. The

men in Yasunari Kawabata's Thousand Cranes and Gabriel Garcia

Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude forever seem to be repeating

the lives of their male ancestors. These cycles reveal that man as a

finds himself left only with the despised Chikako. The quest for the

wrong becoming involved with Fumiko. With her he is tormented,

relationship that ultimately ends in the suicide of his newfound love.

same thing as his father had done before him, but with the next

of Solitude, these relations exist in the form of incest. From the

the pattern of incest continues when Jose Arcadio sleeps with Pilar

the Buendias thereafter, the woman warns of the curse but the man

Approximate Word count = 1746
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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