Fantastic Fates and Where to Find Them In writing One Hundred Year of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Márquez fuses political commentary, magic realism, and reflections on humanity through his creation of the fictional town Macondo. Despite killer ants, gorgeous women ascending to the heavens, and soothsayers, Márquez claims that “there’s not a single line in all [his] work that does not have a basis in reality” (Hamilton 1). If taken literally, Márquez may be referring to the inspiration overbearing banana company or Colombian political unrest gave to his novel. However, his work may be based more on underlying themes of the reality of humankind than specific events in his country of Colombia. He explores a wide range of concepts including incest, gender roles, and mental illness, but his most striking exploration concerns that of fate. Gabriel Garcia Márquez
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Surprisingly, the couple’s children possess no pig’s tail upon birth. Five generations and nearly 300 pages later, though, produces a child finally born with a pig’s tail. The terrifying prediction had been so forgotten that, upon the child’s birth, Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula’s were entirely calm: “They were not alarmed. Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula were not aware of the family precedent, nor did they remember Úrsula’s frightening admonitions” (Márquez 299). Márquez allows the reader to believe, for the majority of the novel, that the Buendía fate has been avoided. The reader and characters themselves ignore the earlier focus on the pig’s tail as it appears this prophecy has not been fulfilled. Upon its fulfillment, the child is consumed by ants and the entire Buendía family and Macondo itself cease to exist. A fate that takes so long to come to fruition emphasizes Márquez’s interpretation that although humans may feel in control of their own destinies, they are truly guided by an invisible predetermined
Surprisingly, the couple’s children possess no pig’s tail upon birth. Five generations and nearly 300 pages later, though, produces a child finally born with a pig’s tail. The terrifying prediction had been so forgotten that, upon the child’s birth, Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula’s were entirely calm: “They were not alarmed. Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula were not aware of the family precedent, nor did they remember Úrsula’s frightening admonitions” (Márquez 299). Márquez allows the reader to believe, for the majority of the novel, that the Buendía fate has been avoided. The reader and characters themselves ignore the earlier focus on the pig’s tail as it appears this prophecy has not been fulfilled. Upon its fulfillment, the child is consumed by ants and the entire Buendía family and Macondo itself cease to exist. A fate that takes so long to come to fruition emphasizes Márquez’s interpretation that although humans may feel in control of their own destinies, they are truly guided by an invisible predetermined