From Creation to Condemnation: A Close Reading of the Final Pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Frederic Edwin Church, View of Cotopaxi, 1857.
This essay includes spoilers.
As a hurricane whips through the streets of Macondo, the final pages of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude similarly fly past, a fever dream culminating in the condemnation of the Buendía family. García Márquez’s novel, a paragon of magical realism, is not a morality tale — the Buendía family produces so many moral failings over the generations that such a reading would be far too simple. Instead, their failure to live up to basic ethics serves to underscore the repetitive nature of humans and our inability to learn from our past.
One Hundred Years of Solitude narrates humanity from creation to the fall and from exile to apocalypse, proving that, despite multiple opportunities to repeat creation and prevent the fall, we consistently fail to choose and create something different. The novel witnesses multiple creations, dozens of falls and chances at redemption, and in the final scene, the entirety of scripture is condensed into a single moment. It is creation, the fall, and the end days — and yet this time there will be no chance at redemption. The final pages present a magnificent and dramatic commentary deeply rooted in biblical tradition. Just as the Bible sets out to narrate the whole of human history and experience, One Hundred Years of Solitude similarly utilizes scriptural metaphors and archetypes to present a powerful rumination on humanity and our inability to overcome our collective history.
Frederic Edwin Church, View on the Magdalena River, 1857.
Macondo as History and Scripture
In a collection of five paintings, 19th-century artist Thomas Cole presents an argument for the cyclical nature of civilizations in his famous series “The Course of Empire.” Despite their seemingly classical themes, Cole assures viewers that the paintings are not intended to represent any particular empire; rather, they are representative of all civilizations. Similarly, One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles the history of a civilization from its humble origins into a sprawling village. In this way, Márquez uses Macondo as a heterocosm to explore the repetitive nature of history.
Yet, there is another layer — Macondo is a microcosm of scripture and therefore of humanity’s entire narrative. As Melquíades’ parchments prophesies, the story of the Buendía family is also the story of the Bible:
“The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.”
In Genesis, Adam and Eve fall when they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Similarly, José Arcadio Buendía’s moral failing is his obsessive pursuit of knowledge, often at the expense of his family. Thus, he is condemned to be tied to a tree, symbolic of his own tree of knowledge, which he unknowingly tied himself to through his obsession. Each decision to remain in his laboratory tightened the ropes further — he tried to become like God, and in his quest was driven to madness.
The prophecy is complete when Aureliano Buendía’s child — the last of the Buendía line — is consumed by ants. This gruesome scene parallels the plagues of the Book of Revelation, including swarms of locust, which are doled out by angels holding bowls containing the wrath of God. It is not difficult to interpret these final scenes as those of a wrathful divinity; after all of the moral failings of the Buendía family, it is unsurprising to see the family succumb to the apocalyptic scenes of Revelation.
The final storm ultimately wipes the Macondo and all memory of its existence from the earth. As Aureliano Buendía tries to decipher Melquíades’ parchments,
“Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane …”
Like Sodom and Gomorrah and the Flood, humanity must answer for its sins through its own destruction. The very town becomes corrupted; therefore, Macondo itself must perish as retribution for the generations of sins committed by the Buendía family.
Thomas Cole, Desolation, 1836.
Condemnation
One Hundred Years of Solitude concludes with a powerful denunciation of the Buendía family:
“Everything written on [the parchments] was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”
There is such force in this final, ominous line — redemption is withheld from the Buendía family. Perhaps we are surprised to see such harsh judgement. However, every generation had the opportunity to refuse repeating the mistakes of the past, but they chose wrong every time.
In this way, the novel takes on a particularly Jewish notion of sin, in which punishment is spread out through the generations rather than apportioned only on the party committing the sin. The sins of the family are visited not only on the children, but on the community as a whole. Life progressively worsens for Macondo as the Buendías continue to intermarry, culminating in the horrific Banana Massacre. Sin corrupts both the individual and the community.
But where is God? He feels notably absent in the novel, despite making short appearances in empty statements from the characters. The final pages have no mention of God, despite the clear parallels to biblical stories. God seems to be fluttering over the pages as He once hovered over the waters, but we cannot quite pin Him down.
Ultimately, the final sentence of the novel offers more questions than answers. Who is it that decides this condemnation? Is it God or did they condemn themselves? And who offers — or in this case refuses to offer — second chances?
Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859.
Divine Time and Man’s Memory
Although the novel moves forward in time, the Buendía family is firmly rooted in their past, determined to live in their memories. In the final moments of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Aureliano Buendía continues this family tradition:
“… [He] wandered aimlessly through the town, searching for an entrance that went back to the past.”
“He was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past.”
The characters’ inability to live in the present and the weight of the family’s moral and personal failings results in an incapacity to grow and develop for every character.
The novel challenges our own understanding of time and memory. It is an unnerving reality — Macondo is “gone,” destroyed in the hurricane, but we have “proof” of its actuality in the very existence of the novel. Macondo and the memory of the Buendías have been wiped from the earth, but perhaps the novel itself is proof that they did exist. In this way, García Márquez challenges us to consider how historical and collective memory are formed. Most of us never leave a trace of our existence. Perhaps our memory is carried around for a while, like the bones of Rebeca’s parents, until finally they are buried, and all that was part of us or our world slowly disappears.
Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.” In this sense, can we consider the Buendías really gone? They continue to exist within the pages of this book, and in this way Márquez has preserved their memory and thus made them immortal.
Ultimately, there is no clear moral message. García Márquez is not a prescribing writer; he does not try to advocate for a certain morality. Rather, he encourages reflection. He wants readers to recognize that individual decisions have consequences, both for ourselves and our communities. But can we truly learn from our personal and collective histories? We are given a chance to choose differently. But perhaps we too, like the Buendías, are condemned to repeat the past.
In the words of Lord Byron,
“There is a moral of all human tales:
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory; when that fails,
Wealth, Vice, Corruption, barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page.”
This article was inspired by my reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
*All quotes are taken from the translation by Gregory Rabassa.