One hundred Years of solitude
The village Mocondo is founded by the fated cousins Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia who are escaping from the past. In the beginning the "village [is] truly happy" (pg. 18), yet as children, and then grandchildren come, patterns become apparent. The Buendia family blindly follows the mistakes of their ancestors, forgetting their past, living in and seeking solitude, and never feeling true love. JAB (Jose Arcadia Buendia) has dreams of "infinite rooms" (pg. 136) where he walks through the same room over and over, but is never able to interpret this dream as a warning concerning the paths and choices of his family. Melquiades, the gypsy who befriends the family, refers to the village as "The city of mirrors"; one where the past is reflected again and again and no Buendias are able to create their own history. Marquez used the repetition of life patterns of the Buendias to demonstrate how people who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them.
19/03/2009 La Ministra de Cultuta de Colombia Paul...
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Buendia's Family T...
Vasco Nunez de BalboaThe residents of Mocondo easily forget the past since it seems to be of no concern to them. During the Utopian Era, a forgotten past is what keeps the town in its innocent state. JAB also has the tendency to easily forget about past failures. He is an enterprising man with a creative spirit and "unbridled imagination" (p.11) which tends to get carried away. When the gypsies come to Mocondo with magnets, JAB never having been exposed to them before, thinks that their power will "expel gold from the bowels of the earth"(12), and buys them. When his attempts fail, he realizes the magnets are useless to him. Yet when the gypsies return again later, he continues to buy more inventions finally using up Ursula's inheritance. Ursula is...