Cien Años de Soledad

I have finished reading a few days ago « Cien Años de Soledad » from Gabriel García Márquez and although I usually write about tech stuff, I have decided to write about it, since I believe lessons of any kind can be relevant to any craft.
Nothing in this book should be considered a spoiler, because the story is a tragedy spanning a century, and there is no cliffhanger or scenario-defining information in the notes below. Those key facts, especially the last, are even present in a lot of editions cover summary, or in preliminary reader notes.

Cien Años de Soledad was recommended to me and since the book had won its author a literature Nobel prize, I thought, why not give it a shot.

200 pages into the book, I thought it was weird, and was considering giving up. As I was reading it in a restaurant in Rome 3 weeks ago (“Impiccetta” in Rome Trastevere, I recommend), the boss running the place stopped by my table and told me, « This book, my friend, is a lesson. ». I told him I would then finish it, and remember him.

First of all, I have never seen anything like it (not saying whether that’s good or bad). Some books give you information, some tell you things, others describe things, but this one really shows you things.

What almost drove me away was the sense of repetition, running in circles, and the magic events intertwined in an otherwise realistic story arc taking place in South America. I have come to believe that what almost drove me away was actually the very point of the narrative technique, and that this temporary phase was necessary to be able to understand the message.

As I now reflect on this book, I tried to think of which lessons could be drawn, as promised to the Impiccetta boss.

Cien Años de Soledad is a book very rich in allegories, to which everybody will react differently, but react, you will, and that’s probably why this book is special.

Why was this book a hit?

Before getting to the messages I think the book convey, I think it’s important to put it in its cultural context. Cien Años de Soledad depicts the birth and death of the village Macondo, lost somewhere in South America. Macondo is a place concentrating so much of South America history, ranging from relationships between indigenous and populations of European descent, to political violence, economic boom but also exploitation, conflict between tradition and modernity… It’s no wonder that most people in South America will relate at least a bit to Macondo, one way or another.

Besides the epic-like history context spanning over a century, Cien Años de Soledad also shines light on humanity dark impulses such as incest, extrajudicial killings, rape, bestiality, in a way that is almost documentary, which adds to the completeness of the artwork.

Moving on, here are, I think, a few messages to be taken away.

The ambivalence of political violence

During the war waged by the liberal colonel Aureliano Buendía to topple the conservative government, an enlightening conversation happens with his generals.

In order to widen the political base of the revolution, some suggest to tone down the revolutionary program on agricultural reform and the place of the church in everyday life, among other things.

The majority of his generals is against what they call a betrayal of their revolutionary principles, to which Colonel Buendía answers: « if we need to betray our program to widen our base, then it means we do not have the support of the people, which means, we’re only fighting for power. I can live with that. Can you?»

He then decides to wind down the war, leaving his generals powerless, unable to solve the contradiction he surfaced. A peace treaty ends up being signed between the government and the colonel, who then attempts to commit suicide, and fails.

This one page of the book perfectly symbolizes the good ol’ saying: « You either die a hero or live long enough and become the villain. »

The Dangerous Malleability of Truth

The foreign agricultural plantation company causing the economic boom in Macondo ends up facing intense strikes over working conditions. At one point during a protest, the military shows up and guns down 3000 workers in a few hours, only to then load the bodies in a train to then dispose of them in the ocean.

One of the Buendía family members is shot but survives, is stacked in a wagon with dead bodies, and then jumps off the wagon shortly after the train departure.

When he makes it back to Macondo, there is no trace of the massacre, the official story is that a deal was brokered between the plantation company and the workers, who then all went home to their region of origin. His own memories become blurry and wonders whether this was all a nightmare, and faces intense rejection from other inhabitants when he tries to bring up the topic.

Multiple other passages of the book blur the lines between lie and truth, where human emotions mix in, where people tend to believe what they prefer to believe to protect themselves, and how this is used by some people in power to shape narratives.

The Power of Fiction to Process Reality

Cien Años de Soledad takes place and in an indefinite however realistic south American context, and I was surprised at first to see references to magic events (flying carpets, rains of flowers, levitating priest, ghosts…) here and there.

But you then realize, those features without explanation train you to accept things without question, and once tragic events occur and true horror happens, it almost becomes unreal, and you accept it because the story universe trained you to accept things without trying to make sense of them.

In a way, García Márquez uses fiction and magic to cloak the horrors of war and violence, and make the reader accept them as facts, unlike the inhabitants of Macondo who could not make sense of them, and thus end up rejecting them, trapped in an alternate reality of their own device.

You can’t Break What you don’t know

The Buendía family is trapped in an endless cycle of repetition, right until the fall of Macondo, along with the family itself. The family fate was written all along, and the last Aureliano only finds out too late, when all things are said and done. The past keeps haunting the Buendías over and over, with the appearance of ghosts, and only Ursula, who lives for more than a century, gets to notice how things keep circling, but no one listens to her.

The Buendía family is cursed, through fates and legends, to live a 100 years of solitude, centered on itself, tied forever to Macondo. My feeling after finishing the last chapter is that behind the tragedy is the notion that you can’t fight a problem if you’re not even aware of its existence. Cien Años de Soledad is a story of perpetuation and determinism, of a curse that you are bound to manifest yourself, unless you are able to uncover it, understand it, to break it.

Last but not least, I used on purpose “determinism” and not “social determinism”, because the Buendía family, over the 7 generations, goes through all sorts of social statuses, and García Márquez ambition is to depict the human condition in its completeness, not just illustrate some economic or social inequalities.

Conclusion

Cien Años de Soledad is one of a kind book, and although I did not enjoy every chapter, I understand García Márquez original ambition, and I think he delivered on it. I recommend reading it, and pushing through the few difficult moments.