Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, lived and
experienced one of the most intriguing cultures in the world, Latin American.
These experiences play a dominant role in the development of the characters,
specifically Jose Arcadio Buendia. Resulting from this vast culture is the
profound psychological makeup interwoven with Jose Arcadio Buendia, which
Freudian interpretation proves to be a useful tool in evaluating. With the
conscious and subconscious decisions that Jose Arcadio Buendia makes, the
distortion of reality becomes an issue. Because of the determination, or better
called an illusional interest, he utilizes all his time to his current
curiosity, thus causing him to forget his duties as a leader and a father.
Through these conflictions or oppositions, Marquez consequently led to the
growth of a complex, in-depth psychological makeup of his characters, based on
the elements of Latin American cultural values of family, honor, and dedication.
However, by understanding the Latin American culture, a psychological
interpretation can provide the reader with the reasons why Jose Arcadio Buendia
complies or diverges from tradition and the characteristics that leads him to
his downfall.
The Term Paper on Jose Arcadio Buendia Buendias World
One Hundred Years of Solitude Historical roots of Macondo and the Buendia family. One Hundred Years of Solitude is about on imagined mythical town which is named as Macondo. Its foundation, rise, development and death throughout the history of its founders; Buendia family is narrated. It is the evolution and eventual decadence of a small Latin American town and its inhabitants. The novel is ...
Jose Arcadio Buendia’s psychological construction can be seen from the
beginning of the book. Marquez implements his successes and failures to portray
to the reader the inner psychological build-up of Jose Arcadio Buendia. This
inner psyche effects every decision of Jose Arcadio Buendia throughout the book
and are all related to the Latin American society in which Marquez lived in.
Throughout Latin American history, we can see the dominating male role in social
life, from common day-to-day decisions to marital life. For example, we see
Latin American males commonly have mistresses without consequences from the
government or the wife, thus demonstrating male power. This male leadership can
be observed in the beginning of One Hundred Years of Solitude when Jose Arcadio
Buendia was fascinated by the inventions of the gypsies. Without asking, Jose
Arcadio Buendia took the money from Ursula to purchase the magnifying glass that
he wanted. “That money was from a chest of gold coins that her (Ursula) father
had put together over an entire life of privation and that she had buried
underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it.” (Pg. 3)
Later in the book, Ursula was afraid of having deformed children therefore
causing her to wear a rudimentary chastity belt. Jose Arcadio Buendia, after the
killing of Prudencio for taunting him about not having sex with Ursula, returns
home and “pointing the spear at her he ordered: Take them off. Ursula had no
doubt about her husband’s decision… If you bear iguanas, we’ll raise iguanas.”
(Pg. 22) As the Marquez continues, we can see major flaws appear in Jose Arcadio
Buendia’s progression of thought. Marquez first amazes the reader with Jose
Arcadio Buendia’s dedication to advancing Macondo’s technology and social life,
but the constant failures and shifting of interests presents to the reader the
opportunity to question Jose Arcadio Buendia’s capabilities. The sanity of Jose
Arcadio Buendia is even questioned by Ursula, “If you have to go crazy, please
go crazy all by yourself!” (Pg. 5) Thus the foreshadowing of Jose Arcadio
The Term Paper on Jose Arcadio Ursula Buendia Aureliano
The innate tendency to commit incest is one of the main ongoing themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude. There seems to be no way of avoiding it from generation to generation of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran flee their native town and found the Utopian town of Macondo in hopes of escaping from their incestuous destiny and the karma of having murdered someone. Like the ...
Buendia’s downfall is established and proven when he loses all sanity and speaks
a “devilish” language. “Ten men were needed to get him down, fourteen to tie him
up, twenty to drag him to the chestnut tree in the courtyard, where they left
him tied up, barking in the strange language.” (Pg. 81) This suggests the reader
to believe that Jose Arcadio Buendia’s psychological makeup, although extremely,
maybe overly, dedicated, has numerous flowing ideas to improve society, but his
inability to sort out reality from magic hinders him from any success at all.
This is further supported when Jose Arcadio Buendia, although possessing a
compass, sextant, and map and fully knowledgeable on their functions, gets lost
in nature. Marquez is revealing Jose Arcadio Buendia’s psyche as having an
imagination too far ahead of his current business and unable to concentrate his
talents to form a purposeful outcome.
This scattering of concentration results in an effect and distortion of reality
in a manner that the reader can interpret this distortion as Marquez’s magical
realism or just a figment of the character’s imaginations. “The pot was firmly
placed in the center of the table, but just as soon as the child made his
announcement, it began an unmistakable movement toward the edge, as if impelled
by some inner dynamism, and it fell and broke on the floor.” (pg. 15) This, to
the reader, obviously is a representation of one of the magical realism evident
throughout the whole book. Nevertheless, Ursula’s perception of the incident
caused her fright however, Jose Arcadio Buendia merely deduced it as a natural
phenomenon. “Ursula, alarmed, told her husband about the episode, but he
interpreted it as a natural phenomenon.” (Pg.15) We can see here how the
different perspective of each character in One Hundred Years of Solitude can
affect the interpretation of an event. “That was the way he always was, alien to
the existence of his sons, partly because he considered childhood as a period of
mental insufficiency, and partly because he was always too absorbed in his
The Essay on Difficult for the reader to feel much affection for the protagonist
It is difficult for the reader to feel much affection for the protagonist in Wolff’s memoir. Do you agree? This Boy’s Life, set in America in the 1950’s, is a compelling memoir by Tobias Wolff, whom recreates the frustrations and cruelties faced throughout his adolescence, as he fights for identity and self-respect. During this period of time, America underwent major changes in the political ...
fantastic speculations.” (Pg. 15-16) This further provides us evidence on how
the psychological makeup of Jose Arcadio Buendia of over dedication allows him
to overlook concerns for his own family and duties. As Marquez progresses to
exploit Jose Arcadio Buendia’s weakness of divided attention and the
disappointment of failure throughout all his ventures, the reader can witness
more and more his distortion of reality, until finally his complete downfall to
insanity. “but suddenly I realized that it’s still Monday, like yesterday. Look
at the sky, look at the walls, look at the begonias. Today is Monday too.” (Pg.
80) “Then he grabbed the bar from a door and with the savage violence of his
uncommon strength he smashed to dust the equipment in the alchemy laboratory,
the daguerreotype room, the silver workshop, shouting like a man possessed in
some high-sounding and fluent but completely incomprehensible language.” (Pg.
81) Although this decline from a dedicated genius to a “crazy man” might
unmistakably seem like only a tragedy, however, we can consider these ventures,
that Jose Arcadio Buendia pursues, a process of self-discovery. We can consider
Jose Arcadio Buendia’s engagement in alchemy, military weapons, and astronomy as
trying to discover his true self; an active portray of a confused psychological
mind attempting to discover its identity, but ultimately failing because of the
instability and the divergence of his concentrations.
We can also apply the Freudian theory to analyze the actions of Jose Arcadio
Buendia. An apparent example occurs during the confrontation between Jose
Arcadio Buendia and Prudencio. Jose Arcadio Buendia’s id, suffering from the
lack of sex, is urging for the immediate satisfaction, but because of Ursula’s
fear of abnormal child production, this urge was suppressed. This suppression
finally explodes when Prudencio taunts Jose Arcadio Buendia, causing him to kill
Prudencio. “And then to Prudencio Aguilar : You go home and get a weapon,
The Essay on Literary Techniques Of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's literary techniques differ between books of fiction and non-fiction: His works of fiction incorporate "magical realism" while his works of non-fiction are much more objective and seem to incorporate the skills used by journalists. The books I will be analyzing are: "News of a Kidnapping" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude."News of a Kidnapping" is a book of non-fiction by ...
because I’m going to kill you…There was no time to defend himself. Jose Arcadio
Buendia’s spear, thrown with the strength of a bull… pierced his throat.” (Pg.
22) Jose Arcadio Buendia returns home demanding the sex he has been deprived of,
thus satisfying his libido. The unwanted consequences were repressed, not
surfacing until the superego initiates. This guilt from the superego ultimately
causes Jose Arcadio Buendia and all of his people to move to Macondo. “It’s all
right, Prudencio, we’re going to leave this town, just as far away as we can go,
and we’ll never come back. Go in peace now.” (Pg. 23) “Jose Arcadio Buendia
buried the spear in the courtyard and, one after the other, he cut the throats
of his magnificent fighting cocks, trusting that in that way he could give some
measure of peace to Prudencio Aguilar.” (Pg. 23) Another representation of
libido is embedded in Jose Arcadio. Jose Arcadio’s sex drive is strong
throughout the novel from the beginning with Pilar, “I want to be alone with
you. One of these days I’m going to tell everybody and we can stop all of this
sneaking around.” (Pg. 29-30) to when he returns with Rebeca, “She managed to
thank God for having been born before she lost herself in the inconceivable
pleasure of that unbearable pain, splashing in the steaming marsh of the hammock
which absorbed the explosion of blood like a blotter.” (Pg. 95) As we can see,
One Hundred Years of Solitude can be interpreted numerous ways, which provides
us different perspectives on the book.
Through analyzing the psychological development of Jose Arcadio Buendia, the
reader can have insights on the complex motives, which Marquez provides. These
motives can help the reader understand Marquez’s magical realisms or even the
Hispanic background. Also, these actions serve as a process for Jose Arcadio
Buendia’s recognition of his true identity. In combination, Marquez not only is
developing an intricate character, but also creating opportunities for him to
The Essay on Gabriel Garcia Marquez 2
... of his most famous novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” Jose Arcadio Buendia married to Ursula Iguaran was an adventurous man that took ... book he uses his own impression when Aureliano Buendia says “It’s Burning” (Garcia Marquez). Another one of those memories is the one ... that the Belgian had used to committed suicide” (Gabriel Garcia Marquez). This story is represented also in two of his novels ...
interweave his own opinions, such as religion, science, or war. Whether one
chooses a Freudian analysis or not, each unique perspective plays an important
role in the comprehension of the novel.
