Blog Post #8 - 100 Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez's book 100 Years of Solitude plays with the topics of memory, solitude, and nostalgia. I didn't realize it before, but nostalgia especially seems be the source of many of the characters' "hauntings." José Arcadio Buendía, as seen in the first reading of the book, is haunted by Prudencio Aguilar when he's tied up to the tree. Aguilar, who was murdered by José Arcadio Buendía before he left to create Macando, haunted him in his lawn and eventually became his only friend when he was bound to the tree. These hauntings, though, don't just follow José Arcadio Buendía. In fact, Aureliano José is haunted without even killing someone. His relationship with his aunt Amaranta, which started out as her just raising him, turned sexual. But when he left for war; 

"he found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would maker her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of danger of death, at all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of the war, the more the war resembled Amaranta" (148).

In Aureliano José's attempt to escape Amaranta it only haunted him more. Everything reminded him of her, and the nostalgia of their relationship when he was a child followed him like José Arcadio Buendía's homicide victim. Again though, it's not just these two men that are haunted. Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who is described to be;

"taller than when he left, paler and bonier, and he showed the first symptoms of resistance to nostalgia" (156).

His resistance to nostalgia only proves bad for the himself and the town. He orders the executions of many, without considering the relationship he or his family members had with them. In trying to escape nostalgia and create solitude, he became haunted by neighboring villages who sounded like they were cheering on his enemies (166).  

In all three of these cases, it's seen that in trying to escape the past, nostalgia haunts all the men instead. Theirs pasts don't let them forget and move on. In trying to move on they only repeat the same mistakes or just make their situations worse. This may even prove that remembering the past can create a better future.