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Introduction
There are three main themes in Siddhartha, which are love, friendship, and a quest for nirvana. Love is shown when Kamala and Siddhartha find that they cannot love one another, and when Siddhartha loves his son so much that it depresses him when he runs away. Friendships between Govinda and Vasudeva both help Siddhartha attain nirvana, his one, and the only goal, to gain complete and total peace. He is led astray by materialism during his lessons about love with Kamala but realizes he is in samsara after his symbolic dream.
Siddhartha realizes that he can learn no more and cannot attain nirvana through the Brahmin ways. Siddhartha now also realized why he had struggled in vain with this self when he was a Brahmin and an ascetic. Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites; too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving. He had been full of arrogance; he has always been the cleverest. The most eager– always a step ahead of the others, always the learned and intellectual one, always the priest of sage. The symbolic dream about “his soul dying” as the bird in Kamala’s cage died, brings him to the realization that he has gone completely into samsara and gone against all his morals, values, and beliefs.
Main body
In the same way, Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is a sad story of the loves, tragedies, and everyday lives of the Buendía family. Throughout the generations, there are many themes, character types, and events that are always present and repeating. It is their fate to be stuck in a never-ending cycle.
José Arcadio Buendía represents Adam in a biblical sense in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. He is the founder and leader of Macondo, and during his life, he never stops striving for knowledge. Sometime after founding Macondo, a mythical yet intensely real town, José Arcadio Buendía discovers the wonders of science. The Gypsies that frequent the town every few years first introduce José Arcadio Buendía to the idea of magic and new wonders of the world, and they even give him a lab to mess around in. José Arcadio Buendía eventually abandons the magical effects of the Gypsies for true scientific study.
One day in his lab he thinks he has discovered perpetual motion. Because perpetual motion is impossible to achieve, he goes crazy. He is convinced the same day is repeating itself over and over again. In a sense, his discovery made the world timeless for him. Time begins to change and the past, present, and future start to overlap. (Janes, 219-26) He is able to visit his descendants throughout the book even after he is dead. With this repetition, Márquez is hinting that the real world never moves forward or backward but is generally all the same. This sense that time is repeating sets up the rest of the family to just repeat the same story over and over.
Exploring the theme of love through Siddhartha, Herman Hesse describes knowledge in Siddhartha as something that can only be obtained through self-discoveries and experiences but with the involvement of love. Throughout Siddhartha’s learning experiences he denounces teachers and their ways of teaching. Hesse traces Siddhartha’s enlightenment through his own experiences and through the people he meets along his journey. Siddhartha’s quest for the Self is developed by three major events including his meeting with Buddha, his attempted suicide, and his arrival and departure of his son. These three events contributed to his self-discoveries and individuality.
Siddhartha’s meeting with Gautama, the Buddha, is the first major experience in his journey that affected his learning process. After several unmotivating years of living an ascetic life of a Samana, Siddhartha began his journey and sought out Gautama, known as “The Illustrious One.” Siddhartha hoped that Gautama could assist him in his journey to find his inner self. Gautama’s advice and teachings were a disappointment to Siddhartha.
He felt that the Buddha’s methods would only teach him spirituality in a logical way when he was searching for ways to realize his spirituality in a more natural, metaphysical way. This interaction between Gautama and Siddhartha demonstrates the theme that knowledge cannot be taught. Siddhartha feels he cannot learn by just hearing Guatama’s experiences. He believes he needs to experience these things himself to truly reach his inner self.
The next event that moves Siddhartha forward in his quest for self-discovery is his attempted suicide. Before he contemplates suicide, Siddhartha has become a completely different man. He indulges in many of the material pleasures that most people delve into. He becomes Kamala’s lover and desires money, which he gets through being a merchant and a gambler. Siddhartha begins to change and becomes self-centered, greedy, and loses much of his spiritual gains because of his exploration of the material world. Siddhartha realizes what the life he is living has become and is disgusted with himself.
He leaves the village as soon as he realizes what he has turned into, demonstrating his growth. At the time of his attempted suicide, Siddhartha has realized the ways of both the secular and spiritual lifestyles and had a choice of which path best suited him. (Boulby, 19-23)
The final experience that gave Siddhartha the most important knowledge was the discovery of his son, Young Siddhartha. Siddhartha was given the responsibility to raise Young Siddhartha, whom he had never known existed, after Kamala’s death. Young Siddhartha was very difficult to rise. Unlike Siddhartha, he was very rude and spoiled. Siddhartha wasn’t able to communicate with his son so he let him do whatever he wanted to do.
Young Siddhartha was very unappreciative and ran away, never to be seen again. After a period of deep suffering, Siddhartha realized that the pain he was feeling was caused by the heartfelt, yet unrequited, love he felt for his son. By experiencing this horrible pain, Siddhartha had learned how to love. By loving than letting go, Siddhartha gained more knowledge of the secular and spiritual world than he thought was possible.
Siddhartha’s growing maturity throughout the book can be traced to events that led to his knowledge of individuality. His meeting with the Buddha allowed him to realize that he must make his own discoveries and experiences. His attempted suicide and experience in the village allowed Siddhartha to see a side of himself he had never seen before. And last, the time with his son gave him the chance to extend himself in love. (Brown, 191-202) His maturation was developed by the effects of both the good and bad consequences of the choices he made.
If we compare the theme of love through other characters, it transpires that Colonel Aureliano Buendía is the military figurehead of the Buendía family. He inherited his will and reclusiveness from his father José Arcadio Buendía. He leads the liberal attack on the conservatives and he is always pushing for liberal victory. He is the main art figure in the novel. During the war, he loses contact with the world. He has no emotions. Before the war, he was able to write beautiful poetry.
After his return he has it all burnt, showing how much he has lost touch with his emotional side. He follows his father’s footsteps and locks himself in his lab to sit and make little golden fish. The fish are a metaphor that symbolizes different elements in his life. He has 25 of the fish and he makes them, and then melts them down to be made again. He has no memory and he is just caught in the cycle of making the same fish over and over again. For him, there is nothing else but the very short repetitions of making the little fish. A short while before he dies, he realizes that he has dreamt the same dream every night for many years.
Just in the way José Arcadio Buendía is able to transcend time, Melquíades is timeless. He is a ghost that is present throughout the whole book. He is a guide to Aureliano at the end of the book. Aureliano spends his end days shut up in Melquíades’ library. Unknown to the Buendía’s the prophecies are the whole story of the family written one hundred years before it happens. At the end of the book, Aureliano finally translates the prophecies and we find out that Melquíades planned everything.
He wrote down the entire story of the family, all before it happened. (Barron, 166-72) The Buendía’s were predestined to live repetitive lives, and to die with the translation of the prophecies: “Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forevermore…” (p. 447) There is no escape for the Buendías, they are bound to a timeless web that they cannot escape.
The motherly figure of the family is Úrsula, who lives longer than any of her children. In her old age, she is still very much the caretaker of the house. In fact, she goes blind and nobody even knows it. She is also convinced that the same day is repeating over and over again. One day she notices that everybody in the house always does the same thing every day, true to her theory. They always go to the same rooms, and in this way, Úrsula is able to function using her memory, not her eyes.
Throughout the generations of the Buendía family, incest seems to carry through. Úrsula seems to be perpetually afraid of children with tails being born in the family. A few different times there is lust inside the family, and she warns against incest. In all the generations of the Buendía’s, there is a hint of incest. (Gullon, 27-32) Even though Úrsula is so against the idea, she herself marries her cousin José Arcadio Buendía. After Úrsula’s death, his fears are confirmed when Amaranta Úrsula and the second Aureliano give birth to a child with a tail. This follows true to the incestuous theme because they are brother and sister. The reason Úrsula was so afraid of incest in the first place was that one of her relatives had a child with a tail. Even though this happens before the story of the book, the cycle is being repeated.
Not only are individual characters caught in endless cycles, but so is the entire Buendía family. Various traits, strengths, and short-fallings haunt the Buendías throughout their generations. These traits go in cycles, and seem to stem from the names of the characters; children are named after their ancestors because of traits they share. In the end, they repeat the cycle and become true to their names. One of these traits is a reclusive scientific nature. José Arcadio Buendía was the originator of this trait, and he spends the later years of his life shut up in his lab. This same trait is inherited by Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who is obsessed with making little goldfish.
And it is passed on again to the second Aureliano who spends lots of his time translating the prophesies written by Melquíades. Another trait is unconventional sexuality. Many of the Buendía’s marry outside the family, but none of them are happy. However, the Buendía’s that have a scandalous element to their relationships are always happy. Such as Rebecca who has an unauthorized relationship with José Arcadio. She was supposed to marry Pietro Crespi, but she has a much better, although taboo, relationship with José Arcadio. Amaranta Úrsula, who is married to Gaston, is very unhappy. When she comes back to Macondo, however, she falls in love with her brother Aureliano the second. Together they are very happy until the end of their days. Sadly the Buendía’s are forced into doing the same things as their ancestors.
Many characters comment that things are easy to predict in the Buendía family because everything is the same: “Pilar Ternera let out a deep laugh…There was no mystery in the heart of a Buendía that was impenetrable for her because a century of cards and experience had taught her that the history of the family was a machine gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle.” (p. 423) This shows that the Buendía’s are truly locked in an inescapable cycle.
Conclusion
With all these cycles, Márquez is trying to explain something about our world today. He simplifies our world down to one family, the Buendía’s, and then expands the timelessness of our culture to demonstrate his view of the world. He shows us that if you break it down, society today doesn’t move forward or backward. Instead, everything is just a repeat of what has happened before. People aren’t developing, but just moving in circles. The Buendía can do nothing to break the cycle they are trapped in. Even the title of the book represents the cycle. The book is titled One Hundred Years of Solitude, yet it happens over much more time symbolizing that it is the same one hundred years just repeating itself.
Works Cited
Barron, Rei. Literature of the Americas. College Park: Maryland University College Press, 1990. 166-72.
Boulby, Mark. Hermann Hesse: His Mind and Art. Cornell University Press, 1967. 19-23.
Brown, Madison. “Toward a Perspective for the Indian Element in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha” In German Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 2, March, 1976, pp. 191-202.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
Gene H Bell-Villada, “Banana Strike and Military Massacre One Hundred Years of Solitude and What Happened in 1928,” in From Dante to Garcia Mdrquef Studies in Romance Literatures and Linguistics, edited by Gene H Bell-Villada, Antonio Gimenes, and George Pistorius, Williams College, 1987, pp 391-403.
Gullon, Ricardo. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Lost Art of Storytelling.” Diacritics. 1971: 27-32.
Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha, trans. by Hilda Rosner. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1951.
Janes, Regina. One Hundred Years of Solitude: Modes of Reading. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. 219-26.
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