Day One Hundred and Twenty-Three

8/3

The Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

ISBN: 978-0-06-088328-7

Suggested By: Mecca Willman

Where: Home

When: 1-2P

Music: None

Company: Alone

Pages: 172-227 (55)

The Lead In: Working overnight at work, so waiting to read is not an option. As far as the book goes, its complicated keeping track of the story at times, because of the constant reusing of name from generation to generation. Not complaining, just sayin...

The 411 on the 55: Aureliano is the leader of the revolution and when all is lost, he goes to a doctor to listen to his heart. He marks a spot on his chest where his heart is located. He proceeds to surrender, ending the war. In his tent, he shoots himself through the spot. However, his doctor has actually marked a spot where he would not die. He survives, much to his irritation.

Line of the Day: “For the love of God,” she said in a low voice, “it’s not right for them to come to me with that memory now.” pg 218

Fact on the Fiction: At least one person considers One Hundred Years of Solitude an epic. “It seems clear to me that, in any conventional sense of the literary term, we are dealing here with an epic work: a long narrative fiction with a huge scope which holds up for our inspection a particular cultural moment in the history of a people. The novel is the history of the founding, development, and death of a human settlement, Macondo, and of the most important family in that town, the Buendias. In following the historical narrative of these two elements we are confronted, as we are in any great epic, with a picture of how at a particular moment in human civilization a unique group of people has organized its life (just as we are confronted with the same issue, for example, in the other great epic we have studied, The Odyssey).” Ian Johnson