Represent of Identity in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

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This novel is one of the most popular in Hispano-American literature as Latin American I am very familiar with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It stood out in the narrative current of the magic realism, a gender that characterizes between other things, for portraying the history of the marginalized in the society, and in Latin America, the native population. The postcolonialism is a theory on the decolonization and his consequences in the societies of the colonized and the colonists, his cultures and identities.
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Gabriel García Márquez is one of the most important and influential people in universal literature, it is interesting to investigate his characteristic postcolonial work. Between several critics, the novel is considered as a ‘classical,’ so much by his realistic character and historical connection, his capacity of summarizing numerous appearances of the human life like the love, the tradition, the politics, and diverse types of conflicts, as his aesthetic appearances.
The historical context, their way, social and much of the work as for reader affects the interpretation, this document concentrates on expanding these perspectives.

Tone the re-presentation of the identity postcolonial in One hundred years of solitude of Gabriel García Márquez. As in the book re-presents identities of ethnicity, sex, social class, nationality, etc., this document will aim to investigate these identities in the constructions of some of the characters and the objects of the novel. Which identities can be identify? how are they represented? Since there are many actors, I concentrate on two of the main, Ursula Iguarán and Colonel Aureliano Buendía (from now the Colonel), are selected because they represent different generations and sexes.
The history takes place in Macondo, a fictitious village, located in a swamp, and narrates the life of the family Buendía for one hundred years, and seven generations.
The loves, tragedies, incest, rebelliousness, and conflicts of the family represent the Colombian history, Latin American and universal, and using the characters represent native and European identities, feminine and masculine, upper and subalterns. The historical context of the novel is essential to consider since, in the years when it published, it produced a change in ‘the form to conceive, interpret and write the history and the literature.’ Some prominent political events were the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Chilean coup d’état in 1973, the death of the General Perón in Argentina, the violent fights of the urban guerrillas, and the violence in Colombia. These are some of the central events that build political speeches and that influence the narrative currents. The question of identity is a significant appearance in Latin American culture. The problem of identity is finally a catchword to be re-known to obtain a voice and space.
A Latin American author writes one hundred years of solitude, in the concrete historical moment already mentioned. It is interesting to analyze if this novel can find a no western perspective; that is to say, how presents history from the Latin American perspective. The fact that it was Latin American does not involve a postcolonial thought automatically, but the study can serve to expand the point of view in the reading or the interpretation of the novel Ursula Iguarán Is the mother and the head of the family Buendía. His authoritarian character contrasts with her husband, José Arcadio Buendía, an adventurous man with a big passion for science.
In contrast, Ursula is skeptical and critical of the gypsy inventions that the husband brings to the house (10-15). By his firm and determined character, Ursula has an upper paper to her husband. In his decisions of authority, she possesses power in the family, which shows in his determination not to go to the village. Despite the will and the arguments of his husband, as it sees in the following appointment: ‘Ursula retorted, with a soft firmness: -If necessary that die I so that they remain here, I die me’ (p, 24). Included it achieves to finalize successfully you contrive that the husband never could, the most characteristic example being that it finds the route that carries just across the swamp (p, 51). Besides, to the consequence of his relentless character, she attains to handle to the village: ‘Dare, murderous,’ shouted. ‘And kill me also to me, are of a bad mother. Like this, I will not have eyes to cry of shame to having bred a phenomenon.’ Whipping him Without mercy, pursued it until the bottom of the playground, where Arcadio rolled up like a snail. The boys of squad dispersed, fearful that Ursula finished venting with them (p, 131-132).
Although Arcadio is his grandson, she keeps his hard and willful character in the example up. Ursula is a hard-working woman that encourages a lot so all the family can be well but also regrets and complains to be the only reasonable person. She says what ‘a crazy family,’ and concerns that all the children and grandchildren will inherit the crazy character of José Arcadio Buendía (55), the misfortune of the family. However, the role of Ursula also reproduces the image of the woman like the guardian of the family, the punctilious and the reflexive, that, in consequence, creates a contradiction concerning her identity of superiority. Despite losing the sight ( 295-299) and succumbing to dementia senile (406-408) does not abandon his paper of guardian and the fact of not explaining to any that is blind sample is to lose authority in the family.
The prominent example of persistence is that never it leaves persuade to explain to anybody where the gold is buried, expecting that a day appeared the owner to ask after this (408). Besides it is conservative, refuses the changes and feels nostalgia by the past, exemplified in the following appointment: ”The years of now no longer come as the ones of before,’ was used to say, feeling that the daily reality escaped him of the hands’ ( 295). This conservative character can also interpret previous when she expresses reluctance to go to Macondo, which gives a signal of discontent by the changes in there. Despite this, in a moment her son José Arcadio escapes with the gypsies, and she tries to look after him following in their footsteps, but in place to find to his son and bring it home finds with other people in the other side of the swamp and carries it to Macondo. These people bring food, furniture, and utensil domestics, which means an advance in the development (ibid., 48-51).
Therefore, refuse the gypsies’ inventions, her husband’s but is positive to novelties, which is contradictory. In one hundred years of solitude, the women in general and Ursula, in particular, obtain an opposite paper about the colonial feminine object like feeble and passive. Concerning her husband, Ursula is described by the narrative voice like severe, moderate, and unbreakable nerves, and his actions along the novel confirm this description (18). Although the characteristics of the inferiority and passivity are the stereotypes of the woman in general and especially the woman colonized, nevertheless the character of Ursula can recognize abnormalities Ursula has been assigned different characteristics to the traditional feminine identity being dominant and reliable, and this can question the concordance of the stereotype. Her various shots express a broader personality of the stereotypical. This contradiction challenges homogeneous identity. The feminine as much as the subaltern in general, as feeble and without a voice.
About the husband José Arcadio Buendía, Ursula has a superior role. José Arcadio has a strong character and a significant interest in science and alchemy (9-29) but, in the end, loses his mind. The family ties him into a tree (100-101). This irrational character of José Arcadio Buendía, in comparison with his severe wife, it contains a little of infantility. It is missing the sense of responsibility by his family and does not concern about how to keep it. Instead of this, expend a significant part of his time figuring out inventions of the gypsies, for example, the ice and the magnet, exploring the world, and continuously follows his curiosity in place to think of rational and responsible form.
The economic field is represented by a ‘banana company’ that comes to explode to the people and the earth, ( 273-275) and the train, accelerate whose entrances the economic activity in Macondo. (267-269). The politician represents the gentleman Brown and the civil servants that come out and take power in the city (287-295), but also by Arcadio, which turns into dictator of Macondo (130-132). The civil field of the sexual relations and especially, incest, and the epistemic area first by the control of the memories of the inhabitants of Macondo in the massacre (367-370). The idea of how the colonizing power established his hegemony based on his concept of history, agrees that the colonists delegitimate the childhood memories of the people, according to the colonizer’s opinion, it lacked history. Therefore, it needed help to develop. But despite his traditionally masculine characteristics, Ursula is also superstitious and believes in ghosts.
The most evident is the fear of having a baby with a pigtail, she doubts in marrying José Arcadio Buendía since they are family, Ursula then explained to him that if the relatives have children, they are born with a pigtail. In the end, she was right about being superstitious, but the time she denies consummate the marriage by fear and anxiety that the words of his aunt be fulfilled (30-32). Nevertheless, to the end of the novel, Ursula had all the reason to be concerned. She perhaps was not so superstitious, because when Aureliano and his aunt Amaranta Ursula have a son, it is born with pigtail (489-490). The writer mentions taboo subjects like homosexuality and incest. It is a question to challenge the reality implicitly to an individual level and oppose the re-presentations that consider unacceptable, causing a vacillation before the existence of the opposition between the real and the unreal (80).
In conclusion, Ursula’s character represents fragmented identities that simultaneously confirm and reject the stereotype of the feminine like feeble and inferior to the masculine. These contradictions in the personality are shots postcolonial that question to the homogenization of the subaltern object. In the novel, these identities are especially the Latin American and the feminine, but also the subalterns in general. Instead, the fact to ‘represent’ the postcolonial identity means that the novel speaks in favor of these identities. An example of this mute subaltern in the story is the massacre of the military government of Macondo when more than three thousand people die, but the only one that remembers it is Aureliano Second. All the others deny this information (362-374). It’s saying that the truth of the massacre has never listened because it does not agree with the history established. It is necessary to be part of the established power to be able to write the history, and the population of Macondo is marginalized in this case.
If the postcolonialism is only ‘represented’, can say that the novel is postcolonial? It can conclude that the characters analyzed contain postcolonial features, although not only and these features when they appear, do not do it at first sight. The novel represents several stereotypes of the feminine, masculine, infancy, and sexual, which contradicts the idea of postcolonialism. For example, the story reinforces the image of the woman like the guardian and the natives like barbarians. Nevertheless, it can be a way to treat these subjects that issues a different perspective, in defense of the marginalized. The fact of reverting images question orders, much as the patriarchal and the racial, and putting the myth in a privileged position.
The writer expresses a new history or at least the will of this. This work aimed to analyze the re-presentation of the identity postcolonial in One hundred years of solitude, through investigating constructions of some of the characters and the objects of the novel. Several theories of postcolonialism have served for the analysis, which concludes that the structure of the characters and objects is represent by postcolonial identities. Nevertheless, it can follow arguing if the postcolonial identity is ‘represented’ given the author’s position. Being Latin American but with a privileged position inside the literary world. Nobody can speak in favor of the subaltern; the novel can be a simple ‘re-presentation’ of the identity postcolonial.

Orville Campbell

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