History Literature / OneHundredYearsOfSolitude

* ApronMatron: Ursula.

* AuthorAvatar: A character only mentioned in passing and [[spoiler: one of the few surviving characters]], simply named Gabriel García Márquez.

* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler: Subverted.]]
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler: Melquíades. Twice.]]

* BananaRepublic - For a while, Macondo is this.

* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler: José Arcadio saves Colonel Aureliano Buendía from the firing squad.]]

* BigFancyHouse: The Buendía household gets remodeled and renovated quite a few times as the family becomes more successful. [[spoiler: It doesn't last.]]

* [[spoiler: BrickJoke: The last of the 17 sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendi­a being killed.]]

* BrotherSisterIncest and ParentalIncest: Or incest in general. One of the biggest driving plot forces is to ''keep'' these from happening. [[spoiler:Rebeca and José Arcadio marry, but Rebeca is adopted and a child of distant relatives]]. [[spoiler:Incest happens anyway, in the end, between an aunt and nephew with the same blood. They actually don't know it until the very end, when she's dead and he's the last one standing.]]
** There's also Aureliano José, who lusts for years after his aunt Amaranta [[ParentalSubstitute who raised him instead of his father.]] She reciprocates a little until Ursula almost catchrs them kissing, then goes OhCrap and refuses to keep up with him.
** Arcadio tries to seduce is own mother, Pilar Ternero (though he's unaware of his true parentage), but she bribes another girl to sleep with him in her stead.

* BuriedAlive - A man condemned to death by fire squad survives and it's implied that he'll be alive when they bury him. This traumatizes José Arcadio the second.
* BuriedTreasure - The gold inside the Don José statue is buried by Úrsula somewhere around the Buendía house.

* CityOfAdventure: Macondo, your quiet smallish town somewhere in LatinLand... AKA Colombian Caribbean

* ControlFreak: Fernanda, especially as Úrsula [[spoiler: loses her eyesight.]] This ends up with [[spoiler: Mauricio Babilonia getting shot and paralyzed, and Meme [[TheVoiceless going silent]] and being shunted off to a convent for the rest of her life.]]
* ConspicuousConsumption: After becoming successful, Aureliano Segundo parties ''hard.''
* CreepyChild: Colonel Aureliano Buendía was one. He cried in his mom's womb, was born with his eyes open, predicted things as a kid and as a youngster…
** One of the 17 Aurelianos also was like this. He creeped the shit out of Ursula and Amaranta when he came to meet them, walked around the house as if he had been born there, and asked them for a toy that he had never ever sen and somehow he knew that they had it.
* DeadGuyJunior: Over and over and over…
* DeathOfAThousandCuts - The [[spoiler:last Buendía dies of this from an army of ants.]]
* DeathByChildbirth: In a variation, little Remedios dies after a terrible miscarriage. [[spoiler: Played straight with Amaranta Úrsula.]]

* [[spoiler:DownerEnding: Amaranta Ursula succumbs to DeathByChildbirth. Hers and Aureliano Babilonia's child dies too and his corpse is eaten by ants. Aureliano, who has crossed the DespairEventHorizon already, sees his kid dead and then realizes it's the last clue to decipher Melquiades's scripts. As he's reading them and uncovering all the secrets of Macondo and the Buendias (his true bond with Amaranta Ursula included), Macondo is destroyed by a tornado and everyone dies.]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: Prudencio Aguilar insults José Arcadio Buendía over his lack of a sex life with Ursula. José Arcadio Buendía [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice kills him with a spear]] ten minutes later.

* EasyAmnesia: The entire town, briefly, and more permanently Rebeca, as a symptom of a plague.

* GeneralFailure: Colonel Aureliano Buendía, although not technically a general. Starts a lot of wars, and loses all of them.

* GratuitousForeignLanguage - Latin during a conversation with the priest, and the bookshop owner sometimes says phrases in Catalan.
* HappilyAdopted: Aureliano Babilonia ''thinks'' he's this. This is what leads him to [[spoiler: have relations with Amaranta Úrsula, setting off the events that culminate in [[RocksFallEveryoneDies the end of Macondo and the Buendía family.]]]]
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: [[spoiler: Subverted by Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Through the war's course he becomes increasingly cold and cruel, and one of his subordinates and personal friend even lampshades it, but he ends up becoming an apathetic {{Hikikomori}} making gold fish.]]

* {{Hikikomori}}: Various characters shut themselves in rooms, usually the workshop or Melquiades' room. Sometimes it's only temporarily. The most "famous" are Jose Arcadio Segundo and [[spoiler: the Colonel]]

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler: The last Buendía seems to have all the good qualities of both José Arcadios and Aurelianos, and is thus expected to achieve balance of the SiblingYinYang and overcome the tragedy that seems to chase the family, he's eaten by ants the next day as his father, the house and the whole town are destroyed]]

* ImpromptuTracheotomy: Jose Arcadio Buendia kickstarts the plot via giving one of these to his rival in Riohacha. Since the guy's ghost starts hangsing around their home few afterwards, he and Ursula and a group of people from the town decide to leave so he can rest in peace.
* InTheBlood: Several traits are repeated through the generations, some could be considered to be in de ''name'', such as the reflexivenesss and stoicism of the Aurelianos and the mad enterprising nature of the José Arcadios (switched with the twins) but others transcend this limitations and are extensive to the women, such as being prone to obsession and incest, as well as sabotagging their own work so as to have more work to do later, and of course the whole family is doomed to have lonely lives with tragic endings.
* IncestIsRelative: After marrying her own cousin, Úrsula spends most of her life desperately trying to prevent this from destroying the family, but it happens anyway. Amaranta provokes this in a few of her nephews and great-nephews, but never follows through with it.
** Subverted by José Arcadio, who marries his adopted sister Rebeca shortly after meeting her for the first time. [[spoiler: Aureliano Babilonia]] [[WrongGenreSavvy thinks he's safe from this]] because he ''thinks'' he was adopted.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Mauricio Babilonia is a fan of BrutalHonesty, but can be somewhat sweeter when with Meme. It's mentioned that Meme starts falling more genuinely for him ones she deduces that his brusqueness towards her is, to a degree, [[PetTheDog his way to show tenderness.]]
* KarmaHoudini: Amaranta. She first plans to kill Rebeca just to prevent her from marrying the man they both love, Pietro Crespi. She then drives the same suitor to [[DrivenToSuicide slit his wrists]] and another wastes his entire life with her cat-and-mouse EmotionlessGirl act. Oh, and then there's the fact she molests both her nephew ''and'' grand-nephew when they are children, leading both of them to have terrible emotional problems and obsess over her their entire lives. Her only punishment? [[spoiler: Knowing she will die when she finishes weaving her own shroud.]]
* KissingCousins: José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula, doubling as ChildhoodFriendRomance. Happened also to some other members of family, with [[spoiler: pig-tailed child as final result.]]
** BookEnds: [[spoiler:A relative of José Arcadio and Úrsula had been born with a pig's tail as a result of incest, which had led Úrsula to refuse to consummate her marriage in the first place.]]

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The book comes with an invaluable family tree. Everyone born into our marrying into the family has ADayInTheLimelight. Some characters get more love than others, but I can't think of a single character than can be considered the protagonist of the story.
** This troper was certain for the first half of the book that it was the Colonel's story, but having read the whole thing if one character can be pointed to and called the protagonist it would have to be Úrsula who is the direct or indirect cause for almost everything that happens in the course of the story and who's yearnings best encapsulate the overarching desires and drives of the Buendía clan. [[spoiler: For this troper the story after Úrsula's death felt like it had had its life sucked from it and it was simply tidying up to close shop.]]
*** FridgeBrilliance: of course you did. Úrsula was the ''real'' leader of the clan, after she died the Buendias quickly fell into decadence and the last survivors were just ghosts of their former glory.

* LonersAreFreaks - Most characters are loners in their own way, and freaky in their own way. The ones that are more obviously loners, such as the {{Hikikomoris}}, are also more obviously freaky (José Arcadio Buendía, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, etc.)

* MayDecemberRomance: Amaranta Ursula and her first husband, Gaston.

* MarkedToDie: [[spoiler: All of the sons Colonel Aureliano Buendía has during the war are eventually given cross-shaped ash marks on their foreheads. It makes them easy assassination targets.]]
* MiniatureSeniorCitizens: The matriarch of the family, Úrsula Iguarán, lives until she is 120 years old… and by that time has shrunk to the size of a fetus. So much that her descendants Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula use her as their doll.

* NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization: Near the end, Aureliano Babilonia is unable to cope with his attraction to Amaranta Ursula, who is his aunt and who he believes to be his sister, and rapes her while her husband is in the other room. She tries to fight him off at first, but ends up enjoying it so much that her feelings of love are transferred from her husband over to him.
* OldRetainer: Several, but the most notable is Santa Sofía de la Piedad, who, albeit is the mother of Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo, is treated as another servant, and she seems to like it in that way.
* OneSteveLimit: Massively averted. Male names are passed down through family lines in every conceivable combination. [[spoiler: It's part of a larger theme of history's cyclical nature.]]
** Notably, during the war Colonel Aureliano Buendía sires 17 sons… who are all named Aureliano. People resort to calling them by both their names and maternal surnames, i.e: Aureliano Triste, Aureliano Amador, etc.
*** And said dad also had a child before, with Pilar Ternera. His name? Aureliano José.
** If you don't have a superhuman short-term memory, you ''will'' need the family tree provided kindly by the publishers at the start of the book.

* ProperLady: Little Remedios, and Santa Sofía de la Piedad later. Subverted with Úrsula, who is very devoted to her family, but also extremely stubborn and more than capable of standing up to her husband and children.

* RapeIsLove: [[spoiler:When Aureliano Babilonia rapes Amaranta Úrsula]]. This is also how Pilar Ternera lost her virginity, and which made her join the caravan that founded Macondo in the first place.

* [[spoiler:RocksFallEveryoneDies]] - In one fell swoop, [[spoiler: Macondo is eventually destroyed.]]
* UsefulNotes/{{Romani}}: Several. Melquíades eventually becomes a permanent fixture in the house after he comes BackFromTheDead. [[spoiler: Then he dies ''again'', then comes back again, then just [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse sort of vanishes…]]]]
** It's all but stated that [[spoiler: Mauricio Babilonia]] has Roma blood in his veins.

* ShellShockedVeteran - Colonel Aureliano Buendía.

* StarCrossedLovers - Meme and Mauricio Babilonia.

* StrawmanHasAPoint - In-universe example: when conservative Apolinar Moscote explains politics to Aureliano, he makes strawmen out of liberals' positions on many topics. The only topic he's not apathetic about, legal acceptance of illegitimate children, is something in which he agrees with the liberals'. What makes him become a liberal, however, is watching the conservative commit electoral fraud right afterwards.
* TheStoic - Colonel Aureliano Buendía becomes this some time during the war. Ursula comes to believe that he was actually like this from the very beginning.
* TangledFamilyTree - And ''how''.
* TarotMotifs - Mentioned occasionally during Pilar Tenera's fortune tellings.
* ThemeNaming - Lampshaded thoroughly and the characters themselves are aware of this. The José Arcadios are outgoing, stout and subject to a cruel, final fate. Aurelianos are more laid back and inquisitive.

* TitleDrop - During the ending.
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: [[spoiler: Little Remedios and Remedios the Beauty.]]

* [[spoiler:TrippyFinaleSyndrome.]]

* TheVoiceless: Meme becomes this after [[spoiler: losing Mauricio Babilonia.]]

** Also, Mauricio Babilonia. Fernanda was surprised when he saw him for the first and only time and looked into his deep BrownEyes... and then she kicked him out of the Buendia house.
* WifeHusbandry: Little Remedios and Aureliano, who's old enough to be her father. Well, she ''was'' [[WiseBeyondTheirYears smarter and more mature than the average girl]], but still, he proposes marriage when she's just ''nine''…

* WrongGenreSavvy: Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula were both raised to believe that Aureliano Babilonia was adopted, therefore thinking that [[spoiler:being each other's {{Victorious Childhood Friend}}s, screwing each other and having a child]] will have no harmful consequences. They're proven wrong, with tragic consequences.

* SpoiledSweet: Meme by Aureliano Segundo, who lets her fish money right out of his pocket.

->-- '''The opening line'''

->''"What did you expect?" Úrsula sighed. "Time passes."''
->''"That's how it goes," Aureliano admitted, "but not so much."''

''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' is a 1967 novel, that gave GabrielGarciaMarquez the Nobel Prize. Staple of Spanish-speaking High School curricula everywhere, mostly for being [[MindScrew awesomely deep and so goddamn hard to understand]]. Arguably one of the most important pieces of literature written in the 20th century, or to put in context, almost as important as ''Literature/DonQuixote'' to Spanish speaking literature. Famous among other things for using every conceivable trope one could ever hope to fit in 28.8 oz of paper.

!!This book provides examples of:

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The book spans exactly one hundred years, with one of the main themes being solitude.

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler: The last Buendía seems to have all the good qualities of both José Arcadios and Aurelianos, and is thus expected to achieve balance of the SiblingYingYang and overcome the tragedy that seems to chase the family, he's eaten by ants the next day as his father, the house and the whole town are destroyed]]

* BestialityIsDepraved: The Golden Child has a dog who does this to be fed.

NeedsMoreLove.

The book follows the story of the Buendía family and the town they create, Macondo, from its foundation to its end. Of course, it is told in a [[AnachronicOrder non-linear fashion]] with [[GenerationXerox every generation having the same few names]], as well as the same basic attributes (except for a pair of twins whose names are thought to have been accidentally switched at some point, which is why it's so confusing). Alongside the story of the Buendia family, there are an abundance of vignettes recounting both the everyday and the supernatural occurrences that shape the lives of the inhabitants of Macondo. The themes range widely, incorporating legendary figures (such as the WanderingJew), historical events ([[{{Pirate}} Sir.Francis Drake bombing of Rioacha]], the Massacre of the Banana growers), and short stories about the love of two minor characters who never get to [[TwoLinesNoWaiting interfere with the main action]]. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Believe it or not]] the story takes place in a time span of a hundred years.

The book follows the story of the Buendía family and the town they create, Macondo, a metaphor for Latin America as a whole, from its foundation to its end. Of course, it is told in a [[AnachronicOrder non-linear fashion]] with [[GenerationXerox every generation having the same few names]], as well as the same basic attributes (except for a pair of twins whose names are thought to have been accidentally switched at some point, which is why it's so confusing). Alongside the story of the Buendia family, there are an abundance of vignettes recounting both the everyday and the supernatural occurrences that shape the lives of the inhabitants of Macondo. The themes range widely, incorporating legendary figures (such as the WanderingJew), historical events ([[{{Pirate}} Sir.Francis Drake bombing of Rioacha]], the Massacre of the Banana growers), and short stories about the love of two minor characters who never get to [[TwoLinesNoWaiting interfere with the main action]]. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Believe it or not]] the story takes place in a time span of a hundred years.

* It'sLonelyAtTheTop: Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Granted, he isn't exactly social ''before'' he achieves his high rank.

* {{Roma}}: Several. Melquíades eventually becomes a permanent fixture in the house after he comes BackFromTheDead. [[spoiler: Then he dies ''again'', then comes back again, then just [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse sort of vanishes…]]]]

* WalkingTheEarth: José Arcadio, although he returns after going around the world sixty-five times. Melquíades and his band of {{Roma}} also do this (they've been just about everywhere, too).

* AuthorAvatar: A character only mentioned in passing and [[spoiler: one of the few surviving characters]], simply named Gabriel García Márquez.
* AnyoneCanDie: [[spoiler: And in fact, almost everyone does.]]

* CityOfAdventure: Macondo, your quiet smallish town somewhere in LatinLand.
** AKA Colombian Caribbean

* KissingCousins: José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula. Happened also to some other members of family, with [[spoiler: pig-tailed child as final result.]]

*** FridgeBrilliance: of course you did. Úrsula was the leader of the clan, after she died the Buendias quickly fell into decadence and the last survivors were just ghosts of their former glory.

** It's implied that [[spoiler: Mauricio Babilonia]] has Roma blood in his veins.

* TitleDrop: [[spoiler:Happens in the last sentence of the book.]]

"My boy, she exclaimed, "may God preserve you just as you are."

* OneSteveLimit: Massively averted. Male names are passed down through family lines in every conceivable combination. [[spoiler: It's part of a larger theme of history's cyclical nature.]]