One Hundred Years of Solitude

José Arcadio Buendía is the husband and cousin of Úrsula Iguarán. He is the father of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, José Arcadio, and Amaranta. He is one of the founders of Macondo and well into his life acts as an informal community leader; others seek his advice before making important decisions. When traveling merchants come to town with new inventions, he feels that he must try out or purchase all of them. He experiments with alchemy and tries to find a route from Macondo to Colombia's capital.

José Arcadio is the archetypal dreamer. In contrast to his wife’s practicality, he busies himself imagining a fantasy world of the future. Symbolically, he represents the other piece necessary to founding a civilization; if Úrsula is the practical one, he represents the ability to dream and have vision. Because he fully embodies this archetype, he lacks other qualities to balance out his extreme tendencies. In his later years, he becomes mentally ill and must be permanently restrained. José Arcadio is a somewhat tragic figure whose death establishes an ominous pattern for the men in the Buendía family.

Melquíades is a mysterious traveler and the novel’s archetypal seer. He often wears a large black hat and is described as having "an untamed beard and sparrow hands" (1). He arrives in one of the early groups of wanderers to Macondo, and he is very excited to show José Arcadio the world's latest inventions. As a seer, Melquíades connects the “real” world to the world of mystery. He can see and understand things that others cannot. He communicates with the gods and has the ability to resurrect through alchemy. His age is indeterminate; he has traveled the world, and, most importantly, his writings predict the Buendía family’s fate.

Melquíades's resurrection represents his connection to the world’s mysteries. He is not a Christ figure, as he does not represent sacrifice; rather, he brings arcane knowledge, the meaning of which can be understood only many years in the future. His predictions link him to the Buendía family’s fate. For many years after his death, his ghost appears in the Buendía house. Family members see him, especially in his former workshop, which is left untended after his death until other Buendía descendants renew an interest in his work generations later.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía is the son of Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía. He is the first person to be born in Macondo. The novel opens as he faces a firing squad and thinks about the first time he sees ice. This event represents his duality as a soldier and an artist. He becomes politically aware and active as a young man when he professes Liberal sympathies despite his comfortable upbringing in a largely Conservative environment.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía is not a patriarch in the traditional sense because his lineage is destroyed. He meets Remedios Moscote when he is a young man and she is still a child. They marry, but she dies at 14 of blood poisoning. Over the course of his military career, he fathers 17 sons by different women across the country. He remains unaware of them until they converge on Macondo for a ceremony celebrating his service to the country. All but one of his sons is murdered by unknown assassins, cutting off his potential lineage.

Amaranta is one of the three children of Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía. She fights with Rebeca over the affections of Pietro Crespi and goes so far as to attempt to ruin Rebeca's wedding dress and even poison her to stop the marriage. When Rebeca marries José Arcadio instead, Amaranta rejects Pietro in favor of remaining alone. She is courted by Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, whom she also rejects.

Amaranta represents thwarted identity within a patriarchal model that allows her no options outside marriage and motherhood. When her original marriage plans fail, she has an incestuous sexual relationship with her nephew, Aureliano José. She tries to end the relationship for fear of becoming pregnant with a baby who has the pig’s tail Úrsula warned against; this occurs after he returns home from war with the idea of marrying her. She never marries or has children, rejecting each of her suitors once the man becomes serious about making a commitment. In her later years, she spends her time weaving her own death shroud; she is prepared for the moment of her own death. Her rejection of marriage left her with no other options for constructing a life or an identity outside the home.

José Arcadio is the son of Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía. He acts as a foil to his brother, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, because of his gregarious nature, his travels abroad, and his impulsive decision-making. The narrative arc between the two characters reaches its climax when José Arcadio threatens the firing squad and prevents the execution of the Colonel.

José Arcadio is the rebellious child. When he is young, he begins a sexual relationship with the older Pilar Ternera. When she tells him she's pregnant with Arcadio, their son, he leaves with a group of travelers and returns years later, a crude, tattooed sailor who auctions himself off to the highest bidder for sex, aware of his power over women. After his marriage to Rebeca, he steals land from others in Macondo and collects taxes from them. He dies under mysterious circumstances in his own bedroom, and his killer is never found. His son, José Arcadio, becomes one of the fathers of the next generation of Buendías.

Rebeca is the orphaned second cousin of Úrsula Iguarán. As a child, Rebeca arrives in Macondo under mysterious circumstances . She brings an insomnia plague and a bag of her parents' bones with her. When she is nervous, she exhibits symptoms of pica; namely, she secretly eats earth and whitewash. She does not speak for a long time. Rebeca seems to have suffered a serious trauma, but the circumstances that caused her condition are never named. Like many characters in the novel, Rebeca has a fatalistic attitude about her past; it is neither worth dwelling on nor worth trying to correct in the future.

Just as with many other characters—both male and female—her life choices center on and are defined by her relationship. As a young adult, she marries her adoptive brother José Arcadio. Together, they prosper and eventually purchase a home on the main square of Macondo. After his death, she retreats into their home and almost never leaves it for the rest of her life.

Arcadio is the child of José Arcadio and Pilar Ternera. He tries to have sex with his biological mother, but she sends Santa Sofía de Piedad to him instead. Sofía and Arcadio marry and have three children: Remedios the Beauty, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo.

During the war between Liberals and Conservatives, Arcadio is named head of Macondo. He rules the town as a tyrant and locks up, assaults, or kills those who disagree with him. He also steals money from the town and embezzles. His mother deposes him and whips him for his behavior. This represents the recurrent idea in the novel that family codes—particularly those of the mother—overrule civic or military law. However, he is still subject to the rule of law in wartime.

When a rider comes to warn him of the Conservative army coming to town, Arcadio does not believe him. The army executes him when they arrive.

A daughter of one of the other founding families of Macondo, Pilar Ternera becomes the oldest character in the book. Her lifespan lasts far beyond that of a normal person; like Úrsula, she symbolizes the eternal feminine caretaker. She is the biological mother of Aureliano José and Arcadio. She also shelters and sometimes has sexual relationships with several other members of the Buendía family, which sets her apart from the traditional matriarch, Úrsula.

She is a lifelong sex worker who hosts other couples who need a private place to meet at her house. She eventually establishes a zoological brothel. Because of the role her career plays in Macondo, she tends to know everyone's private business. Additionally, she tells fortunes and reads the future through omens and cards. Some of her omens become plot points in the novel: For example, she tells Rebeca that her parents' bones need to be buried to be at rest, and she tells Colonel Aureliano Buendía to watch out for his mouth before a poisoning attempt.

Remedios the Beauty is the daughter of Arcadio and Santa Sofía de Piedad. When the French women that José Arcadio Segundo brings to town want to hold a carnival, Remedios the Beauty is named queen. She shares the title with Fernanda del Carpio, who arrives in Macondo and enchants Aureliano Segundo.

Remedios the Beauty is so beautiful that she must wear a homemade sack dress to minimize male attention toward her. Men repeatedly die by accident while trying to stare at or follow her, and she earns the reputation of having a scent that causes men to die. Her ascension while hanging laundry parallels the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In the novel’s traditional Catholic worldview, this is a reward for her having tried to minimize her sexuality and remaining a virgin.

Aureliano Segundo is the son of Arcadio and Santa Sofía de Piedad. As a child, he spends a great deal of time with the ghost of Melquíades in the latter's former workshop. He takes Petra Cotes as a lover and mistress; he organizes raffles with her, shares a bed with her, and throws parties with her.

He can be impulsive and vindictive; when Úrsula scolds him for being wasteful with money, he wallpapers her house with one-peso banknotes. He brings the men from the banana company into town and to party with him without anticipating the consequences of introducing them to Macondo.

As an adult, he tries to be a good father by spoiling his daughter, Meme. He is the father of Renata Remedios (Meme), José Arcadio (of the fourth generation Buendías), and Amaranta Úrsula. During the five-year-long rains, he loses his wealth and becomes obsessed with finding Úrsula's buried gold. He dies at the same moment as his brother, José Arcadio Segundo.

Petra Cotes organizes raffles in Macondo and co-hosts exuberant parties with her lover and partner, Aureliano Segundo. At first, she is a lover of both Aureliano Segundo and his brother, but after they all get a sexually transmitted infection, she continues exclusively with Aureliano Segundo. She acts as a foil to his wife, Fernanda, who ends up agreeing to share her husband with her while publicly pretending not to know that their relationship continues.

Her presence and blessing of animals means that they procreate much more than they otherwise would. This bounty increases the wealth of Aureliano Segundo greatly and provides endless income for their parties. After Aureliano Segundo's death, she continues to support Fernanda with money and groceries.

Raised in a convent, Fernanda believes it is her destiny to become a queen. Her bearing, manner, and behaviors all reflect this belief: She is a deeply conservative, pious, and religious woman. She consents to her husband Aureliano Segundo's long-term romantic relationship with Petra Cotes so long as he does not die in Petra’s bed, because Fernanda cares more about the appearance of a scandal than the actuality of one.

When Meme begins a sexual relationship with a carpenter, Fernanda arranges to have him shot as a purported chicken thief, and she hurries Meme off to the same convent where she was raised. Afterward, she pretends Meme died, and she hides Meme's son Aureliano in the shut-up Buendía house until her own death.

Fernanda is an example of how the female body is pathologized. Her condition embarrasses her, and instead of seeing a doctor in town for her uterine prolapse, she consults with charlatans by mail who claim they can examine her from afar. Aureliano Segundo finds her pessaries and thinks they are meant for witchcraft. He tries to solve Fernanda's medical issue by burying a chicken alive rather than pursuing advice from the medical community. Her character exemplifies the novel’s positioning of the female body in the novel at the crossroads of religion, medicine, and the occult.

José Arcadio Segundo is the son of Arcadio and Santa Sofía de Piedad. When he is younger, he professes Conservatism and tries to connect Macondo to the rest of the world by ferry. His attempt to create a workable water infrastructure fails, being replaced by his bringing French sex workers to town.

As an adult, he works for the banana company and eventually becomes a leader of the strike. He becomes much more progressive in his worldview as a strike leader. He is the sole survivor of the banana company massacre; he spends the rest of his life sticking close to the Buendía house and trying in vain to convince others that the massacre really happened. His character represents the futility of liberalism in the face of conservatism and imperialism.

Known throughout the novel as Meme, Renata Remedios is the daughter of Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda del Carpio. As a child and young adult, she goes to school to become proficient at playing the clavichord; she gives clavichord concerts around town. However, she does not particularly like the instrument and goes through with the schooling simply to make her parents happy.

As a teenager, she has a romantic and sexual relationship with Mauricio Babilonia, who is a mechanic at one of the banana company's garages. Fernanda strongly disapproves of their relationship, so they have to hide their meetings from her, first at the movies, then at Pilar’s house, and finally in the bathroom of the Buendía house. When Fernanda discovers them sleeping together, she sends Meme off to a convent, from which she never returns. However, a nun sends her son, Aureliano, to the Buendía house.

He is the son of Fernanda del Carpio and Aureliano Segundo. Rather foppish in clothing and dress, he is religiously educated, with the eventual goal of occupying a position of power in the Catholic Church. He does not particularly care for Aureliano or any of his other family members.

When he returns home after Fernanda's death, he takes up carousing with the local teenagers. Sometimes he has nude parties with them. Aureliano finds him dead in the bath after the local teenagers searching for sacks of gold murder him. His death presents a critique of the hypocrisy of the Church.

She is the daughter of Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda del Carpio. She is educated in Europe and returns home as a married young woman with the goal of revitalizing the Buendía house, as well as all of Macondo. Like her mother, Fernanda, she keeps herself busy with solving domestic issues.

Additionally, she knows the current trends in music, dance, and fashion, despite living so far away from a major urban center. She sews her own fashionable clothes and teaches Aureliano the latest dances.

Her husband tries to adapt to Macondo but eventually gives up and returns to Europe. Amaranta Úrsula has a passionate love affair with her nephew Aureliano in the decaying Buendía house. She dies giving birth. Their relationship and its thematic connection with decay foreshadow the end of the Buendía family.