LITERATURE: 100 Years

The Buendia family is one driven by happenstance.  Their lives respond to who wanders into their village, what is brought, what is bought by Jose Arcadio.  Meanwhile, the young Jose is evidently astronomically endowed and has discovered its usefulness.  He becomes intimate with the housekeeper, unable to stay away from her until she tells him she is pregnant.  He then discovers love with a young gypsy girl and leaves with the tribe, solving two problems at once.  His mother, Ursula, is distraught and goes by herself after the gypsies, and here is where it gets interesting.

Ursula is gone for five months, leaving her husband Jose Arcadio behind to watch the two children, Aureliano and Amaranta.  When she returns, she "gave him a conventional kiss, as if she had been away only and hour."  And the kicker:

"Ursula had not caught up with the gypsies, but she had found the route that her husband had been unable to discover in his frustrated search for the great inventions."

We’re not quite sure what Marquez is referring to by this, knowing that Jose Arcadio had left his birthplace with a following that traveled for two years to settle in the little village of Macondo, but his life since had been dedicated to finding, trying, exploring every possibility the gypsies brought with them on their visits.  Ursula’s trip had taken her to a town where many of the new things were commonplace and when they came back with her to the town, it came to life, and Jose Arcadio with it.

Here Ursula has come into a more obvious status as savior of the town and her family, and Jose Arcadio once again enjoys being a leader of people as the town grows with people and commerce.  And though Ursula, still angry at the gypsies that stole her oldest son away forbids their entry to the village, the one tribe of old Melquiades who was his friend was to be made welcome at Jose’s insistence:

"But Melquiades’ tribe, according to what the wanderers said, had been wiped off the face of the earth because they had gone beyond the limits of human knowledge."

And there is the little twist, the little bit of nonsense of unfathomable depth and meaning that Marquez gives us, sneaking it in among the relating of the mundane.