100 Years of Solitude: José Arcadio Buendía's story

By Gabriel García Márquez

     José Arcadio Buendía is the founder of Macondo and first José Arcadio generation. He is married to her cousin, Ursula Iguarán, and I actually think he becomes funny later in life with all his random ideas. He is the father of José Arcadio, Aureliano and Amaranta.

Roosters like doing favors to
other's man's wives it seems.

     José Arcadio Buendía was a young and serene man who marries her cousin, Ursula. But Ursula is scared of having kids with a pig's tail, as other of his cousins who married, so she elaborates chastity pants she wears at night where the act of love has been replaced by a battle of struggles between Ursula hanging to her pants and him wanting to remove them. A year after, people start suspecting that Ursula is still a virgin and start mocking José Arcadio, yet he keeps his serenity. One day while having a rooster's fight, José Arcadios's kills Prudencio Aguilar's rooster. Angrily, Prudencio shouts how he hopes his rooster may make the favor to his wife. José Arcadio, calmly, declares him he will come in the afternoon to kill him. And he does in fact and pierces his throat  That night while Ursula is putting her pants, José Arcadio orders her to undo it and Ursula resigns bitterly.
     At night, Prudencio Aguilar's ghost wanders around the house seeking for water in the pots to clean his wound in the throat. Night after night, he comes and finally José Arcadio promises him to leave town expecting that that way he may find peace.
     It is then when travelling with other men who wished to follow him he dreamed of a town of mirrors and when asked its name, the voices reply, "Macondo". After he wakes up, he decides to establish a town right there and name it after the town of his dreams. José Arcadio helps to distribute land fairly and helps others, while Ursula helps beautifying the town with birds and other things.

Smile to the silly man.
Maybe this is what Melquiades
looked like when he saw José Arcadio
with all his experiments.

     One day some gypsies arrive, who admit they were guided by the song of the birds. They bring artifacts to show and sell and José Arcadio is marveled by it. Melquiades, a gypsie, presents him the magnets and silly José Arcadio buys it, expecting to be able to find gold with it even when Melquíades himself warned him it would not. He bought it with Ursula's dowdry which consisted of her father's golden coins. Frustrated, José Arcadio returns only finding a rusted knight's armor. Melquíades, returns him his money in an act of good faith, and thus become good friends. Before leaving, Melquiades leaves him some artifacts and José Arcadio obsesses with it to the point of leaving all the work to Ursula causing her to resent Melquiades. It is finally one day that he leaves his room and mutters he discovered the earth is round like an orange. The town mocks him but when Melquíades's tribe returns, he proves him right and decides to help him make a workshop much to Ursula's discontent. And so, Melquíades presents him with new inventions and José Arcadio tests them for silly experiments like when he believed he may be able to turn the magnifying glass into a solar weapon and while working in his project sents a letter to the government expecting funds which never reply. Melquíades leaves once again while José Arcadio starts immersing himself into alchemy, melting and mixing Ursula's gold coins in poop expecting to be able to get the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. He gets his boys to help him but the only interested is Aureliano.

[I will start naming the father José Arcadio Buendía and the son José Arcadio just as the book to avoid confusion]

     After many years, José Arcadio Buendía welcomes the gypsie's tribe to find it different. He wanders asking for Melquíades to finally be told that he has died and has been thrown to the sea in his travel through the world. José Arcadio Buendía returns sadly but is motivated to see what this gypsies have brought. He brings his sons along and so that day was the first time José Arcadio Buendía saw ice and mistook it for the biggest diamond in the world. José Arcadio Buendía and Aureliano where fascinated and paid to touch it several times. He assumed that the transparent sheets of which where made the houses of his dream town where actually ice.
     One day José Arcadio ran away with the gypsies and Ursula went after him hoping she may bring him back. He was left alone with Aureliano and the newborn baby, Amaranta. As months pass he starts missing Ursula and hopes for her to come back. She finally returns as if nothing bringing with her people from the other side of the marsh but unable to find José Arcadio. They upgrade the town and Ursula starts a business which permits José Arcadio Buendía to immerse himself to his workshop only.
     Not long after, Pilar Ternera announces them that she was pregnant and gave birth to José Arcadio's son. José Arcadio Buendía accepts him into the family as he can't stand having someone of his own blood adrift. His name is José Arcadio but to avoid confusions call him only Arcadio.

Creepy girl in the darkness...

     One day they receive in their house a little silent girl which drags a case and a letter announcing she is a distant relative of them which none remembers. They welcome her into their house and name her Rebeca Buendía as she doesn't replies. The girl eats lime and earth but he leaves Ursula and her helpers to deal with it while he continues his never ending experiments. Visitación, one of the helpers who resigned to her kingdom to escape from a devastating sickness, finds Rebeca awake at night with eyes shining in oblivion. She rapidly announces Ursula and José Arcadio that she has the insomnia sickness from which she escaped along with her brother. They don't take it to heart. José Arcadio and Aureliano become unable to sleep but they don't believe it's due to the sickness as its not rare and little by little starts extending through the whole family and through Ursula's business of caramel animals it spread to the town. The busy people didn't feel unhappy about it but little by little came the sickness of oblivion which accompanies the insomnia. They elaborate a method of written notes all over the house and town to avoid forgetting but which know will only work while they still remember how to read.

Houses sure would be cool all year long.

     One day a man enters the forsaken town and heads directly to the Buendía's house. José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula welcome him but act extremely friendly as they cannot remember him. The man feels offended as he actually did recognize that but looking through the walls filled with instructions he came to understand. He took a small bottle from his bag and gave it to José Arcadio Buendía. At once, José Arcadio wailed in astonishment to see Melquíades alive. Melquíades cured the sickness and explained to them that he was too lonely in death so he came back but his tribe expelled him for his overloyalty to life, and asked if he could stay with them. Ursula prepared him a room and he worked in the workshop along with José Arcadio Buendía and Aureliano. There he started working in the scrolls where he told him he foresaw a town with mirrors ("Ice," insisted José Arcadio) and the ending of the Buendía's lineage which he accused as wrong.
   
     Ursula remodels the house due to the girl's coming of age and once again José Arcadio Buendía shows his funny scientific side. Melquiades shows José Arcadio what are the daguerreotypes. José Arcadio then passes all his time in his new found theory of eventually being able to capture God's daguerreotypes if he takes randoms shots in his house. When Ursula buys a pianola from Pietro Crespi, an italian she hired to teach Amaranta and Rebeca how to dance, José Arcadio wonders who may play the instrument and takes daguerreotypes hoping to find the invisible man playing but eventually he disarms the pianola hoping to understand how it works and causing to bring Pietro Crespi once again to fix it. It is then that they discover Rebeca and Pietro have been sending letters to one another. José Arcadio Buendía agrees to their relationship only if he marries her.
     At the same time he has trouble with Moscote, a man sent by the government to control the town, and accepts him into Macondo because he has shown the eagerness to stay by bringing his family. Yet leaves in bad terms as enemies as he doesn't want him to control matters in town.
     He is surprised when Aureliano revealed his wishes to marry one of the Moscote daughters. While Ursula is delighted, José Arcadio Buendía grumbles that he has chosen the enemy's daughter. With a bitter smile, José Arcadio Buendía goes to the Moscote's house along Ursula and Aureliano to ask for the hand of the little Remedios who has agreed to marry Aureliano.

God's still not there but found the red teletubby.

     Melquíades dies one day and as promised, José Arcadio Buendía burns mercury in his room where his corpse remains in bed for three days before burying him in the new graveyard, becoming the first man to die in Macondo. Frustrated that he can't catch God in a daguerreotype he concludes angrily that God mustn't exist. He starts losing it; one day wakes up and goes to the workshop where he tells Aureliano, "It's Monday". And the day after he says, "Once again is Monday". And the day after that, "Why is it still Monday?" And so until one day he starts destroying the workshop and bawls in a demonic language. They tie him to a chestnut in the backyard where he remains and is only visited by the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar which in his loneliness seeks for José Arcadio Buendía.
     Father Nicanor comes to town and decides it's his duty to evangelize this whole barbaric town. He proves God's power by drinking chocolate and levitating. Once when he was performing it again in front of the chestnut, José Arcadio replied in his strange language that it was a trick. Father Nicanor slowly landed and replied in the same language that it was God's power. "That day it was known that the demonic slang of José Arcadio Buendía was actually Latin." Father Nicanor started visiting him hoping to return him his faith. He came to talk and play chess [I believe] with him while he tried to demonstrate him through the Bible, belongings said to be from God's son and the like the existence of God but José Arcadio Buendía stubbornly wanted as only proof: God's daguerreotype. Father Nicanor desisted after a while as José Arcadio Buendía was actually trying to make him lose his faith in God.

Habits die hard and so chestnut trees!

     No one again remembered José Arcadio. He stood there silently looking into oblivion while moss and rain and sun came by where he sat. Ursula, Remedios and later Santa Sofía de la Piedad took care of him while he wandered in his mind through rooms which were all alike until one day he couldn't remember where was the first room and became lost. Aureliano recommended her mother to see him as he was dying. Ursula indeed saw José Arcadio Buendía comatose and crumbling. She drove him to his room and unconsciously due to routine came back to sit near the chestnut. Ursula decided to tie him to the bed and took care of him until he died. That day for some reason rained yellow flowers all over Macondo.
   

     And so the first Buendía died while tied to a tree, at least his consciousness. I really liked his experiments and was sad when he died. 

     I could understand that while he was ignorant he was a fair and serene man which was transformed by knowledge and abandoned his family to live practically in the workshop. After Melquíades died he grows desperate and loses faith in God. Which is curious as it's known that some scientists nowadays don't believe in God and he could be considered as one, a very crappy one at that. I think José Arcadio portrays the loneliness which comes of knowledge and the messy seek for it.

     It's a very epic novel, so I hope you like it. 

     Happy reading!