One Hundred Years of Solitude

The village Mocondo is founded by the fated cousins Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia who are escaping from the past. In the beginning the "village [is] truly happy" (pg. 18), yet as children, and then grandchildren come, patterns become apparent. The Buendia family blindly follows the mistakes of their ancestors, forgetting their past, living in and seeking solitude, and never feeling true love. JAB (Jose Arcadia Buendia) has dreams of "infinite rooms" (pg. 136) where he walks through the same room over and over, but is never able to interpret this dream as a warning concerning the paths and choices of his family. Melquiades, the gypsy who befriends the family, refers to the village as "The city of mirrors"; one where the past is reflected again and again and no Buendias are able to create their own history. Marquez used the repetition of life patterns of the Buendias to demonstrate how people who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them.…