The Founding of Macondo

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells the story of the Buendia family and the fictional town of Macondo. The first part of the book's opening line, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice," serves to catapult the reader into the future, while the second phrase pushes the reader into the past. From this point onward, however, the book moves in fairly straight forward chronological order, with only occasional forays into the past or the future.

The first chapter introduces Jose Arcadio Buendia, the founder of Macondo; his wife, Ursula; and the gypsy Melquiades, who brings inventions to Macondo. Jose Arcadio and Ursula also have two sons introduced in the opening chapter. The older, Jos6 Arcadio, is large, strong, and physically precocious...