Repeated Names
One of the most important themes of the novel is the way personal history and political history are constantly repeating themselves. Or if not exactly repeating, then at least "rhyming" with itself...
Amaranta's Black Bandage
Amaranta wears a black bandage around her hand for her whole life. What does it represent? Actually, the bandage's symbolism changes throughout Amaranta's life. She first puts it on after she drive...
The Ash Wednesday Marks of the 17 Aurelianos
This novel is committed to the idea of fate. The way the writing weaves back and forth in time and events are constantly foreshadowed reinforces the idea that everything that happens is meant to ha...
Baby with the Tail of a Pig
Throughout the novel, the Buendía family lives under the warning/curse of Úrsula's mother: that a baby born from incest will have the tail of a pig. For a while, this seems like a merely metaphor...
Colonel Aureliano Buendía's Little Gold Fish
A recurring image in the novel is the way humans, who have the ability to use their energy and life force to create and be productive, often choose instead to waste it on useless and obsessive acti...
Ghosts
Most fiction takes one of two approaches to ghosts. There's the terror approach (think The Ring), in which evil spirits from beyond freak people out and generally try to kill and destroy the living...
Melquíades' Writings
Another recurring theme in the novel is the collection or presentation of knowledge. At the beginning we have the gypsies with their carnival of wares. Later, during the forgetting disease, José B...