One Hundred Years of Solitude

by

Gabriel García Márquez

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José Arcadio Buendía Character Analysis

The patriarch of the Buendía family and the founder of the city of Macondo. Against his family’s wishes, he marries his third cousin, Úrsula Iguarán. Because their families have been intermarrying for centuries, the pair are warned before their wedding that any child they have will be born with the tail of a pig. They set out to discover a new city where they can live without shame for their incest and past mistakes, and they establish Macondo, parenting three biological children—Colonel Aureliano Buendía, José Arcadio (I), and Amaranta—and also the orphan Rebeca. José Arcadio Buendía becomes obsessed with the sciences introduced by the gypsy Melquíades, and he slowly transitions from being a hands-on founder and developer of the town into a solitary man, overcome with curiosity about technology. In a fit of frustration, he starts to destroy his home, and the family determines that he has lost his mind. They tie him to a tree in the center of town, where he lives out the end of his life.

José Arcadio Buendía Quotes in One Hundred Years of Solitude

The One Hundred Years of Solitude quotes below are all either spoken by José Arcadio Buendía or refer to José Arcadio Buendía. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Circularity of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Colonel Aureliano Buendía
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

“We will not leave,” she said. “We will stay here, because we have had a son here.”

“We still have not had a death,” he said. “A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.”

Úrsula replied with a soft firmness:

“If I have to die for the rest of you to stay here, I will die.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2  Quotes

They were afraid that those two healthy products of two races that had interbred over the centuries would suffer the shame of breeding iguanas. There had already been a horrible precedent. An aunt of Úrsula’s, married to an uncle of José Arcadio Buendía, had a son who went through life wearing loose, baggy trousers and who bled to death after having lived forty-two years in the purest state of virginity, for he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of a corkscrew and with a small tuft of hair on the tip. A pig’s tail that was never to be seen by any woman and that cost him his life when a butcher friend did him the favor of chopping it off with his cleaver. José Arcadio Buendía, with the whimsy of his nineteen years, resolved the problem with a single phrase: “I don’t care if I have piglets as long as they can talk.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Related Symbols: Tail of a Pig
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

José Arcadio Buendía dreamed that night that right there a noisy city with houses having mirror walls rose up. He asked what city it was and they answered him with a name that he had never heard, that had no meaning at all, but that had a supernatural echo in his dream: Macondo.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3  Quotes

“If we don’t ever sleep again, so much the better,” José Arcadio Buendía said in good humor. “That way we can get more out of life.” But the Indian woman explained that the most fearsome part of the sickness of insomnia was not the impossibility of sleeping, for the body did not feel any fatigue at all, but its inexorable evolution toward a more critical manifestation: a loss of memory. She meant that when the sick person became used to his state of vigil, the recollection of his childhood began to be erased from his memory, then the name and notion of things, and finally the identity of people and even the awareness of his own being, until he sank into a kind of idiocy that had no past.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Visitacíon
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:

In the meantime, Melquíades had printed on his plates everything that was printable in Macondo, and he left the daguerreotype laboratory to the fantasies of José Arcadio Buendía, who had resolved to use it to obtain scientific proof of the existence of God. Through a complicated process of superimposed exposures taken in different parts of the house, he was sure that sooner or later he would get a daguerreotype of God, if He existed, or put an end once and for all to the supposition of His existence.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Melquíades
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4  Quotes

“Love is a disease,” he thundered. “With so many pretty and decent girls around, the only thing that occurs to you is to get married to the daughter of our enemy.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, Remedios Moscote
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

On the next day, Wednesday, José Arcadio Buendía went back to the workshop. “This is a disaster,” he said. “Look at the air, listen to the buzzing of the sun, the same as yesterday and the day before. Today is Monday too.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

On a certain occasion when Father Nicanor brought a checker set to the chestnut tree and invited him to a game, José Arcadio Buendía would not accept, because according to him he could never understand the sense of a contest in which the two adversaries have agreed upon the rules. Father Nicanor, who had never seen checkers played that way, could not play it again. Ever more startled at José Arcadio Buendía’s lucidity, he asked how it was possible that they had him tied to a tree. “Hoc est simplicissimus,” he replied. “Because I’m crazy.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Father Nicanor Reyna
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
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José Arcadio Buendía Quotes in One Hundred Years of Solitude

The One Hundred Years of Solitude quotes below are all either spoken by José Arcadio Buendía or refer to José Arcadio Buendía. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Circularity of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Colonel Aureliano Buendía
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

“We will not leave,” she said. “We will stay here, because we have had a son here.”

“We still have not had a death,” he said. “A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.”

Úrsula replied with a soft firmness:

“If I have to die for the rest of you to stay here, I will die.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2  Quotes

They were afraid that those two healthy products of two races that had interbred over the centuries would suffer the shame of breeding iguanas. There had already been a horrible precedent. An aunt of Úrsula’s, married to an uncle of José Arcadio Buendía, had a son who went through life wearing loose, baggy trousers and who bled to death after having lived forty-two years in the purest state of virginity, for he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of a corkscrew and with a small tuft of hair on the tip. A pig’s tail that was never to be seen by any woman and that cost him his life when a butcher friend did him the favor of chopping it off with his cleaver. José Arcadio Buendía, with the whimsy of his nineteen years, resolved the problem with a single phrase: “I don’t care if I have piglets as long as they can talk.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Related Symbols: Tail of a Pig
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

José Arcadio Buendía dreamed that night that right there a noisy city with houses having mirror walls rose up. He asked what city it was and they answered him with a name that he had never heard, that had no meaning at all, but that had a supernatural echo in his dream: Macondo.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3  Quotes

“If we don’t ever sleep again, so much the better,” José Arcadio Buendía said in good humor. “That way we can get more out of life.” But the Indian woman explained that the most fearsome part of the sickness of insomnia was not the impossibility of sleeping, for the body did not feel any fatigue at all, but its inexorable evolution toward a more critical manifestation: a loss of memory. She meant that when the sick person became used to his state of vigil, the recollection of his childhood began to be erased from his memory, then the name and notion of things, and finally the identity of people and even the awareness of his own being, until he sank into a kind of idiocy that had no past.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Visitacíon
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:

In the meantime, Melquíades had printed on his plates everything that was printable in Macondo, and he left the daguerreotype laboratory to the fantasies of José Arcadio Buendía, who had resolved to use it to obtain scientific proof of the existence of God. Through a complicated process of superimposed exposures taken in different parts of the house, he was sure that sooner or later he would get a daguerreotype of God, if He existed, or put an end once and for all to the supposition of His existence.

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Melquíades
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4  Quotes

“Love is a disease,” he thundered. “With so many pretty and decent girls around, the only thing that occurs to you is to get married to the daughter of our enemy.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, Remedios Moscote
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

On the next day, Wednesday, José Arcadio Buendía went back to the workshop. “This is a disaster,” he said. “Look at the air, listen to the buzzing of the sun, the same as yesterday and the day before. Today is Monday too.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

On a certain occasion when Father Nicanor brought a checker set to the chestnut tree and invited him to a game, José Arcadio Buendía would not accept, because according to him he could never understand the sense of a contest in which the two adversaries have agreed upon the rules. Father Nicanor, who had never seen checkers played that way, could not play it again. Ever more startled at José Arcadio Buendía’s lucidity, he asked how it was possible that they had him tied to a tree. “Hoc est simplicissimus,” he replied. “Because I’m crazy.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Father Nicanor Reyna
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis: