One Hundred Years of Solitude: Metaphors 5 key examples

The narrator uses a metaphor that compares a heavy and elaborate wedding dress to “armor.” After Amaranta fails in various attempts to sabotage Rebeca’s marriage to Pietro Crespi, the narrator notes that: 

That afternoon, while Rebeca was suffocating with heat inside the armor of thread that Amparo Moscote was putting about her body with thousands of pins and infinite patience, Amaranta made several mistakes in her crocheting and pricked her finger with the needle, but she decided with frightful coldness that the date would be the last Friday before the wedding and the method would be a dose of laudanum in her coffee.

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Márquez uses an extended metaphor that compares dealing with government bureaucracy to warfare in a highly satirical passage. The narrator describes Colonel Aureliano Buendía's frustrations in attempting to secure the pension promised to him and the other soldiers by the government: 

After the armistice of Neerlandia, while Colonel Aureliano Buendía took refuge with his little gold fishes, he kept in touch with the rebel officers who had been faithful to him until the defeat. With them he waged the sad war of daily humiliation, of entreaties and petitions, of come-back-tomorrow, of anytime-now, of we’re-studying-your-case-with-the-proper-attention; the war hopelessly lost against the many yours-most-trulys who should have signed and would never sign the lifetime pensions. The other war, the bloody one of twenty years, did not cause them as much damage as the corrosive war of eternal postponements.

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Márquez uses simile and metaphor to describe Colonel Aureliano Buendía's deep but impotent anger following the assassinations of all of his sons born during the war: 

Colonel Aureliano Buendía did not recover his calm for a long time. He abandoned the manufacture of little fishes, ate with great difficulty, and wandered all through the house as if walking in his sleep, dragging his blanket and chewing on his quiet rage. At the end of three months his hair was ashen, his old waxed mustache poured down beside his colorless lips, but, on the other hand, his eyes were once more the burning coals that had startled those who had seen him born and that in other days had made chairs rock with a simple glance.

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The narrator uses simile and metaphor to describe the complex changes brought to the Buendía family by the railroad and the influx of foreign visitors to the once-remote town of Macondo: 

Fernanda had to swallow her scruples and treat guests of the worst sort like kings as they muddied the porch with their boots, urinated in the garden, laid their mats down anywhere to take their siesta, and spoke without regard for the sensitivities of ladies or the proper behavior of gentlemen [...] Colonel Aureliano Buendía, convinced that the majority of those who came into his workshop to greet him were not doing it because of sympathy or regard but out of the curiosity to meet a historical relic, a museum fossil, decided to shut himself in by barring the door [...] 

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The narrator uses both simile and metaphor when describing some of the major social changes brought to Macondo by the introduction of the railroad: 

Ever since the railroad had been officially inaugurated [...] on the streets of Macondo men and women were seen who had adopted everyday and normal customs and manners but who really looked like people out of a circus. In a town that had chafed under the tricks of the gypsies there was no future for those ambulatory acrobats of commerce who with equal effrontery offered a whistling kettle and a daily regime that would assure the salvation of the soul on the seventh day; but from those who let themselves be convinced out of fatigue and the ones who were always unwary, they reaped stupendous benefits.

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