When describing Aureliano’s life after the war and the solitary habits which he begins to develop after becoming profoundly disillusioned with humanity, the narrator personifies the concept of solitude: 

Taciturn, silent, insensible to the new breath of vitality that was shaking the house, Colonel Aureliano Buendía could understand only that the secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude. He would get up at five in the morning after a light sleep, have his eternal mug of bitter coffee in the kitchen, shut himself up all day in the workshop, and at four in the afternoon he would go along the porch dragging a stool, not even noticing the fire of the rosebushes [...] and he would sit in the street door as long as the mosquitoes would allow him to.

Here, the narrator describes Aureliano as making an “honorable pact with solitude,” as if solitude were a human figure who could be negotiated or bargained with. There is a particular irony to this act of personification, as Aureliano has signed numerous pacts and deals with other parties as leader of the rebel faction in the civil war. Now, he simply wishes to put the war behind him and to be left alone, but even this desired solitude is imagined by the narrator as yet another "pact."