The magical realistic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1970, has a circular plat in which the past, present, and future are interconnected. The past is inescapable and the future inevitable. The story begins with the marriage of cousins Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula. Jose Arcadio Buendia raises fighting cocks and Ursula is a stay-at-home wife. Because of the familial tie between husband and wife and the threat of giving birth to a baby with a “pig’s tail” (Marquez 20), Ursula does not want to consummate the marriage. After Prudencio Aguilar teases Jose Arcadio Buendia about Ursula’s reluctance to finish the marital process, Jose Arcadio kills Prudencio Aguilar. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula them get haunted by Prudencio …show more content…
This novel is filled of moments of fate versus free will. In the duration of this novel, the seven generations of Buendias have their destiny written for them: “It was the history of the family, written by Melquiades, down to the most trivial details, one hundred years ahead of time.” (Marquez 415). Equivalent to the parchments of Melquiades, is the word is the word of Halitherses in Homer’s The Odyssey: “(Halitherses): ‘I who foretell this am not untried, I know what I am saying. Concerning him, I say that everything was accomplished in the way I said it would be at the time the Argives took ship for Ilion, and with them went resourceful Odysseus. I said that after much suffering, with all his companions lost, in the twentieth year, not recognized by any, he would come home. And now all this is being accomplished’” (Homer 2.170-176) Within both stories the idea of not being in full control of your destiny is prominent. Both authors uses these passages to enforce the idea that we are not in control of our destiny. There are higher beings that choose what happens to us. They direct our lives as they see