Below you will find five outstanding thesis statements / paper topics for “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  that can be used as essay starters. All five incorporate at least one of the themes found in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and are broad enough so that it will be easy to find textual support, yet narrow enough to provide a focused clear thesis statement. These thesis statements fpr “100 Years of Solitude” offer a short summary and analysis of different elements that could be important in an essay but you are free to add your own analysis and understanding of the plot or themes to them. Using the essay topics below in conjunction with the list of important quotes from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” at the bottom of the page, you should have no trouble connecting with the text and writing an excellent paper.

Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #1: The Significance of the Title “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

The title of this novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, refers to the imaginary town of Macondo, which is the setting for the book. It might be possible, however, to offer the interpretation that the solitude suggested by the title can also apply to the characters and families in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” as well. Identify what changes have led to the current conditions in Macondo. Then, identify what kinds of solitude those changes have produced. Finally, consider how the changes and ultimate devastation experienced in Macondo also affect the characters in the novel, and use your reflections to explain the significance of the title, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #2: The Importance of Language in “100 Years of Solitude”

Language and its use play a vital role in the development of the plot and the theme of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Language is a way to bridge differences, as well as a means of asserting and maintaining distance. Language is mysterious and endangered. It explains and it obscures. Identify one or more instances of particular uses of language in the novel (i.e.: the tattoos of Jose Arcadio, the Sanskrit predictions, the use of the Guajiro dialect) and compare and contrast the ways in which they are used, as well as the effects that they produce. Consider what Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s message about the importance of language might be.

Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #3: One Hundred Years of Solitude as Sociopolitical Allegory

A great deal has been written about the use and representation of magical realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels, and certainly, One Hundred Years of Solitudeis a seminal example of magical realism. It is also possible, though, to read this novel as a sociopolitical allegory, not only for Colombia, Garcia Marquez’s native country, but also for other countries around the world, where certain languages, cultures, and ways of life are either threatened or are already disappearing. Write an expository essay in which you explain how   One Hundred Years of Solitude can be read as a social and/or political allegory. Conclude with an application of the novel to contemporary events, and identify whether this particular novel offers any lessons that we might be able to apply to current social and/or political conditions. You will need, of course, to understand the definition of allegory in order to write on this topic.

Thesis Statement / Essay Topic #4: The Symbolism of Inventions in “100 Years of Solitude” 

The various inventions that are brought to Macondo and peddled to the townspeople are believed—at least by the peddlers—to represent progress. Yet, the people of Macondo view and relate to inventions differently. Select one or more of the inventions mentioned in One Hundred Years of Solitude and explore its symbolic significance to the novel as a whole. Identify whether the attitude towards inventions changes over the course of the novel. If so, then explain what this change represents to the culture and society of Macondo.

Thesis Statement/Essay Topic #5: Dreams and Prophecies in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

Dreams and prophecies are recurrent images in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Select one or more of the dreams and prophecies from the novel and analyze its significance to the novel as a whole. You may wish to take a comparative perspective, in which you analyze the similarities and differences of certain dreams and prophecies. Alternately, you may choose to compare a dream with its real-life counterpart, considering what insight the dream may offer regarding a situation a character is experiencing in the novel itself.

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This list of important quotations from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez will help you work with the essay topics and thesis statements above by allowing you to support your claims. All of the important quotes from “100 Years of Solitude” listed here correspond, at least in some way, to the paper topics above and by themselves can give you great ideas for an essay by offering quotes about other themes, symbols, imagery, and motifs than those already mentioned.  All quotes contain page numbers as well. Look at the bottom of the page to identify which edition of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” they are referring to.

“He would spend hours on end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction.” (3)

“In his youth, Jose Arcadio Buendia and his men, with wives and children, had crossed the mountains in search of an outlet to the sea, and after twenty-six months they gave up the expedition and founded Macondo, so they would not have to go back.” (11)

“They were new gypsies, young men and women who knew only their own language, [who had] the multiple-use machine that could be used at the same time to sew on buttons and reduce fevers, and the apparatus to make a person forget his bad memories, and a poultice to lose time, and a thousand more inventions so ingenious and so unusual that Jose Arcadio Buendia must have wanted to invent a memory machine so that he could remember them all.” (17)

“In reality, the only thing that could be isolated in the rocky paragraphs was the insistent hammering on the word, equinox, equinox, equinox….” (78)

“In the heat of the party he exhibited his unusual masculinity on the bar, completely covered with tattoos of words in several languages intertwined in blue and red.” (98)

“He believed it as if it had been determined by fate.” (200)

“As long as Ursula had full use of her faculties some of the old customs survived and the life of the family kept some quality of her impulsiveness… no one but she determined the destiny of the family.” (228)

“But by then her acceptance of her fate was so deep that she was not even upset by the certainty that all possibility of rectification were closed to her.” (300)

“It was the history of the family, written by Melquiades…. He had written it in Sanskrit…, and he had encoded the even lines in the private cipher of the Emperor Augustus and the odd ones in a Lacedemonian military code.” (446)

“Before reaching the final line…he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men… and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since from time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” (448)

Reference:  Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998

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