How Does ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ the Book End?
Cien Años de Soledad S1. Claudio Cataño as Aureliano in Cien Años de Soledad. Cr. Mauro González /Netflix ©️2024
Gabriel García Márquez’s most famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was published in 1967, is now a Netflix show. The release of the Spanish-language show, filmed entirely in Colombia, has sparked interest in the novel it was based on, and particularly in the ending. This is especially true considering the first eight episodes released by Netflix only really tell half the story, with the other half set to be released by the streamer at a later date.
– – – – SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE BOOK ENDING – – – –
The ending, however, was already teased in Season 1. The show starts exactly where it will later end and then it goes back to tell the story of the founding of Macondo and José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán. The first few moments of the first episode show us a man reading a book while a woman is seen dead on a bed, with a crib next to the bed, crawling with ants. Those two are Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula, the last two members of the Buendía family, generations removed from the ones we’ve met, who fall in love and start an incestuous relationship without knowing they’re related.
Amaranta then falls pregnant and gives birth to a baby, Aureliano, who finally fulfills the prophecy the show started with, bearing the tale of a pig. She dies in childbirth and the baby is eaten by the ants, leaving Aureliano Babilonia, the last living member of the family to decode a manuscript left behind by Melquíades many years before.
Just as Aureliano reads the final sentence in the manuscript, the town of Macondo is destroyed by a windstorm, wiping it from the face of the Earth. Because, just as the book says at the end, “races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” It was always going to end this way.
The quote can also be heard in the opening lines of the official trailer below.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is now on Netflix.
