What Are The Allusions In One Hundred Years Of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude closely mimics passages and parables found throughout The Bible, beginning with the city of Macondo itself. An allusion to the Garden of Eden, Macondo is a lush and vibrant world wherein citizens live very long and subject their morals to the natural law. This and other occurrences resonate parallel to stories and characters found in the Old Testament. Religion itself is regarded with skepticism, illustrated through the arrival of the Priest Father Nicanor Reyna in One Hundred Years of Solitude. These references and characters both serve to validate the novel’s epic relevance and exemplify Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s view on the impact of organized religion on indigenous society.
The novel begins with a very distinct
In chapter five, Father Nicanor Reyna arrives and begins to build an elaborate church. “Thinking that no land needed the seed of God so much, he decided to say on for another week to Christianize both circumcised and gentile, legalize concubinage, and give the sacraments to the dying. But no one paid attention to him. They would answer him that they had been many years without a priest, arranging the business of their souls directly with God, and that they had lost the evil of original sin. (81)” Before the priest’s arrival, shame is unknown in Macondo—like Adam and Eve before the fall, the citizens are “subject to the natural law” sexually and worship God without a church. Father Nicanor’s arrival disturbs the untouched innocence that the town maintains. Further, Father Nicanor can decipher that Jose Arcadio Buendia does not speak jargon, as the town assumed, but perfect Latin. “Father Nicanor took advantage of the circumstance of being the only person who had been able to communicate with him to try and inject the faith into his twisted mind.