The Color Yellow in one Hundred Years of Solitude

The Color Yellow in One Hundred Years of Solitude

The use of color is one of the most important literary elements that can be found in a novel. The color of specific objects can be used as symbols of underlying themes and motifs and traced throughout the story. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, makes use the color yellow in order to allude to, or even foreshadow, death, change, and destruction of the Buendia family, Macondo and the people that live there.

Early on in the novel, the people of Macondo become infected with a disease referred to as the insomnia plague. It infected the entire town because "once it gets into a house no one can escape the plague" (Marquez page 44). At first, the plague only affected Rebecca and then the Buendia family. It did not spread to the rest of the town until after children ate the candy animals that Ursula made and gave to them. Included in these candies are "tender yellow ponies of insomnia" (45). This is one of the first major instances in which the color yellow is associated with destruction. It relates to the destruction of the peoples' minds and even further isolates them from the rest of the world. The insomnia that the people have not only inhibits them from falling asleep; it causes the loss of memory. In addition, because the plague is transmitted through the mouth, outsiders of the town that came to visit "had to ring bells so the sick people would know they were healthy" (46) and they quarantine Macondo. All of this was caused by the consumption of the yellow ponies.

When Jose Arcadio Buendia dies at the end of chapter 7, the town of Macondo gets covered by a "light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling" (140). These flowers fell so thick that the next day, they had to physically remove them in order to get tasks done, "they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by" (140). Jose Arcadio Buendia is the main Buendia. He is the founder Macondo and is the one who made it into a great little town, "it was a truly happy village where no one was over thirty years of age and where no one had died" (9). The yellow flowers falling all over the place foreshadows what is going to happen because of his death: death, destruction, and change. Since the flowers cover everything, everyone has to adapt to the flowers being in the way and therefore break from their usual routines which is ultimately going to lead to the demise of Macondo.

One of the most important symbols in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the yellow train. Modernization is the ultimate destroyer and the yellow train what brings it all to Macondo. "The innocent yellow train that was to bring so many ambiguities and certainties, so many pleasant and unpleasant moments, so many changes, calamities, and feelings of nostalgia to Macondo" (222). With the yellow train comes electricity, a movie theater, the phonograph, and then the telephone.

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