On a Tuesday of a hundred years of solitude, José Arcadio Buendía, the enigmatic patriarch of the Buendía family, suddenly realizes that “it’s always Monday, like yesterday” (Marquez 77). At first this may seem like madness; the characters around him all discredit his idea, and he is ultimately tied to a chestnut tree after his realization drives him mad (78). However, his statement goes further than it seems. The realization that it is “still Monday” even as the week continues to progress speaks to the larger theme of the cyclical and ultimately stagnant nature of time in the novel (77). Throughout the novel, Macondo experiences many technological advancements, globalization, and population growth, but ultimately the city succumbs to collapse and returns to a pre-civilization state. Even as the plot and events move forward, the characters seem to repeat themselves, as the constant flow of “José Arcadios” and “Aurelianos” confuses and distorts what would be considered a logical or orderly progression of time. Even though time brings progress and change, it eventually erases them, causing a cycle to begin again. Monday represents the start of these cycles. It is the first day of creation in the book of Genesis and is used in the novel to frame the beginning of important events. The fact that José Arcadio Buendía declares that every day is Monday shows that Macondo is an analogue of human civilization, symbolizing that despite any apparent progress, time eventually erodes everything; progress and change are only illusions, because things will always return to their “Monday”. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayJosé Arcadio Buendía comes to grips with the fact that his surroundings remain unchanged, despite the fact that it is supposed to be a different day. One Tuesday, he told his son Aureliano to “look at the sky, look at the walls, look at the begonias. Today is also Monday” (77). The next day, he declared that nature and its environment were “the same as yesterday and the day before yesterday. Today is also Monday” (77). It rejects the established passage of days in a week in favor of determining the day based on the immutable characteristics of life and the world around it. José Arcadio Buendía thus believes that, despite the dominant societal conception of distinct days of the week, each day is essentially the same from a broader perspective. Beyond the small changes of daily life, things like the sky, the sun, plants and walls remain the same. Thus, José Arcadio Buendía decides that the differences that time brings in people's lives are ultimately meaningless. The specific choice of Monday is important, because Monday is considered the start of the week's routine or cycle, as well as the first day. of God's creation of the Earth in the book of Genesis. If Sunday, the seventh day, is the day of rest, then Monday was the first day on which God “created the heavens and the earth.” From the first page of the novel, Macondo serves as a symbol for the world and for human civilization as a whole. Márquez writes that “the world was so new that many things lacked names” (1). The fact that, according to José Arcadio Buendía, in Macondo is always Monday means that it is essentially always the first day of Creation, always the beginning of time and history. Using Monday as a representation of this first day shows that the characters, plots, and Macondo as a whole seem to exist in cycles that eventually return to their previous states, such as technological influx and then eventual collapseof the city. or the repetition of incestuous relationships between characters, or the fact that characters with the same name tend to share aspects of a collective personality. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, it's always Monday, because things always end up going back to how they were before, despite any apparent changes that have occurred. In the context of the plague of insomnia, Monday serves as a representation of the nature of time in Macondo. At the time of the plague of insomnia, it was discovered that the entire city was affected "at dawn on Monday." The event began on Monday, but perhaps even more important is the fact that due to their amnesia, the townspeople begin each day without certain knowledge or memories, thus making each day seem like a Monday metaphorical in the sense that it marks the beginning. of another cycle of time. Additionally, the fact that they have to learn the names of things every day suggests the idea that they are almost recreating the world in their minds every day; each day they reset a cycle, stagnating over time. Despite their apparent progress in learning the names of objects throughout the day, or in their attempts to learn about their past through Pilar Ternera's card readings, they remain static, relying on labels to remind them of things they would otherwise forget. Additionally, the fact that the village does not sleep during this epidemic connects each day, blurring the lines between days. In this regard, the statement that it is always Monday carries significant significance for the scourge of insomnia, as it describes not only how amnesia seems to reset the minds and lives of urban dwellers, but also the fact that their lack of sleep blurs each successive step. day in the original Monday. In the case of the scourge of insomnia, Monday represents how time works in Macondo; everything returns to its beginning and, in the end, change is only an illusion, hiding the true cyclical and static nature of Macondo's history and events. When Colonel Aureliano Buendía is captured by the conservatives, he is brought back to Macondo on a Monday and is then given his sentence the following Monday, again showing the cyclical nature of time in the novel. The fact that both of these events occurred on a Monday reinforces the underlying meaning of Monday in the novel, as it underlines the idea that Mondays are ultimately the beginning and end of the Macondo cycles, based on in which time is constructed, constantly moving forward but continually returning to the same point. Colonel Aureliano's return to Macondo took place on a Monday and his final departure was also to take place on a Monday. These Mondays mark the end of the era of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. For a man so determined to bring about change by leading insurrections and rebellions, he ultimately could not escape the ultimate cycle of his life, returning to Macondo to live out his life making golden fish and doing virtually no work. no influence on the city as a businessman. entire. Despite all his efforts, despite the war and despite the deaths and changes that have occurred in Macondo, no change is permanent in the long term. Furthermore, the fact that it is always Monday in Macondo highlights the fact that Aureliano's return and his planned execution play out as real Macondo events, thus contributing to its cyclical time pattern. Ultimately, however, the most important mention of "Monday" in the novel may not be the word "Monday" at all. In Spanish, the word for Monday is lunes, which comes from the Latin dies Lunae, which basically translates to "day of the moon." The word "moon" only appears once in the entirenovel ; the night when José Arcadio Buendía and his wife Ursula finally have sex is described as “a beautiful June night, cool and with the moon” (22). Extrapolating from this passage, one could say that the origin of the entire Buendía line in Macondo – every José Arcadio, every Aureliano, every Amaranta – was essentially a metaphorical "Monday" on which the installation and the possible population of Macondo. . The family on which the novel centers began under the moon, under the influence of the symbol of Monday; If in Macondo every day is Monday, then every day is truly the beginning of its history, showing the stagnant nature of the city as a whole. Progress and change may have occurred, but the cyclical nature of events in Macondo means that eventually, events repeat, characters start over as the next generation grows up with the same names, and ultimately, the town itself - even ends up collapsing, all the vestiges of civilization. destroyed in the final phase of the novel. Towards the end of the novel, José Arcadio Segundo and his son Aureliano are visited by the apparition of an old man in Melquiadés' laboratory. The old man, presumably Melquiadés himself, explains that in the world many years before their birth, "there it was always March and always Monday" (348). Like Monday, March also symbolizes beginnings: the start of spring, the blooming of flowers and other beginnings associated with spring. But the fact that Macondo was always in its infancy shows that Macondo was trapped in a series of historical cycles in which no significant progress is ever made. Even at this point in the novel, where it is implied that it is no longer always Monday or always March, Macondo's progress and globalization are ultimately halted as growth slows, and ultimately reversed by the apocalyptic winds at the end of the novel. No period is safe from a possible return to Monday, at the beginning, because all time in Macondo follows this highly cyclical structure. After hearing Melquiadés say this, the two characters "understood that José Arcadio Buendia was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one with enough lucidity to feel the truth about the fact that the time also stumbled and had accidents.” (348). This sentence is extremely important, because it reinforces and legitimizes the assertions made by my José Arcadio Buendía much earlier in the novel. If José Arcadio Buendia was “the only one who had enough lucidity” to realize that it is in fact still Monday, then his realization carries much more weight than any member of his family believed. Time in the novel is imperfect, like everything else, but ultimately follows a pattern; things repeat themselves and return to previous states. José Arcadio Buendía's realization of this model through his metaphorical understanding of the concept of "Monday" frames the entire novel within the context of "Monday"; that is, Macondo's story exists as a series of cycles and a series of beginnings, and even when things come to an end, that end is ultimately just a return to the beginning. The concept and meaning of Monday is used several times. to frame important events and stories in the novel. Because of the cyclical narrative structure, José Arcadio Buendia's assertion that it is always Monday comes not from a place of madness but from a place of intense clarity; he understands that the small constructions of civilization, like the days of the week, ultimately have no meaning in the face of the immutable world around him. As people make changes throughout their lives,.