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Ethos
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Firing Squad:
Throughout the novel, the narrator foreshadows a later incident in which Aureliano Buendía, having served as a rebel leader in a bloody civil war, faces a firing squad. This repetitive foreshadowing begins in the very first lines of the novel:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.
The narrator foreshadows this later event from the opening lines of the book, foregrounding the importance of this later event among the many incidents, both major and minor, detailed in the book as it tells the story of multiple generations of the Buendía family. By beginning the story in this manner, the narrator presents key events in the novel, such as the day that the residents of Macondo are first introduced to ice, as a sort of flashback. Much of the story, then, is presented in the form of memories that run through Aureliano’s mind as he faces death.
Related Themes:
