In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Colonel Aureliano Buendía experiences several metamorphoses which give him his multidimensional character. However, these metamorphoses become regressive and he finds himself in despair as he struggles with the endless cycle of his transformations. He constantly oscillates between his polar identities as a scientist and a soldier, and he eventually loses any real commitment to either. Each shift from one character to the next causes Aureliano to become more disillusioned with his nature and even more entangled in his nostalgia, ultimately leading to his demise. Aureliano is for Márquez the greatest harbinger of the eventual disappearance of the Buendía family, a foreshadowing of the disaster to come. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayAfter the liberals lose their unsuccessful war and the colonel recognizes his growing hubris, he falls back into his airtight cocoon, where he begins to make gold. fish in his workshop. His obsession with science leads him to a greater withdrawal from society, but his nostalgia for war brings him back to his pride. Considered the original sin and the most serious of sins, pride still handicaps Aureliano from humility and love, of which he seems incapable. Although he returns to his golden fish, he is already hardened by his many battles and experiences complete detachment from people as well as himself. Colonel Aureliano's entry into adulthood constitutes his greatest and most significant transformation. His jump from laboratory to war is a complete shock to the reader and one of the most powerful character changes in the novel. As Aureliano spends “endless hours in the abandoned laboratory, learning the art of working with silver,” he begins to make his cocoon (Márquez 39). He becomes “so focused on his experiments…that he [barely] leaves the laboratory to eat” and adopts an impervious lifestyle, devoted entirely to alchemy (Márquez 40). Aureliano's ignorance, due to his hermeticism, becomes evident when he throws extra coins into a prostitute's hopper, not out of desire or need, but out of pity and guilt. He launches into the crazy proposition of marrying this prostitute and freeing her from "the despotism of her grandmother", but he is annoyed when he discovers that she has left town and resigns himself "to being a man without woman all her life -- to hide the shame of her uselessness” (Márquez 53). Aureliano's shell experiences its first crack upon the arrival of Don Apolinar Moscote's family. The magistrate takes his wife and seven daughters to settle in at the Hotel Jacob, where they are welcomed by José Arcadio and Aureliano. Despite Aureliano's nonchalant attitude towards women, he is fascinated by the image of Don Moscote's youngest daughter, Remedios. The nine-year-old's “lily-colored skin and green eyes” become a physical sensation that “bothers [Aureliano] when he walks, like a pebble in his shoe” (Márquez 58). Aureliano is troubled by the thought of Remedios and tormented by his solitude. His detachment from science becomes more evident when he welcomes Remedios into his laboratory. His focus shifts from dedication to his work to a new obsession with Remedios. Aureliano grants her entry into his realm of alchemy and offers her his little fish with a level of eagerness that surprises Remedios and scares her away. As Aureliano falls more and more in love, everything in his life begins to remind him of Remedios and he begins to neglect his work. “The house [becomes] full of love” and Aureliano expresses it in poetry that has neitherbeginning nor end: “on the hard pieces of parchment…on the walls of the bathroom, on the skin of his arms”, in which Remedios appears. (Marquez 65). As their marriage is arranged, Aureliano's priorities undergo an earthquake: he grows closer to his wife and further away from her chemistry. However, before her transformation can fully take place, "[Remedios] wakes up in the middle of the night soaked in a hot broth that exploded in her insides... and dies three days later, poisoned by her own blood" (Márquez 68). The miscarriage leaves Aureliano once again disoriented, trapped in a state of withdrawal and hungry for another outlet for his loneliness. He begins to bury his affection for Remedios and his love for the world, leaving only his poetry as a memory. The future colonel completes his first cycle, a transformation from goldsmith to lover and a regression from man of sentiment to enthusiast of medieval sciences. The conflict between the liberal and conservative parties erupted at an opportune moment for Aureliano. He sees the war as an outlet for his emotional turmoil and adopts an identity different from anything in his past. Although he is initially impartial towards all politics, Aureliano observes the magistrate illegally opening the ballot boxes and cheating for the conservative side, "leaving only ten red [votes] and making up the difference with the blue [votes]" (Marquez 96). . Sympathizing with liberals and understanding the disadvantages of being in opposition, Aureliano declares that “if he has to be anything, he will be liberal… because conservatives are cunning” (Márquez 96). After witnessing Don Apolinar Moscote's subterfuge, Aureliano reaches out to the youth of Macondo and embarks on a furtive campaign against the conservative parody. He announces that “the only effective [approach] is violence” and, despite his ties to the magistrate, develops an intervention plan with the conservative establishment (Márquez 98). Obsessed by the imminence of war, Aureliano frees himself from his solitude and begins another metamorphosis of character. As he begins to lead the rebellion, Aureliano grants himself the title of "colonel" and ends up conquering Macondo for the liberals. Aureliano's new identity as a soldier paves the way for him to become the legendary but erratic leader of the Liberal armies. When the liberals lose the war, Colonel Aureliano falls prisoner of his enemies and is condemned to death. His execution is planned in Macondo "as a lesson to the people", and he begins to understand the emptiness of war, saying: "A person screws up so much... just so six weak fairies can kill him." and he can do nothing about it” (Márquez 128). However, when he is miraculously saved by José Arcadio, Aureliano starts another war on the spot. He “contacts the sleeping liberals” and organizes another uprising, the first in a series of thirty-two that failed and underlined the futility of the war (Márquez 129). Even realizing that “[the war] has no meaning for anyone,” Aureliano is blinded by his own pride and determined to maintain the liberal regime (Márquez 136). A war mentality takes hold of the Colonel and prevents him from understanding why he continues to fight for the party, fundamentally detaching him from his true feelings. The root cause of many other sins, pride sparks in Aureliano the desire to be more important than others, but this need is quickly extinguished when he discovers the lack of light at the end of the tunnel of war. The small success experienced by the liberals gives rise to an "illusion of victory" which Aureliano understands is false, leaving him with the "feeling of being surrounded against the sea" and in a desperate search for an "escape through which he [can] escape.» (Marquez 134). In his quest to find this "escape", Aureliano fights his pride and ultimately prevails, but the end of his struggle marks only the beginning of another. Losing confidence in the war, Aureliano also loses confidence in a life after the war. He decays into a shell of the man he was, drawn by nostalgia for his old life but then falling back into a soldier, this time fighting against his own liberal party in an attempt to end the war. Aureliano thus completes another cycle, from warrior to hermit and back to fighter. As Aureliano falls back into a solitary life, he cannot help but notice the flaws of war and the need to end it. Whether he truly yearns for war or simply wants to end it, Colonel Aureliano “scratches for many hours, trying to break the hard shell of his solitude” (Márquez 169). Eventually, he returns to war but now fights for “his own liberation and not for abstract ideals” (Márquez 170). But this second attempt at war only weakens Aureliano when he realizes that he has betrayed the same party for which he fought so enthusiastically. His suicide attempt and failure leaves him in a state of emotional hardness, where "he makes a last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection has rotted" and realizes that he cannot find (Márquez 173). His memories have been buried so deeply that even the thought of Remedios appears as a blurred image of someone who could have been his daughter rather than his wife. He recognizes that all his travels and conquests left no trace in his feelings and that in the end, “everything was destroyed by the war” (Márquez 173). Instead of trying to revive an emotion, Aureliano decides to bury it once and for all; he reduces his old poetry to ashes. He tries to leave the past further and further behind him by getting rid of his memories, but the void leaves him only “nostalgia for glory” (Márquez 176). Realizing that he cannot rid himself of his desire for war, Aureliano takes refuge in his workshop and “loses all contact with the reality of the nation” (Márquez 198). Once again, Aureliano abandons one identity for another. But this time, he does not approach his work on gold with the same enthusiasm. Aureliano has been hardened and exhausted by his wars and seeks goldfish making as a sanctuary rather than a true hobby. His only relationship with the rest of the world becomes his affair with these little goldfish; he even shudders at the thought of war and tells others “don’t talk to me about politics” (Márquez 198). Márquez throws Aureliano into a vicious cycle of exchanging gold fish for gold coins only to convert those coins into more fish, only to emphasize the cycle Aureliano is experiencing inside. Due to his restless nature, Aureliano's dedication to his workshop cannot rid him of his nostalgia for rebellion. Although he devotes his eyes and hands to his work, he cannot close his ears to the world outside his store. When Aureliano finds out about Mr. Brown and the banana plantations, he says, “Look at the mess we find ourselves in. just because we invited a gringo to eat bananas” (Márquez 228). Aureliano loses his calm in the face of this foreign invasion and falls back into the cycle: "I'm going to arm my boys so we can get rid of these shitty gringos!" (Mark 238). He immediately abandoned his making of small fish and directed his efforts towards finding ways to wage another war. Aureliano visits Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, who at the time was "really the only one who could have pulled... the strings.