Centenary Paper: One Hundred Years Largely Wasted: The Waste Land Myth in Gabriel García Márquez’s <i>Cien años de soledad</i>

This article aims to establish a connection between Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad and the Waste Land myth. The novel is understood as a reconfiguration of the myth, focusing on its core themes. In it, the reasons for the barrenness that has tainted the Buendía family through generations is explored, leading to an inevitable Waste Land. The myth’s archetypes are embodied by the characters in the novel, re-enacting some of the essential episodes and quests in the Arthurian canon. The analysis follows Tennyson’s rendition of the myth, in which there is no hope for a kingdom inscribed in a cyclical Waste Land, and is further developed in the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, who places Macondo in a degenerative cyclicality.