We know this book is fiction. But as we come to know the town of
Macondo, we begin to see how fiction can impart a larger truth
about ourselves. Often as not, fiction can be more revealing of
truth than any reportage of bare fact. After all, facts can be
distorted. When you, as a reader, are presented with anecdotes
that stretch credibility—the insomnia plague that makes people
forget who they are and where they came from; the rain that
lasts four years, eleven months and two days; the slaughter that
is forgotten in the time it takes José Arcadio Segundo to return
home from the train—ask yourself why the narrator has done this.
Are his stories meant to be interpreted literally? Doubtful.
It's much more likely that he wanted you to look beyond facts
for the truth that they are meant to represent. Could the
insomnia plague relate to a loss of collective identity, just as
much as it relates to a literal illness? Could the unrelenting
rain evoke the kind of inertia and loss of morale that swamps a
town and its pe