Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,’ the story of the seven generations of the Buendias unfolds in the town of Macondo. Every member of the family is born with their own tragic fate, which unravels over the course of many tragedies and heartbreaks. There are a lot of brutal and untimely deaths, with several members dying in the prime of their lives. And, interestingly, only one person watches the whole thing go down from the start to almost the finish. The family’s matriarch, Ursula, remains the last bastion of sanity and protection for her family, and with her death, whatever remains comes crashing. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ursula Dies of Extreme Old Age
Over the course of seven generations, the Buendias lose themselves to various plagues. They are consumed either by solitude, rage, and war, or by love and lust. Each bears their own cross through a turbulent life that tests them to their limits. Several of them lose their minds, especially in the final years of their lives, and the one too lucid and pure for this world literally ascends to the heavens. The only person who remains clear-headed throughout is Ursula. She rules the family, and at one point, the town, with an iron fist and a determination that brings the most bloodthirsty dictators of the town to their knees. But eventually, old age catches up with her, arriving in the form of blindness. By this point, Ursula has already crossed the century mark.
Her eyes seem to have given up, but that doesn’t keep the matriarch from going about her life as if it’s just another day. She has spent so many years in her house and the ever-changing town of Macondo that the memory of the rest of her senses keeps her functional. For a time, she manages to hide her blindness even from her family. And sure enough, the lack of sight does not prevent her from knowing things that others can’t see. Eventually, however, her body begins to break down as well, and it starts to shrink. Following the Banana Massacre, when the four-year-long rains come, she is permanently confined to bed. Eventually, she sees her own death, knowing she will leave her body when the rains leave Macondo. This is exactly what happens.
When the sun eventually shines on Macondo, Ursula’s soul leaves her body. We see her reunite with her husband, Jose Arcadio Buendia, whose ghost never left the house, sitting by the tree where he had spent the last years of his life. Ursula had been the only one who could see her husband’s spirit, and so, when her own spirit leaves her body, she is reunited with him in death. Meanwhile, her family finds her dead in her bed, bidding her goodbye. At this point, Ursula had been so old that it had become hard to ascertain her age. It is believed that she was somewhere between 115 and 122. One thing that is for certain is that she was the only one who saw all seven generations of her family, and died before her fear of an incestuous relationship in the family, leading to the birth of a child with a pig’s tail, could come true.
Her being the force that kept everything together explains why things fall apart so quickly after her death. Amaranta Ursula is sent away to Brussels by her father, who dies soon after, along with his twins. Having witnessed the deaths of all her children, Sofia leaves the house and is never seen again. The last ones to remain in the decrepit house are Fernanda and her daughter’s illegitimate son, Aureliano. He suffers from his own curse of solitude, something Ursula had seen in his eyes even in her blindness, leading her to christen him Aureliano. Interestingly, no one beyond the ones she has seen survives the story. She dies having known Meme’s son, Aureliano, the last Buendia, with whom the family’s hundred-year story comes to an end. Thus, in a sense, Ursula bookmarks not just the starting of the tale but also its end.
Read More: One Hundred Years of Solitude Season 2: Is Remedios the Beauty Dead?
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