In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Colonel Aureliano Buendía experiences several metamorphoses that give him his multidimensional character. However, these metamorphoses become regressive and he finds himself desperate as he struggles with the endless cycle of his transformations. He constantly oscillates between his polar identities as a scientist and a soldier, and ultimately loses any true commitment to either. Each transition from one character to another causes Aureliano to become increasingly disillusioned with his nature and further trapped in his nostalgia, ultimately leading to his death. Aureliano is Márquez's greatest omen of the future demise of the Buendía family, a harbinger of the disaster to come. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay After the Liberals lose their unsuccessful war and the Colonel recognizes his growing arrogance, he falls back into his hermetic cocoon, where he begins producing fish gold in his laboratory. His obsession with science leads him to greater withdrawal from society, but nostalgia for the war brings him back to his pride. Considered the original and most serious sin, pride further hinders Aurelian from humility and love, a trait of which he appears to be incapable. Although he falls back into his golden fish, he is already hardened by his many battles and experiences a complete detachment from people and himself. Colonel Aureliano's entry into adulthood constitutes his greatest and most significant transformation. His leap from the laboratory to the war is a total shock to the reader and one of the most powerful character changes in the novel. While Aureliano spends “endless hours in the abandoned workshop, learning the art of silversmithing,” he begins to create his cocoon (Márquez 39). He focuses “so much on his experiments…that he barely [leaves] the laboratory to eat” and takes on an impervious lifestyle, completely devoted 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 dedicates himself to the crazy proposal to marry this prostitute and free her from "the grandmother's despotism", but is irritated when he discovers that she has left the city and resigns himself "to being a man without a woman for his whole life - in order to hide the shame of its uselessness” (Márquez 53). Aureliano's armor experiences its first crack upon the arrival of Don Apolinar Moscote's family. . Despite Aureliano's apathetic attitude towards women, he is mesmerized 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 "annoys [ Aureliano] when he walks, like a pebble in his shoe” (Márquez 58). Aureliano is troubled by Remedios' thoughts and tormented by his loneliness. His detachment from science becomes more evident when he welcomes Remedios into his laboratory. His focus shifts from dedication to his work to a newfound obsession with Remedios. Aureliano grants her entry into his realm of alchemy and offers her his little fish with a level of enthusiasm that scares Remedios and causes her to flee. 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 a poem that has no beginning or end: “on the hard pieces of parchment… on the bathroom walls, on the skin of his arms”, inall of which Remedios appears (Márquez 65).While planning their wedding, Aureliano's priorities experience an earthquake: he gets closer to his bride and distances himself from his chemistry. However, before her transformation can fully take place, “[Remedios] wakes up in the middle of the night immersed in a hot broth that has exploded in her bowels… and dies three days later, poisoned by her own blood” (Márquez 68). The abortion causes Aureliano to feel disoriented again, trapped in a state of withdrawal and longing for another way out of 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 silversmith to lover and a regression from sentimental man to devotee of medieval science. The conflict between the liberal and conservative parties erupts at an opportune moment for Aureliano. He sees the war as an outlet for his emotional turmoil and takes on an identity unlike anything in his past. Although initially impartial towards any policy, Aureliano observes the magistrate illegally opening the polls and cheating the conservative side, “leaving only ten red [votes] and making up the difference with blue [votes]” (Márquez 96). . Sympathizing with liberals and understanding the disadvantages of being in opposition, Aureliano states that “If [he] is to be anything [he will be] a liberal…because conservatives are deceitful” (Márquez 96). After witnessing the subterfuge of Don Apolinar Moscote, Aureliano turns to the youth of Macondo and undertakes 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 loneliness and begins another metamorphosis of character. Beginning to lead the rebellion, Aureliano grants himself the title “colonel” and eventually conquers Macondo for the liberals. Aureliano's new identity as a soldier figure 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 to his enemies and is sentenced to death. His execution is scheduled in Macondo "as a lesson to the populace", and he begins to understand the emptiness of war, stating that "A person messes up so badly... only for six weak fairies to kill him." and he can't do anything 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 revolt, the first of thirty-two that fail and highlight the futility of the war (Márquez 129). Despite realizing that “[the war] means nothing to anyone,” Aureliano is blinded by his own pride and determined to continue the liberal regime (Márquez 136). A war mentality takes over the colonel and prevents him from understanding why he continues to fight for the party, fundamentally distancing him from his true feelings. The main cause of many other sins, pride gives rise to Aureliano's 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 that the liberals experience gives rise to an “illusion of victory” that Aureliano understands to be false, leaving him with the “feeling of being trapped against the sea” and desperate for a “loophole through which [he can] escape. ” (Márquez 134). In his quest to find this “loophole,” Aureliano fights his pride and ultimately prevails, but the endhis struggle marks only the beginning of another. By losing faith in the war, Aureliano also loses faith in a life after the war. He decays into a shell of the man he was, drawn by nostalgia for his former life, then relapses 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 returns to a solitary lifestyle, he cannot help but notice the war's flaws and the need for an end. Whether he sincerely desires the war or simply wants to end it, Colonel Aureliano “scratch[es] for many hours, trying to break the hard shell of his loneliness” (Márquez 169). He eventually 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 had fought so enthusiastically. The attempted and failed suicide 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 had rotted” and realizes that he cannot find it (Márquez 173). His memories have been buried so deep that even the thought of Remedios seems like a hazy image of someone who might 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 had been swept away by the war” (Márquez 173). Instead of attempting to revive any emotion, Aureliano decides to bury it once and for all; he burns his old poetry to ashes. He tries to leave the past increasingly behind by freeing himself from memories, but the emptiness leaves him only with “the nostalgia for glory” (Márquez 176). Realizing that he cannot free himself from the nostalgia of the war, Aureliano takes refuge in his laboratory and “loses all contact with the reality of the nation” (Márquez 198). Once again, Aureliano abandons one identity for another. This time, however, he doesn't approach his gold work with the same enthusiasm. Aurelian has been hardened and exhausted by his wars and seeks goldfish creation as a sanctuary rather than a true hobby. His only relationship with the rest of the world becomes his business in 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 these coins into other fish, only to underline the cycle Aureliano is experiencing within it. Due to his restless nature, Aureliano's dedication to his workshop cannot free him from the nostalgia of rebellion. Although he devotes his eyes and hands to his work, he cannot close his ears to the world outside his shop. When Aureliano finds out about Mr. Brown and the banana plantations, he states: “Look at the disaster we have made just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas” (Márquez 228). Aureliano loses his calm in the face of this foreign invasion and falls back into cycle: “I'll arm my boys so we can get rid of these shitty gringos!” (Márquez 238) He immediately abandons the making of the minnows and directs his efforts towards finding the means to wage another war Gerineldo Márquez, who at the time was “really the only one who could have pulled… the musty threads of the rebellion,” and begs for help in starting a “deadly conflagration” against the foreign invader (Márquez 242). , however, only feels pity for Aureliano and rejects his idea.