Los ejemplos de mágica realismo en el uso de tiempo

 One of the most interesting aspects of magical realism in the novel plays a major role throughout the story but is not revealed until the last three pages. Remember the parchment written by Melquíades, our local priest-magician,  predicting the deaths of the first and the last of the Buendía line? Well, that wasn't the only parchment written about the family. In fact, before the founding of Macondo, Melquíades had already written several scrolls, in Sanskrit, no less detailing the one hundred years of solitude to be lived by the Buendías. While several of the men try their hand and deciphering the messages, it is ultimately the sole survivor, Aureliano, who is able to deciper the scrolls so easily "as if they had been written in Spanish," (García Márquez 415). What's so interesting about this is that the story is so detailed, that Aureliano questions whether or not his family was real or fictitious. This story within a story functions a lot like Hamlet.

"It was the history of the family, written by Melquíades, down to the most trivial details, one hundred years ahead of time. He had written it in Sanskrit, which was his mother tongue, and he had encoded the even lines in the private cipher of the Emperor Augustus and the odd ones in a Lacedemonian military code. The final protection, which Aureliano had begun to glimpse when he let himself be confused by the love of Amaranta Ursula, was based on the fact that Melquíades had not put events in the order of man's conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant." (García Márquez 415, emphasis my own).

While the Buendías had lived one hundred years in one town, this passage of time was smaller for Melquíades. As the biographer/prophet of all their fate, he was able to oversee their entire legacy before it occurred. Throughout the novel, he serves as a mentor and guide to the family, always apparently one step ahead of their questions and ready to provide needed guidance. Even after his death, his endowments of books, technology, alchemy and science serve to educate the younger generations.

The Buendias' progression of life seems to the reader to be the only story being told. However, with the revelation that the family's entire legacy was preconceived, it opens up an idea that goes deeper than surface level. It takes the story outside of the confines of time by telescoping and compressing an entire century into a single moment on a page. Through this, Aureliano finds himself trapped in the words on a page.

Now for a good dosage of irony (I promise, it all goes together).

While the discoveries of the family legacy and death of the last generation are both taking place, things are getting a little crazy outside the Buendía house.

"Then the wind began, warm, incipient, full of voices from the past, the murmurs of ancient geraniums, sighs of disenchantment that preceded the most tenacious nostalgia....

Macondo was already a fearful whirlwind of dust and rubble being spun about by the wrath of the biblical hurricane when Aureliano skipped eleven pages so as not to lose time with facts he knew only too well, and he began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror."(García Márquez 415)

 Continuing on...it's not just the whole town getting blown away that is so significant but also the room in which Aureliano is living out his last few moments. This particular room is called the "magic room" (more irony for ya) and has served many purposes over the century.

• The alchemy lab where Jose Arcadio Buendía conducted experiments with the technology and tools purchased from the gypsies.
• Haunted by Melquíades ghost
• Where Aureliano's father taught him to read.
• The room is impervious to outside influence, such as dust, heat, wind, or fading from the sun. This traps the room into perpetual preservation. 

In a room impervious to the changes of time, the scrolls of the Buendía family's history and future are preserved until the last Buendía discovers the family secret. 

 "For García Márquez, history and reality are as open to imaginative interpretation as are the time and memory, for if memory is known to be somewhat unreliable and our concept of time too rigid, so are many of our unquestioned assumptions." ( McNerney 25)