The novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," deals with the story of the Buendia family. It is the chronicle of a family with, "inescapable repetitions, confusions and progressive decline. The novel covers the time span of a family's rise and fall; from Jose Arcadio Buendia to the death of the last member of the line." The story starts when Colonel Aureliano Buendia recalls the first time, "when his father took him to discover ice." A new and fresh world of Macondo which has been introduced is, "overshadowed by the fact that he is facing a firing squad." The memory of a character introduces us to Macondo (Vijayaraghavan, 2). .
Events of several hundred years show the evolution of Macondo; from the years 1850 to 1950. In the beginning things lacked names in the town and the newly established town is compared to Eden "where human memory has been wiped totally." Memory is quite complex in this novel. Sultana Wahnon elaborates this by talking about the "scourge of forgetting. At the time when Jose Arcadio and Ursula grasp the reins of their fate, the Buendia clan is of a lineage that is predisposed to forgetting historical experience." The implication here is not that Macandoans do not have a past but that they are not interested in "shaping the contours of that past." Both leave the town with the purpose of forgetting, leaving and moving away from Riohacha, so that they, "do not meet anyone they know." They do not take up the route which might lead them to their past. The founders are not able to remove their fears from their lives and decide to flee from Prudencio's ghost and also from the fear of a child with a pig's tale by, "embracing progress," (Wahnon 196). Rebecca who comes with a letter from a distant relative is not identified by any of the family members. Family members have totally forgotten about their relatives.