1. War is futile, this is reflected by the dehumanization and ultimate demise of Col. Aureliano Buendia through his war efforts. Chapter 6 opens with an entire page listing all of Col. Buendia’s miraculous victories over death, war honors and responsibilities bestowed on Buendia as a Colonel, as well as how little recognition Buendia earned in his lifetime. “Colonel Aureliano Buendia organized thirty-two armed uprisings and he lost them all. He had seventeen male children…they were exterminated one after the other on a single night before the oldest one had reached the age of thirty-five,”(page 103). Despite the continued ramblings that describe foiled assassination attempts on his life, his reputable legacy and dignity that prevented him from accepting a lifetime pension in order to pursue his gold fishes – all the fighting and war was futile, he gained nothing from his experience except agony at the realization that his purpose in life was for a violent, futile cause. The only thing left to commemorate his achievements was a street named after him in Macondo, but no one would ever know all Col. Buendia endured in the name of war. Col Buendia sinks into succumbs to his despair and becomes engulfed by sadness and a feeling of futility that his life of war has brought.
“Little by little, however, and as the war became more intense and widespread, his image was fading away into a universe of unreality. The characteristics of his speech were more and more uncertain, and they came together and combined to form words that were gradually losing all meaning,”(page 161).
His fleeting war fever opened up sadness and a new purpose for war, “He was never a greater soldier than at that time. The certainty that he was finally fighting for his own liberation and not for abstract ideals, for slogans that politicians could twist left and right according the circumstances, filled him with an ardent enthusiasm,”(page 170).
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