The Narrator of One Hundred Years of SolitudeWho is this narrator of One Hundred Years of Solitude? He or she knows the entire history of the Buendias better than any of them. But the narrator is not entirely omniscient. For example, the opening sentence (quoted earlier) and Pilar's vision of the "axis" of time are two of the few places where the narrator claims to be able to read a character's thoughts. In general, we learn about characters by carefully observing what they say and do, and we must infer what they are thinking. The narrator's knowledge is also lacking in the great unsolved mystery: José Arcadio, eldest son of the founder, is murdered in his bed, but no one ever knows by whom. The narrator also does not know who shot all of the Colonel's illegitimate sons and, in fact, seems as surprised as we are when the last survivor among these sons appears in Macondo and is also shot. There are two likely candidates for the narrator. One is Melquiades, the gypsy magician and sage...