One Tuesday in One Hundred Years of Solitude, José Arcadio Buendía, the enigmatic patriarch of the Buendía family, suddenly realizes that "it's still Monday, like yesterday " (Marquez 77). At first, this may seem crazy; all the characters around him discredit his idea, and he is eventually tied to a chestnut tree after his realization drives him mad (78). However, his claim is more than meets the eye. The realization that it is “still Monday” even as the week continues to progress speaks to the larger theme of the cyclical and ultimately stagnant nature of time in the novel (77). Throughout the novel, Macondo experiences much technological progress, globalization, and population growth, but ultimately the city succumbs to collapse and returns to a pre-civilization state. Even as the plot and events move forward, the characters seem to repeat themselves, as the constant flow of "José Arcadios" and "Aurelianos" confuses and distorts what would be considered a logical or orderly progression of time. While time brings progress and change, it ultimately erases them, once again resulting in the beginning of a cycle. Monday represents the beginning of these cycles. It is the first day of creation in the Book of Genesis and is used in the novel to frame the beginning of important events. The fact that José Arcadio Buendía declares that every day is Monday shows that Macondo is an analogue of human civilization, symbolizing that, despite all apparent progress, time ultimately erodes everything; progress and change are just illusions, because things will always return to their "Monday". Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayJosé Arcadio Buendía comes to his conclusion based on the fact that the surrounding environment remains unchanged, despite the fact that it is supposed to be a different day. One Tuesday he tells his son Aureliano to “look at the sky, look at the walls, look at the begonias. Today is Monday too” (77). The next day he declares that nature and the surrounding environment are “the same as yesterday and the day before yesterday. Today is Monday too” (77). It rejects the established passage of days in a week in favor of determining the day based on the immutable characteristics of life and the world around it. In this way José Arcadio Buendía decides that, despite the prevailing social concept of distinct days of the week, each day is essentially the same from a broader point of view. Beyond the small changes of daily life, things like the sky, the sun, the plants and the walls remain the same. Thus, José Arcadio Buendía decides that the differences that time brings to people's lives are ultimately meaningless. The specific choice of Monday is important, because Monday is seen as the beginning of the routine, or cycle, of the week, as well as the first day of God's creation of the Earth in the Book of Genesis. If Sunday, the seventh day, is the day of rest, then Monday was the first day that God “created the heavens and the earth.” From the first page of the novel, Macondo serves as a symbol for the world and human civilization as a whole. Márquez writes that “the world was so recent that many things had no name” (1). The fact that, according to José Arcadio Buendía, in Macondo it is always Monday, means that essentially it is always the first day of Creation, always the beginning of time and history. The use of Monday as a representation of this initial day shows that the characters, plots, and Macondo as a whole seem to exist in cycles that eventually return to their previous states, such as the technological influx and then the eventual collapse of the city, or the repetition of incestuous relationships betweencharacters, or the fact that characters who have the same name tend to share aspects of a collective personality. In One Hundred Years of Solitude it is always Monday, because things in the end always go back to the way they were before, despite every apparent change that has taken place. In the context of the plague of insomnia, Monday serves as a representation of the nature of time in Macondo. During the time of the insomnia plague, it was discovered that the entire city was affected by it “that Monday dawn.” The event began on Monday, but what is perhaps even more important is the fact that, due to their amnesia, the citizens begin each day without certain knowledge or memories, thus making each day seem like a metaphorical Monday as it marks the start of another cycle of time. Furthermore, the fact that they have to learn the names of things every day points to the idea that they are almost recreating the world in their mind every day; every day they restore a cycle, stagnant over time. Despite their apparent progress in learning the names of objects as each day progresses, or in attempting to learn about their past through Pilar Ternera's card readings, they remain static, relying on labels to remind them of things they would otherwise forget . Furthermore, the fact that the village does not sleep during this plague links each day together, blurring the lines between the days. In this regard, the statement that it is always Monday has significant meaning for the plague of insomnia, because it describes not only the way in which amnesia seems to reset the minds and lives of citizens, but also the fact that their lack of sleep clouds every subsequent day in the original Monday. In the case of the plague of insomnia, Monday represents the way time passes in Macondo; everything returns to its beginning and, ultimately, change is just an illusion, which hides the true cyclical and static nature of Macondo's history and events. When Colonel Aureliano Buendía is captured by the conservatives, he is brought back to Macondo one Monday and then given his sentence the following Monday, once again showing the cyclicality of time in the novel. The fact that both of these events happened on a Monday reinforces the underlying meaning of Monday in the novel, as it points to the idea that Mondays are ultimately the beginning and end of the Macondo cycles, the foundation upon which time is built , constantly moving forward but at the same time continually returning to the same point. Colonel Aureliano's return to Macondo takes place on Monday, and his definitive departure was also supposed to take place on Monday. These Mondays mark the end of the era of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. For a man so intent on enacting change by leading uprisings and rebellions, he was ultimately unable to escape the final cycle of his life, returning to Macondo to live out his life creating golden fish and exerting almost no influence on the town as a Total. Despite his best efforts, despite the war, and despite the deaths and changes in Macondo, none of these changes are permanent in the long run. Furthermore, the fact that it is always Monday in Macondo highlights the fact that Aureliano's return and his planned execution play out as real Macondo events, thus contributing to its cyclical time model. Ultimately, however, the most notable mention of "Monday" in the novel may not be the word "Monday" at all. In Spanish, the word for Monday is lunes, which comes from the Latin dies Lunae, which essentially translates to “day of the moon.” The word "moon" appears only once in the entire novel; the night in which José Arcadio Buendía and his wife Ursula finally have sexual intercourse is described as “a beautiful night in June, cool and with the moon” (22). Extrapolating fromthis passage, one might say that the origin of the entire Buendía line in Macondo – every José Arcadio, every Aureliano, every Amaranta – was essentially a metaphorical "Monday" on which the eventual settlement and population of Macondo was based. . The family on which the novel centers began under the moon, under the influence of the symbol of Monday; if every day is Monday in Macondo, then every day is truly the beginning of its story, showing the stagnant nature of the city seen as a whole. Progress and change may have occurred, but the cyclical nature of events in Macondo means that events eventually repeat themselves, characters start over as the next generation grows up with the same names, and finally, the town itself eventually collapses , all remnants of civilization swept away in the final stage of the novel. Towards the end of the novel, José Arcadio Segundo and his son Aureliano are visited by an apparition of an old man in Melquiadés' laboratory. The old man, presumably Melquiadés himself, explains that, in the world many years before they were born, “there it was always March and always Monday” (348). Like Monday, March also symbolizes beginnings: the beginning of spring, the blooming of flowers, and other beginnings associated with spring. But the fact that Macondo has always been in an early stage shows that Macondo was trapped in a series of historical cycles, in which significant progress was never achieved. Even at this point in the novel, where it is implied that it is no longer always Monday or always March, Macondo's progress and globalization are ultimately halted by slowing growth, and finally reversed by the apocalyptic winds at the end of the novel. No time frame is safe from the eventual return to Monday, at first, as all time in Macondo follows this highly cyclical structure. After hearing this from Melquiadés, the two characters “understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as his family said, but that he was the only one who had enough clarity to understand the truth of the fact that even time stumbled and had accidents ”. (348). This sentence is extremely important, since it reinforces and legitimizes the statements made by my José Arcadio Buendía much earlier in the novel. If José Arcadio Buendía was “the only one who had enough clarity” to realize that, in reality, it is always Monday, then his awareness has much more weight than his family believed. Time in the novel is imperfect, like everything else, but ultimately follows a pattern; things repeat themselves and return to previous states. José Arcadio Buendía's realization of this pattern through his metaphorical understanding of the concept of "Monday" frames the entire novel in the context of being "Monday"; that is, Macondo's story exists as a series of cycles and a series of beginnings, and even when things end, that end is ultimately just a return to the beginning. The concept and meaning of Monday is used on multiple occasions to frame important events and stories within the novel. Because of the cyclical narrative structure, José Arcadio Buendía's statement that it is always Monday does not come from a place of madness but from a place of intense clarity; he understands that the petty constructs of civilization, such as the days of the week, are ultimately meaningless in the face of the immutable world around him. Although people make changes throughout their lives, Macondo's story along with the use of "Monday" shows that, in the end, these changes accomplish nothing; Macondo is constantly in an initial state and any change eventually erodes and returns to its original state. From each character sharing the name "Aureliano" having similar personality traits, to the fact that Macondo himself eventually collapsed,.