Strategic Gendered Power in One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Game Theoretic and New Historicist Reading

Abstract

This research, which uses a combination of Game Theory, New Historicism, and Gender Theory portrays One Hundred Years of Solitude as a play of strategic decisions, influenced by the mixed ideologies of machismo and marianismo. It emphasizes the choices of four characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán, Aureliano Buendía, and Amaranta, and interprets their decisions as personal and symbolic actions, as calculated moves in a game that is historically determined. Nights of the novel are juxtaposed with Colombia's political tumults, from the Thousand Days' War to the Banana Massacre, as the colonial past and gendered codes consistently swing between dominance, cohesion and resistance. These strategies are explained using computational models in R, including payoff matrices and multi-round simulations: Machismo is an early winner but a long-term loser, while marianismo is a long-term winner at great personal expense. Combining close reading and formal modeling, the article provides new insights into Márquez's work and provides a replicable model for examining how literature represents the strategic logic of power under patriarchy.