1. Jose Arcadio Buendia

His imagination goes beyond nature, miracles, and magic (11).
Thought he could use the magnetized ingots of the gypsies to extract gold from the earth (11).
He didn't believe Melquiades was being honest when he told Jose Arcadio Buendias that the ingots would not work for extracting gold from the earth (11).
Traded his mule and a pair of goats for the ingots (11).
The only thing he found with the ingots was a suit of fifteenth-century armor, inside of which was a skeleton wearing a locket that contained a woman's hair (12).
Thought he could use the magnifying glass the gypsies brought as a war weapon; traded the 2 ingots and three colonial coins for the magnifying glass (12).
Using the magnifying glass, he exposed himself to the sun and suffered burns, to demonstrate the effects the magnifying glass would have on the enemy (13).
Created an instructional manual for the magnifying glass as a weapon of war that he sent to the government (13).
Was prepared to train military authorities "in the complicated art of solar war" (13).
Spent months shut up in a room conducting experiments with the instruments of navigation Melquiades had given him: the astrolabe, compass, and sextant (13).
"He conceived a notion of space that allowed him to navigate across unknown seas, to visit uninhabited territories, and to establish relations with splendid beings without having to leave his study" (14).
Discovered on his own that the earth is round--a notion his family found crazy (14).
Could "pull down a horse by grabbing its ears" (15).
Had unyielding obstinacy (17).
Dug up Ursala's colonial coins believing he could double their quantity; in his attempt to do so, he had turned his wife's inheritance into "a large piece of burnt hog cracklings that was firmly stuck to the bottom of the pot" (17).
Was so fascinated by Melquiades fake teeth he lost his interest in alchemy, ate irregularly, and would spend the day walking around the house; he felt these fake teeth were proof of magical and incredible things going on in the rest of the world while Macondo went on "living like donkeys" (17).
Was a patriarchal youth who worked for the welfare of the community (17).
Set up the houses in Macondo so that they all received the same amount of sun and could all reach the river with equal effort (19)
Built traps and cages from the time they founded Macondo, so that soon the whole village was filled with birds and their songs (19)
Ignorant of the region's geography (19)
Founded Macondo with other people after 26 months searching (and failing) to find an outlet to the sea (19)
Believed in fate, that his was whimsical, and that it was tricking him when he searched for the sea "at the cost of countless sacrifices and suffering" but only found it when he wasn't looking for it (21)
Believing Macondo was a peninsula and isolated from the scientific world, he wanted to move the village so that they could receive the benefits of science (21)
Said that a person does not belong to a place until someone dies and is buried there (22)
Thought childhood was a time of mental insufficiency (24)
After Ursula lectures him for neglecting his sons, he begins educating them, tells them about the wonders of the world, and in doing so, forces his imagination to extremes (22, 24)
He and Ursala are cousins (28)
In response to the objections to his and Ursala's marriage, he says "I don't care if I have piglets as long as they can talk" (28)
Kills Prudencio Aguilar after this man jibes him for not having consummated his marriage with Ursula; after killing him, commands Ursula to have sex with him, saying "there'll be no more killings in this town because of you" (29)
Killed Prudencio before they lived in Macondo; after Prudencio's suffering ghost would not leave their house, he, Ursula and many of their friends left Riohacha and went on to found Macondo (30, 31)
Thought his dream with houses having mirror walls meant he was supposed to build new houses in the village our of ice (32)
Searched for the philosopher's stone in his laboratory (38)
Thought Ursula's return after her 5 month disappearance was a miracle, and had longed for it over the discovery of the philosopher's stone (42)
After Ursula returned with a group of men and women from the other side of the swamp, he lost interest in his laboratory, abandoned his search for the philosopher's stone, and once again became the enterprising man he used to be (44)
Became a figure of authority amongst these new people (45)
Initially didn't understand Visitacion's fear of insomnia, thinking they could all get much more out of life if they never slept again (50)
Wanted to build a memory machine to fight off the memory loss caused by the insomnia plague; planned the memory machine to be a spinning dictionary, where, every morning in just a few hours, one could view everything learned in one's life (54)
Thought he could use a daguerreotype to either prove or disprove God's existence (58)
Indignant when Don Apolinar Moscote declares himself magistrate of Macondo, he tells Moscote that the government had never helped Macondo, and Macondo had never bothered the government. They were quite happy that up until then the government "had let them grow in peace, and he hoped that it would continue leaving them that way (61)
Gave up searching for God with the daguerreotype, convinced he did not exist, and instead took apart the pianola to figure out its "magical secret" (66)
He would not allow Melquiades to be buried upon his death, believing the man immortal; only allowed Melquiades to be buried after he had burned mercury next to the corpse for three days, and the body began "to burst with a livid fluorescence" (76)
Pietro Crespi's mechanical fauna helped him get over Melquiades' death and he became an alchemist again (77)
Stopped eating and sleeping when he attempted to apply the principles of pendulums to just about everything; during this time, Prudencio started haunting him again, and the two talked until dawn (80)
Became convinced time was not passing; cried for everyone he knew that was alone in death; smashed all the equipment in the alchemy lab, the daguerreotype room, the silver workshop, and tried to smash up the rest of the house--it took Aureliano and 10 men to get him down, "14 to tie him up, 20 to drag him to the chestnut tree...where they left him tied up, barking in the strange language and giving off a green froth at the mouth" (81)
The strange language was latin; Father Nicanor was the only person who could speak with him in Latin; stubbornly resisted Nicanor's attempts to evangalize him and tried to break the man's faith (all while tied to the tree) (86)
"Sunk in an abyss of unawareness," he eventually lost all touch with reality (106)
Ursula unties him from the tree, but he doesn't move from the stool, as though an "invisible bond kept him tied to the trunk" (107)
He dies (137)