" Pilar Ternara also starts telling past instead of future, since no one was now interested in their future. "They did not who they were and thus future was meaningless without a past." The future holds no meaning for them without their memory. Memory for them becomes a function where they follow a word and its instruction, (Ahsan).
The concept of time also changes with the loss of memory. Time exists in memory and there is no record of time during plague. One is unable to record time since there is no memory. L Ahsan says that, "The narration of the insomnia plague from beginning till the end does not mention the time period it lasted, because the narration talks about loss of memory and hence loss of time, there can be no record of the time during the plague. In other words, the time period of the insomnia plague cannot be determined because it cannot be recorded since memory is lost (3)." The war is also related to the memory. In the beginning people do not divide themselves into different groups and mutually consult each other in such matters. Later people divide themselves into two groups such as liberals and conservatives. Colonel Aureliano soon, "realizes the meaninglessness of war." L Ahsan says, "because it is not his war; he has no memories of enmity with anyone. The final consequence of fighting thirty-two wars without ever rendering a sacred purpose to any of them, Colonel Aureliano Buendia develops an unimaginably mundane sense of reality. He becomes lost in solitude. Death becomes meaningless to him and he conceives of time in the same manner as all the other Buendias: ever moving like a pendulum, in still motion. "How awful," he says, "the way time passes!" "It's just that war has done away with everything.".
The novel constantly shifts through time. There is interplay between linear time and circular time.
