100 Years of Solitude-Time

So, it's been a while since I've last posted, but I've really enjoyed One Hundred Years of Solitude. Time in this book is purposely out of order. I mean, Garcia Marquez starts out the novel with "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Obviously, that statement is projecting to the future. The next sentence starts with "At that time..." coming back to the present. Marquez shifts from the past, to the present, to the future. Marquez doesn't clearly define the present, past or future, either. For example, both Melquiades and Prudencio Aguilar die and come back to the present. Oh, also....the dates seem to be the same in the novel. I mean, how many times did J.A.B. say that it was Monday, again? Oh, wait....countless times. Or Marquez decides to jump from February to March in two lines. What I'm curious to know is why Marquez decided to make time so unclear. He definitely succeeded in making it hard for the reader to make a chronological timeline as to what happened in the novel. However, I don't think that confusing the reader is his sole purpose. I guess I'll have to keep reading to find out :)