García Márquez attributes the novel's objective and unembellished narrative style to the influence of his grandmother:

She would tell her stories with an unwavering expression, which left everyone amazed. In my earlier writings, I narrated without genuinely believing in the tales. I understood that to be successful, I had to truly believe in the stories myself and present them with the same stoic expression my grandmother used—a face like stone.

Considering this, understanding the narrator's role becomes more complex, as one could argue that the novel centers around Ursula's story. The narrator seems to be the all-knowing and ever-present Melquiades, whose manuscript foretells the Buendía family's history and remains unread for a hundred years. The final Aureliano deciphers the manuscript after he sees his son consumed by ants. Thus, the reader interprets a work translated into English from a Spanish text that was originally decoded from Sanskrit, with "even lines in the private cipher of the Emperor Augustus and the odd ones in a Lacedemonian military code."