Well, I finished the book during the reading break, which in hindsight I realize was a bad idea. I was struggling to figure out what to say this week, so I decided to just focus on the last chapter, which in all honesty was interesting but also kind of disappointing. There was a lot that was done in the last chapter that tied up the book, but also simultaneously left the reader wondering about the ending. Personally, I felt like the ending was kind of abrupt and that there was kind of a build-up throughout the novel that kind of fell through at the end. I don’t know what I was expecting because it was kind of obvious what was going to happen, but nonetheless it felt anti-climatic. I guess the “simple-ish” ending added to the realistic aspect of the book. In reality not everything has or needs a big, splashy ending. Anyways, besides the way the book ended there is one piece of imagery that I can’t forget, and that’s the ants.
When Ürsula and José had their child and it was born with the tail of a pig, I knew the kid was going to end up having the same fate as the rest of the family. However, I never anticipated for it to be so gruesome and quick. I expected there to be a mention of the kid growing up and dying or maybe just being forgotten about, but instead we get told that the baby was devoured by ants. The imagery from the lines “And then he saw the child. It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path in the garden.” (pg.553), is so clear in my mind. I did not expect Márquez to write about a baby succumbing to such a brutal death, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. The imagery is just so haunting and it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
Overall, I would say this was a good book and I did enjoy it. I had read Márquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold“, and didn’t really enjoy it but this book made me change my mind about his writing style. He really knows how to capture magic realism in such a beautiful way.
Question to think about: Every character dies a sad death at the end of the novel, however Márquez writes the most gruesome death for the newborn baby. Why do you think he chose to kill the baby like that? Did being eaten by ants add something more to the story?
“which in hindsight I realize was a bad idea”
Perhaps the better thing would have been to write both blog posts over reading break, then? But no matter.
You say that the end is “anti-climactic” and at the same time that “The imagery is just so haunting and it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.” Sounds like a climax to me!
But I agree that it is in some ways abrupt–I address that to some extent in my lecture. I think there’s a practical question here: how to end a book such as this? It has to be somehow a cataclysmic ending in which everything (including, implicitly, the book that we have just been reading) is wiped off the face of the earth.
And yet of course the ending has been (literally) prophesied almost from the very beginning: that when a child is born with the tail of a pig, that will be the end of the (Buendía family) story. Everybody has in some sense been waiting for this, fearing this outcome but knowing that it will happen some day.
And the ants, yes, the ants. These little tiny creatures that normally we hardly even notice (they have been mentioned before in the book, perhaps we now remember), come to the fore in a way that is, as you say, almost horrific.
Why? I don’t know. But perhaps this is what comes of not paying sufficient attention to what’s around you?
It’s interesting how you point out the realism of the last chapter of the book. I interpreted it to be a rather fantastical ending, especially because of the child being born with a pig’s tail and being eaten by ants. That came across to me as something like the ending of a dark fairytale- like has anyone ever died that way? And then the simplistic ending of Macondo is surprisingly simple, if not underwhelming as you point out. Very thought-provoking, thanks.
Hey Alizey! This ending was certainly haunting, I agree. I’ve just finished watching the lecture and am glad that Jon touched on the abruptness, but mainly ‘paradoxical’ ending which makes itself literally unreplicable in its expansive and wild detail.
As for why Marquez might have chosen such a gruesome fate for the pig tailed child… I honestly thought that it was a chosen at random – even though we may have heard of them before… I bet it was a flip of a coin for him and this i what came to mind. Maybe.
As for what it adds to the ending – besides being a little discomforting and vivid, I thought of the way the ants were all working together to attack the body, and how one would see thousands (as “all the ants in the world” were there or something) – and how the many many tiny creatures represent a bit of a “population” similar to the family who used to live in the village, now being brought to the end of an era, dragged away by death – was in a weird way kinda fitting. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but something about death being paired with being engulfed by thousands of tiny animals as if the species of humans were being overruled by natures fate.
Hey Alizey, nice blogpost again :). The visual of “bloating skin” is overwhelmingly gross, I agree. To answer you question, I think the baby had to be killed off quickly because Aureliano had to discover that something was amiss and decipher the prophecy right as everything was going down. Thus the second the baby was born, the destruction of the place was carried out quickly, which sort of contributes to this feeling that the “prophecy” was delivered. I think having the ants take them connects to the other times that ants showed up.