This week’s reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude was harder to get through than the first half. Although I still appreciate the novel as meaningful and enjoyed the plot it is written so densely that about half way through it becomes rather exhausting to keep up and I became slightly numb to the climaxes and moments of tension because they begin to seem futile and never-ending. Although, as mentioned in the lecture this endless repetition is a central theme of the work, and so perhaps my reading experience is exactly what is intended. Another aspect that I found grew tedious was the descriptions of women’s bodies, which often highlighted why they were or were not sexually alluring and made me cringe in their crudeness a few times.
Religion plays an on and off large role in the work, usually shining a negative light on Catholicism and the church (for example Fenanda’s imposing of religious rules on the Buendía household), and yet many of the miraculous occurrences in Macondo are described in terms that connote religious belief, for example fate, card reading and prediction. This suggests a critique of organised religion and the hierarchical system of the church rather than a critique of religion. The cross is a largely negative symbol (for example the boards on the windows and doors as mentioned in the lecture) in the novel and is equated with a target when the sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendía are shot in the ash Wednesday cross never washed off their foreheads. Their religion makes them targets of the banana plantation owners who represent the modernisation and sudden chaos in Macondo. The miraculous of Macondo is being killed by these new influences introduced by the train line.
Macondo’s memory loss surrounding the massacre of the plantation workers is a stark example of how the repetition of history is possible. People simply forget or refuse to acknowledge past tragedies; however, the cause of this is unclear. Would acknowledging such events help move Macondo past the endless cycles or must the town forget in order to move forward and not become haunted? The rain that follows reminds of the rains of Noah’s Arc in the old testament, which wipe out everything on earth. Similarly, these rains wipe out a lot of Macondo. Is this perhaps a punishment for forgetting the massacre so quickly?
Question for the class: What is the function fo Remedios The Beauty? Is she a religious symbol? Or perhaps a personification of the original Macondo?
“Would acknowledging such events help move Macondo past the endless cycles or must the town forget in order to move forward and not become haunted?”
Oh, this is a good question. I wonder what such acknowledgement would look like? (And is García Márquez’s novel itself a form of acknowledgement… the depiction of the banana massacre, and more generally of the depredations of the banana industry in the region, are based on real history.) Alternatively, are you suggesting that the Buendías can’t quite forget enough?
Kara, it is true that there is a religious component to the language and narrative forms within the novel, but the relationship to more institutionalized structures is more problematic than it first appears. Let’s think that unlike Pedro Páramo, for example, the role of the Church is much less obvious, and the function it develops, for example in political events between liberals and conservatives, remains quite in the background. It seems as if García Márque did not want to get involved in those issues. The theme of oblivion appears strongly in two moments, as you say. At first, it is almost a “natural” event. The other one is more ambiguous and deserves a deeper comment… I’m interested in knowing what others think.
Hi there,
thank you for sharing.
To answer your question about Remedios, I think she may be a great metaphor for how beauty is curse too. If you’re as beautiful as Remedios was portrayed, the world may only view you and never get to know you. Same could be said about Macondo, it is seen by the gypies as place of profit and never appreciated as a place of solidarity.