One Hundred Years of Solitude Part III

I want to begin by saying that this book surprised me. I judged it and then I thought...ughh...an extremely long book, better get it over with...but then again, as I was reading, I found myself at times not being able to put it down. But, mary, i agree with you 100% because as advised, I made a photocopy of the family tree and referred to it oftenly while reading. It was actually helpful. But to get on with the analyses.

I wrote down notes while reading the last third of the book because I knew it was going to be important. I also jotted down the rain as a symbol. I remember reading How To Read Literature Like a Professor and he brought up the many symbols rain could represent. On page 308-309, "...he could find no trace of the massacre. The streets were deserted under the persistent rain and the houses locked up with no trace of life inside." The rain washed away every trace of the bloody massacre at the station and any proof whatsoever that there was any Banana Company at all. Thomas C. Foster in the How To Read...says that rain could symbolize rebirth or rejuvination of some sort. Macondo was born again, into what it used to be. "The survivors of the catastroph, the same ones who had been living in Macondo before it had been struck by the banana company hurricane, were sitting in the middle of the street enjoying their first sunshine...but in their hearts they seemed happy to have recovered the town in which they had been born," (331). The townspeople were glad even though a majority of Macondo was destroyed.

The rain also changed certain characters of the Buendias too. Jose Arcadio's desire for war were thrown away, along with the war itself. Aureliano Segundo became more solemn at home with Fernanda. The rain was all he needed for a reality check. He lost all the weight that he had put on and he began to resemble his twin brother Jose Arcadio Segundo.

I found it interesting how Ursula died on Good Friday (page 342). In the Bible, Jesus died on Good Friday, too. He died on that day for our sins to save the world from oblivion in response to the wrath of God. As steph113 says, Urula was the only one who stayed true to her morals and didn't fall into the disorder that befell Macondo. Yes, I agree with her reference to the fall of Adam and Eve, but I just find it interesting how she died on Good Friday, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross...

The pigs tail in the novel is one of the deformities that a couple gets when they are involved with incestry, and is most feared when giving birth to a child. I was wondering how the Buendias were going to get by and get lucky, with normal looking children and not one sign of physical deformity. But, I didn't expect any less though for Amaranta Urula and Aureliano's baby to not be marked, plus it was towards the end of the book. The pigs tail is a symbol of incestry, of which we already know. I agree with Paul_In_A_Nutshell about it being a sign of yielding to temptation. The child dies a horrible death, just as Melquiadez predicted in his parchment work. I had a feeling that the red ants would have some signicant role in the novel because of its constant repetion. Urusula would try to get rid of them but they kept coming back. It was like a foreshadowing for me.

I want to bring up one last point. The cobwebs and dust that kept reappearing in the Melquiadez's room. When one thinks of dust and cobwebs, something that resembles aging comes to mind. She kept cleaning the room, but the dust kept returning. I see it as a way of saying that no matter what happens, no matter what natural disaster, things can't go back to the way they used to be and that time is always moving forward, even if it looks like its moving back, especially in the Buendia household. Catalonian also mentions this too in one of his letters, "...he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart...and that wherever they might be they always remeber that the past was a lie, that memory has no return..." (403). It is true. Yes, the rain that lasted for many years did away with most of Macondo, but it also did away with the memories. No one seemed to remeber the Buendias anymore.