Cien Años de Soledad: Entry 4

I found Cien Años de Soledad to be a very interesting and well thought out novel. It was very intriguing from start to finish and in my opinion the ending was a perfect one as it made a full circle or connection to the beginning. It started off with the incestuous relationship between Ursula and Jose Arcadio while ending with the incestuous relationship between Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula, resulting in a deformed child and the end of the Buendia family. This almost seemed inevitable as in the beginning Ursula and Jose Arcadio were worried that their child would bear signs of deformity. Also, incestuous relationships continued for the whole novel and the whole Buendia family (and Macondo) experienced a progressive destruction. It also seems that connections between the past and the present are seen throughout the book. For example, Meme enters a convent in the same town her mother came from.

As continuously stated in class, there seems to be a continued struggle to keep memories alive throughout the book and in the last section we continue to see this. Even though Jose Arcadio Segundo struggled to keep the massacre of the innocent plantation workers alive, their deaths were completely unacknowledged by the town, and instead forgotten and no trace of the banana plantation remained. Moreover, the destruction of Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes’ animals further showed the loss of the past. All in all, the eradiation of memory is predestined in this novel even though many characters try to conserve it by living in the past.

I definitely think this is a good book to end the course and would recommend it to others.

Cien Años de Soledad: Entry 3

As the story develops, time continues to pass by quickly and marriages, births and deaths continue to occur frequently.

I definitely like Ursula’s character in the novel because I feel she has strength which many others do not possess. For example, she has been blind since the birth of her son and she has not let this interfere with her life, enabling it to go unnoticed by using scents, shadows and her memory to guide her. Also, throughout all this time, she appears to be more together than most of the family members as she is still able to keep the house in order and take care of others while appearing rather mentally composed.

Solitude seems to constantly come up often as the family members suffer from this in their own way. Amaranta closes herself off from others as she foresees her own death and leads a solitary life while Colonel Aureliano Buendia realizes his solitude will watching the circus passing by the house. Not only do the characters suffer individually, but also as a collective group; for example, it says “solo despues de la muerte de Amaranta, cuando la familia volvio a encerrarse por un tiempo en la luto….” On the positive, Aureliano Segundo was able to cure his solitude by caring for his daughter and having a role in her life.

Not only is there a continued destruction of the family, but of the town, which demise is inevitable.

100 Años de Soledad Continued

As I continue to read this book, it gets more and more interesting and every page is packed with new events. What is a bit frustrating is that more and more characters get introduced and intertwined with the Buendia family. Not only is the amount of characters hard to follow, but the names of characters (for example the children of Arcadio) overlap with the initial characters of the novel. I don’t really understand why everyone has such similar names and the fact that the “sons” of Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s military expedition are all named Aureliano doesn’t really help.

The topic of incest seems to come up a lot in this book; for example, Aureliano Jose having a liking for his own aunt. Maybe this is trying to show how we have a tendency to want what we can’t have, but on the other hand, incest is not natural or normal. So, I’m not really sure why this seems to be such a dominate theme in the novel.

Furthermore, the novel just continues to get more outrageous, with more incest, bestiality, the two brothers sharing the same girl and it just seems to continue.

I am very intrigued by 100 years of solitude because I really don’t know what’s going to happen next and the suspense is what makes this a good book in my opinion. With the new found connection that links Maconda with the outside, I am really curious to see what will result of it.

Beginning of Cien Años de Soledad

So far I am quite enjoying Cien Años de Soledad by Garcia Marquez. I am finding it both easy and hard in that the word usage and style of writing is more contemporary and easy to read than Cumandá or Mama Blanca, yet characters are harder to follow. There are quite a few characters in this novel and Marquez refers to a lot, such as aunts, grandparents and acquaintances that I find myself having to read carefully.

From the start, I found the book to be pretty intriguing; the gypsies, the magic and the town of Macondo all demonstrated Marquez’s creativity and imagination. Moreover, the book seems pretty eventful and interesting to read. I like in the very beginning how Macondo and the gypsies are being described because the isolation and magic of the town and transformation by the gypsies seem very mystical and supernatural. For example, “todavia no tenemos un muerto” and the gypsies provided “un millar de invenciones.”

The intrigue of the novel also came with the slow development and disruption of the town, such as the missing son and the first death in the town.

A few themes or topics that have come up thus far include incest, lust/sexuality, and power of the gypsies.

Although not very far in the novel, I’m looking forward to continuing and discussing it in class to better analyze it.