One Hundred Years of Solitude Blog post 3

Gill Hurtig

Blog post 3

Romano 5

10.15.14

One Hundred Years of Solitude Blog Post 3

Colonel Aureliano Buendia has now had 17 children, all of whom died on the same night. He has lost every single armed uprising he has organized, and yet he hasn’t even been remotely injured. Can he be considered a Christ figure if he can’t be caught by death? “He survived fourteen attempts on his life, seventy-three ambushes, and a firing squad. He lived through a dose of strychnine in his coffee that was enough to kill a horse” (103). Before Aureliano was a Colonel, he sculpted metal, which is very similar to a carpenter. And what was he sculpting? Nothing other than little fishes, a symbol for Christianity. But why would Marquez want us to think of Aureliano as a christ figure?

But then again, it doesn’t make sense that he would be considered a Christ figure because he promotes violence so much as a colonel. He also is the father of seventeen sons, from seventeen different women. Jesus certainly did not have that much sex.

At this point, an unhealthy number of people are in love with Amaranta. It seems as though everybody loves her. I consider her almost a vampire figure. She attracted Pietro Crespi earlier in the book. He told her he loved her, and yet she let him down harshly. Aureliano Jose also took a liking to Amaranta (his aunt), and she almost agreed to have sex with him, but right before they did, Amaranta stopped the affair. Aureliano was crushed, so he decided to join the army. Eventually, even Gerinaldo Marquez begins to love her, but she consistently rejects him. “Gerinaldo Marquez had declared his love for Amaranta. At that time she was so illusioned with her lonely passion for Pietro Crespi that she laughed at him” (136). He continued to insist to marry her, and she continued to reject. It is as though she feeds on the love of men, but eventually just turns them down. Amaranta reminds me of Daisy Miller. Both seem to be loved by many guys, and they are somehow able to manipulate the guys without ever giving them anything. The difference is, Amaranta seems to be much more aware of her self-image. She seems to feel things more, as she is found weeping multiple times. Perhaps this is supposed to give her a more humane quality in a book with so many inhumane characters. With that said, she was considering poisoning her sister earlier in the book, so Marquez is signifying her growth as a character.

Lastly, ghosts are once again making appearances, as Melquiades often checks on Aureliano Segundo. Remedios also makes an appearance when she is deemed the queen of a carnival. Why does Marquez continue to bring characters back from the dead? And what do they signify? I’m hoping to answer this in my last blog post at the end of the book.