The last 200 pages of Garcia Marquez's book took readers on another bumpy but thrilling journey. Some themes from this last half I want to discuss in my blog today are decline, fate, horror, open vs. closed and multitudes.
Macondo is in a state of decline in the last half of Marquez's book. People are slowly migrating out of the town, the birds are flying away, and even the Buendia family's fate is in a state of decline. There are many reasons why Macondo is in this decline. Still, first, I want to focus on the Buendia family's fate and the fall of their family.
The Buendia house is a place of history in Macondo. Generations of the family have lived and been a part of the Buendia family. 100 Years of Solitude focuses on the Buendia family's character lives and incestual relations.
Internally, the Buenida family is causing their own decline, and their fate leads to the physical destruction of Macondo. The family has a curse that is caused by their incestual relations. At one point, a child will be born from the family and have a pigtail. This is the curse that leads to the destruction and end of the Buendia family. At the end of the book, Amaranta Ursula bears this child born with a pigtail. Unsure of what will happen, the curse fulfills itself and ends the family, including Macondo. This abrupt but horror-filled ending gave my body chills and made me want to throw up. The fate of the family and Macondo ends when the mother is bleeding to death. Ants eat the pig-tailed newborn, and a 'hurricane of biblical proportions' (lecture) destroys Macondo to its entirety. This curse caused the fate and decline of the Macondo in the end.
There were visible signs of decline outside of the Buendia family that also caused these proportions to destroy the Macondo village.
The Macondo village was closed off in their own bubble and was safe without visitors disrupting its peace and tradition. One innovation that opened the town was the train (representing innovation and new technology from outside the village), allowing people to come in and out and new technology and messages to enter Macondo's civilization. Although modernization seems promising, it leads the town to lose its simplicity, history and traditions that were unique to the Macondo villager and helped them survive. Each new outside source would rip this tradition away and slowly lead to Macondo's decline, left in ruins and nothing the same. Being open to the outside world was toxic for the village of Macondo. In the lecture, Jon reminds us that Maconod was happier when cut off from the bigger world. Allowing them to protect their people and traditions. Being open leads to Macondo's decline.
Multitudes of reasons cause this decline. This book is not a solitude but filled with many multitudes affecting everything. Within the Buendia family, there are repeated names and personalities, like ghosts haunting the lineage. At the end of the book, Aureliano is basically the only guy left in town. Still, when he sits in a chair in the Buendia home, he is filled with the presence of old ghosts through his mimicked patterns of them.
"He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebeca had sat during the early days of the house to give embroidery lessons, and in which Amaranta had played Chinese checkers with Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, and in which Amaranta Úrsula had sewn the tiny clothing for the child." (414)
Aureliano feels stressed under "the crushing weight of so much past" (414) from his family's ghosts. This shows that he is not in solitude, even though he is physically alone, but instead in a multitude of surrounding personalities and familiar names.
There are multitudes of these names and multitudes of everything in Macondo. Gypsies, bananas, books, solitudes, friendships, and mistakes (lecture). Although these things can stand independently, they are all attached to the ones that came before. There is always a layer of multitudes in and outside the town. What ultimately leads to the fate and decline of Macondo is the negative habits inside and the ones that were exposed to Macondo through openness. Complete closeness from the world can also lead to decline because you are stuck investing in the same things. Soon, you will have nothing left and no resources from the outside world to save your town. It is hard for Macondo to stay open and closed, which is the way to balance and keep your city thriving. Macondo can never be entirely cut off from the world; the energies from outside have their own habits and will always find a way inside if it is meant to. Maybe Macondo wasn't strong enough to withhold its citizens and their relations and needed the outside world, but this also led to its destruction. This is where my mind sits, puzzled. So I wanted to ask you guys what you think.
I wonder when this openness started with the gypsies? With people exploring the village's boundaries in hopes of finding new things? My question is, was there any way to prevent Macondo's decline? Or would the curse ultimately destroy the town and people even if it stayed closed off from the outside world? Why do you think that?
Your post this week has suggested many ideas to me, thanks for sharing it. I will only take one part to comment on: this tension between closeness and openness for the fictional world of this novel. "Macondo can never be entirely cut off from the world; the energies from outside have their own habits and will always find a way inside if it is meant to." The forces of History (with a capital H) interact with crowds and communities in less than obvious ways. A novel like this allows us to make them visible in Latin America, for example in episodes like the wars between liberals and conservatives.
ReplyDeleteHello, I loved your review! Answering your questions about the development and decline of Macondo, I think this took place due to the combination of several factors, including the curse in the story and the isolation of the town from the outside world. It is difficult state if there would have been a way to prevent Macondo's decline, but it is possible that different choices made by the main characters in the story could have contributed to a change. However, the curse and the lack of control that characters have over this could have affected Macondo's destiny whether or not characters acted differently.
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa,
ReplyDeleteLoved your post!
To answer your question about was there being any way to prevent Macondo’s decline, I do not think so. There was a multitude of reasons that brought Macondos decline in the first place. One being what you mention the openness of the town and how it was never cut off from the world. The tension brought in when their world met the outside world could not ever be prevented. The gypsies were the start but as more people started leaving and entering the town, there was no way to protect the town.
Hi there,
ReplyDeletethank you for sharing.
To answer your question about if there was a way to prevent the decline of Macondo is a question of that should be charged to the Buendia's since their fate is to be the same of Macondo's. Since it is a family question, I would say that yes, it was possible to prevent it because it may be a matter of consciousness that can solve the problem. Every family inherits good and bad traits from their parents and grandparents but does that mean that we are going to repeat the same mistakes as them? I think the existentialists would like to argue against that notion. Come to think of it, I don't think there was much philosophy mentioned in this book which is interesting to think since almost all the ideas of the world all arrived at the doorstep of Macondo.