#ursula buendia

[floral-alchemist]

Congrats on being able to name ten female characters you like!

I have another query. Can you name ten male characters of color you like? Can you name ten female characters of color you like, for reasons unrelated to sex or sexuality?

[panvani]

Like kind of the thing with Fernanda is that she is materially abusive, but the actual reason she is met with constant contempt and abuse within her family amounts to "well, she's sort of stuck-up." The Buendias complain about how she's a highlander and ergo a Conservative, when the Buendias had a proud history of class and land abuses within Macondo, were largely responsible for the power of the Church within Macondo, were largely complicit in the establishment of the banana company and the subsequent worker's abuse in Macondo, etc. Colonel Aureliano's commitment to Liberalism is framed obviously as based not on any sense of moral right or wrong but simply by happenstance and a love for war. When Fernanda manipulates and isolates her daughter, this is taken without question, but when Fernanda tells her husband that the family is without food, he deliberately and violently destroys every one of her possessions with the specific intent of humiliating her. This was after decades of being verbally and emotionally abused by her family by marriage (again, for reasons that are at best hypocritical) and even scholarly interpretation of her character tends to focus on her personal wrongdoing than the fact that she was ostracized and isolated

[toshkakoshka]

rip to ursula buendia but im different

[shipcestuous]

Want to add to my message about "One hundred years of solitude" cause I reread the ending! Now, spoilers obviously. So, because of this "pig curse" (a belief that any incest between Buendias would lead to the birth of a child with pig tail. This proved to be true in the end), it's easy to see incest as depicted negative in the book. Which is reasonable, because not only the child has pig tail, but he is even called "mythological monster that was to bring the line to an end". Again, proved to be true because soon after his birth and quick death (spoilers of the very end) the city is wiped out by the wind, erasing it and the Buendia line forever, "because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth". Sounds very incest-negative. However! This is how the relationship between Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula decribed just before that:

"They would give themselves over to the worship of their bodies, discovering that the rest periods of love had unexplored possibilities, much richer than those of desire"

"Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula opened their eyes, dug deep into their souls, looked at the letter with their hands on their hearts, and understood that they were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation"

"Aware of that menace, Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula spent the hot months holding hands, ending with the love of loyalty for the child who had his beginning in the madness of fornication. At night, holding each other in bed, they were not frightened by the sublunary explosions of the ants or the noise of the moths or the constant and clean whistle of the growth of the weeds in the neighboring rooms"

"and then they learned that dominant obsessions can prevail against death and they were happy again with the certainty that they would go on loving each other in their shape as apparitions long after other species of future animals would steal from the insects the paradise of misery that the insects were finally stealing from man"

And this is how the birth of so-called "mythological monster" is described:

"Through her tears Amaranta Ursula could see that he was one of those great Buendias, strong and willful like the Jose Arcadios, with the open and clairvoyant eyes of the Aurelianos, and predisposed to begin the race again from the beginning and cleanse it of its pernicious vices and solitary calling, for he was the only one in a century who had been engendered with love"

This baby (also called Aureliano) is literally called the ONLY one in the family who was born from love. He's also the only one born from incest (if you don't count children of the original Buendias, first cousins). So, my question is if you really, really wanted us to think incest is disgusting and that was the only point of the book, why would you include that. Also, as Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula did not know about the pig tail prophecy, they were not alarmed by this, and the midwife even said that "the tail could be cut off when the child got his second teeth". Which would happen irl probably if such child was born.

So, of course I'm no literary critic in any way and it's probably better to hear their interpretations than mine, but I just think making an incest couple also one of the only couples in the book who were really in love does not serve to make incest seem off-puting. If I had that goal, I'd probably leave them at lust which they started with. Also I could show the grown-up child as a real horrible vicious person who puts an end to his bloodline through his actions, not through just being born and triggering the "curse", cause tail or not, the baby was innocent and I doubt any reader saw it the other way.

Also, a bit off-topic but this couple until the end thought they were brother and sister rather than aunt and nephew, well, not like it stopped them, lol.

[x]

Thanks for these extra details and that great passage!

Yeah, kind of raising my brow at all of this? The great incestuous undoing of the family is an innocent baby born of love with a physical disfigurement that's easily fixed?

[shebsart]

Hey, I’m sorry to bother you. It’s 2am where I live I was having the worst time being awake. And then I saw you had finished 100 years of solitude. This is so cool!!! I hope you liked it. And I hope drawing the Buendías is a nice experience. (But don’t feel pressured) anyway have nice things coming your way. You don’t have to post this. it just made me happy.

Hi, Im sorry you were having a bad time anon, hope you feel better soon :( 🙏🏼

I loved the book and I was honestly very surprised it doesnt have any visual adaptations (bad or decent) since it has such vivid imagery.. (apparently GGM's family didnt give the rights for one?? Until recently?)

And I really wanna draw them (i already started tbh) but its gonna be challenging because i didnt take notes while reading and i dont remember all the character descriptions so i will have to hunt for bits of descriptions, it might turn out a bit inaccurate 🤔

Spoilers ahead for those who wanna read One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Some of my favorite bits were; jose arcadio mysteriously dying and his blood leaking back to the family house and avoiding carpets to not stain them, poetic cinema

Segundo twins getting mixed up when they were babies and returning to their "true" name at the end with the mixing of their coffins, that made me so :'))

Ursula coming back to macondo with a bunch of new people

Yellow flower rain for jose arcadio buendia :)

The corpse train plot :(( that was sad but evocative

And ofc the ending!

There are a lot more that i cant remember right now but i wanna reread it in the future, this time preferebly in english since i dont know spanish lol ;_;

[thebookbillboard]

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Genre –

Historical fiction, magical realism, family drama, Spanish classic

What is it about –

Published in Columbia in 1967, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was written originally in Spanish and later translated to 37 languages. It is considered a masterpiece of literature.

The book is about the Buendia family based in an isolated town, Macondo in Latin America, that is founded by them.

The story spans across a century and takes us through seven generations of Buendias against the backdrop of a changing Macondo from a small town with a handful of settlers to a thriving centre with the arrival of railroad, cinema and immigrants.

The mad ingenuity and pioneering spirit of Jose Arcadio Buendia and the hard working, practical nature of his wife Ursula sow the seeds of the Buendia family, weaving a tale that takes the reader on a roller coaster journey filled with emotions, tragedies, fantasies, wild ambitions, foolish ventures and entrapments.

These people are purely ruled by the heart with no regard for repercussions. They loved, lost, won, lived, married, prospered, starved, interbred and guarded their ambitions and dreams with utmost tenacity and passion.

The rise and fall of the family coincide and mirror the same cycle of Macondo.

Main Characters –

Úrsula Iguarán

José Arcadio Buendía

Remedios Moscote

Fernanda del Carpio 

Aureliano Buendía

Amaranta Buendía 

Amaranta Úrsula Buendía 

José Arcadio Segundo

Aureliano Segundo

Aureliano José

Book Evaluation -

Rarely you will find a family where every member is a unique character, each has his own destiny carved by himself and the present generation being as different from the one preceding it as it is similar.

You come across gypsies with their inventions of flying carpets, false teeth and ice, murders of family members, clandestine and publicised love affairs, maniacal studies in workshops, civil wars and absconding wives and sons...the list goes on making the book a very colourful, imaginative and interesting read. History and fantasy, tragedy and comedy, love and vengeance, births and deaths, all form a part of the everyday lives of the Buendias.

Even though there are so many characters, each character is given ample time to shine and carve a niche for itself in the family as well as in the reader’s mind.

The author has written the multi generation story so effortlessly that even though the names of most of the characters are similar with even similar traits, we easily remember them distinctly.

What intrigued me the most was the title of the book. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that majority of the action happens within the family house, often described as “madhouse” by Ursula, the family matriarch. The Buendias are shown to be selfish, self-centred and oblivious to the world, except one or two of the clan. Each individual has his/her own fancies, ambitions and whims and lives without any regard for the other family members, the town or the world in general. Be it long periods spent in experiments completely ignoring his family by the family patriarch Jose Arcadio or the whimsical elopement with the gypsies by his elder son Jose Arcadio or the undertaking and losing of 32 wars by his younger brother or the innumerable years spent by the family members shut alone in the laboratory, deciphering parchments or conducting metallurgy experiments. Even the fictional town of Macondo remains in solitude for several decades as it is bordered by forests and swamps and is unknown to the outside world.

As the years pass by, we witness multiple births, deaths, weddings, affairs, love stories, financial upheavals, expeditions and business ventures in the family. The town goes through droughts and floods, immigrant settlements, worker strikes and scandals and we see Macondo change from a close-knit community of 20 initial settlers to a bustling, free spirited centre full of immigrants.

There is so much happening in the book at the same time involving so many people, it seems you are watching a reality tv show that is wild, obnoxious, bordering on the thin line between reality and fantasy, shocking, dramatic, tragic, comic, sensitive, and even uplifting at times. Every word, every line, every incident moves the story forward.

In India we call a movie with all the above elements a masala potboiler. I would like to give this book the same name, but of an epic scale.

The writing style awakens a curiosity in the reader to know the fate of every character and ultimately the fate of the family and Macondo.

Your takeaway? As in the case of every masala Hindi movie made – entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.

Favourite Lines –

I couldn’t find any striking or noteworthy line to remember from any character. The book is to be devoured as a whole. But a line by Ursula s worth mentioning here, “Life comes a full circle.”

App Mention –

I listened to the story on the Storytel app in the voice of Peter Silverleaf. His voice complements the emotion and drama in the story and makes it all the more interesting to listen.

Recommendation –

DO READ the book to lose yourself in a magical and mystical world created by the author and filled with wonderful, mad, crazy, lively and passionate characters. This piece of stunning literature will cause the lines of reality and magic to blur for you and carry you along on a journey as enthralling as the citizens of the town of Macondo experienced on the flying carpets of gypsies.

I haven’t placed the book in the MUST READ category simply because I felt this book is not everyone’s cup of tea.

MUST READ/DO READ/CAN BE READ/CAN BE SKIPPED

Rating – 4/5

Ambience – 4

Language – 4

Characterization – 4

Plot – 4

Pace – 4

Entertaining – 4.5

[writings-of-melquiades]

Greetings, denizens of Tumblr.

I will now speak of my third and final death within Macondo's walls, and the death of Macondo. On my next visit to Macondo, much time had passed. A civil war in Colombia had been fought and ended, one known in your day as The Thousand Day's War. Aureliano, now Colonel Aureliano, was the driving force behind Macondo's involvement in this war. Arcadio had laid with a woman by the name of Santa Sofia, and with her bore three children. There was Remedios, who would soon be known as Remedios the Beauty. Alongside her were a pair of twins, Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo. Among the dead were José Arcadio Buendia, Remedios and José Arcadio. There were more who had came and went, lived and died, but for this story to continue that is all you must know.

My lab had fallen into disrepair in the many years of my absence. Aureliano reopened it, and set to work finding the truths of the world through text within it. I joined him, for a spell, attempting to teach to him as I am to you the history of the world. But he, like so many others, refused to hear my teachings, which would prove to serve his downfall.

The voracious sex life of Aureliano and Petra Cotes led to a burst of productivity, with mixed emotions coming from others in the family. Meanwhile, José Arcadio has set out to find the ocean, bringing in a ship of French women, who immediately set into motion a carnival. I have seen my share of carnivals in my day, but never have I witnessed one that led to more tragedy than this one. For to the carnival came Fernanda del Carpio, and Aureliano wed her.

Fernanda was not a pleasant sort, and inflicted her strict religious regimen onto the family members. Fernanda and Aureliano laid, birthing José Arcadio and a young girl named Renata, whom everyone called Meme, short for Remedios, named for her aunt. My daughter has stated that "meme" is the name of a popular art form in your time, even stating that she may find some of these art pieces for me to display within my journals here. I do not know what this art form is, but it makes my daughter happy, so I may do so.

The seventeen children of Colonel Aureliano, born to to the women he'd laid with during the war, visit him in the Macondo. Amaranta takes them to receive permanent ash markings. For the purposes of this telling, I will be referring to them as the Ash Aurelianos. Two of the Ash Aurelianos stay within the village, in service of Aureliano Segundo, who is now a proper buisnessman. Together, they connect Macondo by rail.

Chaos is set into Macondo by this new rail - and with it, came a banana plantation. Colonel Aureliano realizes that newcomers are invading his town, and he threatens to arm his children to fight back. Sixteen of the seventeen Ash Aurelianos are killed, the last of which goes into hiding. Soon, Colonel Aureliano dies as well.

Fernanda and Aureliano birth another child by the name of Amaranta Ursula. Meme falls in love with a man from the banana plant with the name of Maricio Babylonia. Before long, Fernanda shoots him, paralyzing him from the waist down, and sends Meme off to a convent. She will die there, having never spoken another word.

Soon after, her son arrives, and despite's Fernanda's best efforts, he is named Aureliano, and adopted by Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda.

Amaranta passes, and José Arcadio Segundo is working at a banana plantation. He begins a labor strike alongside many of his fellows, demanding better treatment. After much conflict, the entirety of the strike is massacred, and the massacre hidden from the eyes of the commonfolk. None except José Arcadio know their fate, and none will listen to him. It is as I always say - those who are willing to turn a blind eye to the truths of the past will doom us all.

The company who committed this massacre is today known as Chiquita.

The massacre begins a five-year stretch of rain, which ruins Macondo. The town falls into the depths of disrepair, and many of its inhabitants flee. Amaranta Ursula is sent off to a far-off school. Some of the only remaining souls are the Buendia family. Soon after the end of the rains, Ursula passes on, with Aureliano and José Arcadio Segundo following soon after. After the death of his father, Aureliano is left alone with Fernanda, who forbids him from leaving the house.

I worked with Aureliano to transcribe the earliest copy of my book, hoping for him to perhaps know his fate and avoid it. But my time in the world was growing short, and soon after this, I disappeared once more.

When I reawoke, not long later, Macondo was forgotten. Washed away by the winds of time.

This is not the whole story of the town of Macondo, merely my lived experiences. For the whole story, I present it within One Hundred Years of Solitude. It may be of interest of you to read it - in fact, I implore you to. To know the sins of your ancestors is to avoid your own. If you are able to learn from the errs of those who came before you, you will be able to achieve more than you can imagine.

If I may leave you with only one message, let it be this - be sure to not forget the past you are built upon.

[desyartis]

Cent'anni di solitudine - Gabriel García Márquez Cent'anni di solitudine è la storia delle sette generazioni della famiglia Buendía nell'immaginaria cittadina di Macondo, nella Colombia caraibica. «Ha chiesto che città fosse, e gli hanno risposto con un nome che non aveva mai sentito, che non aveva alcun significato, ma che aveva una risonanza soprannaturale nel sogno: Macondo.» «Il Colonnello Aureliano Buendia comprese a malapena che il segreto di una buona vecchiaia non è altro che un patto onesto con la solitudine.» «Lo zingaro veniva deciso a restare nel villaggio. Era stato nella morte, effettivamente, ma era tornato perché non aveva potuto sopportare la solitudine.» «Non si muore quando si deve, ma quando si può.» «In quella Macondo dimenticata perfino dagli uccelli, dove la polvere e il caldo si erano fatti così tenaci che si faceva fatica a respirare, reclusi dalla solitudine e dall'amore e dalla solitudine dell'amore in una casa dove era quasi impossibile dormire per il baccano delle formiche rosse, Aureliano e Amaranta Ursula erano gli unici esseri felici, e i più felici sulla terra.» «Aureliano non poté muoversi. Non perché lo avesse paralizzato lo stupore, ma perché in quell'istante prodigioso gli si rivelarono le chiavi definitive di Melquiades, e vide l'epigrafe delle pergamene perfettamente ordinata nel tempo e nello spazio degli uomini: "Il primo della stirpe è legato ad un albero e l'ultimo se lo stanno mangiando le formiche."» «Allora saltò oltre per precorrere le predizioni e appurare la data e le circostanze della sua morte. Tuttavia, prima di arrivare al verso finale, aveva già compreso che non sarebbe mai più uscito da quella stanza, perché era previsto che la città degli specchi (o degli specchietti) sarebbe stata spianata dal vento e bandita dalla memoria degli uomini nell'istante in cui Aureliano Babilonia avesse terminato di decifrare le pergamene, e che tutto quello che vi era scritto era irripetibile da sempre e per sempre, perché le stirpi condannate a cent'anni di solitudine non avevano una seconda opportunità sulla terra.» #centannidisolitudine #gabrielgarciamarquez #romanzi #sagafamiliare #bookstagram #libridaleggere (presso Ceccano, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmcBRTKNb0j/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[petiteblasee]

“E que tudo o que estava escrito neles era irrepetível desde sempre e por todo o sempre, porque as estirpes condenadas a cem anos de solidão não tinham uma segunda oportunidade sobre a terra.”

*:･ﾟ✧ Cem Anos de Solidão - Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

[buddyhollyscurls]

currently reading 100 years of solitude and one thing I kept thinking about is how Gabriel Garcia Marquez really showed that women really are the pillars of entire generations of families and communities

[lamajacagica]

-¿Qué dice? -preguntó. -Está muy triste -contestó Úrsula- porque cree que te vas a morir. -Dígale -sonrió el coronel- que uno no se muere cuando debe, sino cuando puede.

[tanda-panda]

'What do you expect?' he murmured. 'Time passes.' 'That's how it goes,' Úrsula said, 'but not so much.'

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

[helgabonnet]

Things are alive too. It is only necessary to be able to wake up the soul in them.

One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Part 1 

[turniptitaness]

Super interested to hear more of your thoughts on One Hundred Years of Solitude. I read it like 15 years ago in high school and LOVED it but I had a much higher tolerance for the patriarchy back then. Also 💜+💚

Oooh well boy do I ever have THOUGHTS! This could get long. Keep in mind, I still have about a quarter of the book to go.

First, what an absolute banger of a first line! I mean, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." GOD. But being that it is such a banger, I was expecting both of those events to hold more significance in the overall narrative... And instead they've both been more like "yeah, so that happened. Moving on." moments.

Incidentally though, I love the sort of off-hand way all the wilder stuff is handled, especially the magical elements. Like, a person predicting the future or zooming up into the sky is treated as no more significant than someone else cleaning out a chamber pot, and I find that glorious.

The writing style is fabulous, and really does transport me into that slightly altered reality of the town. I feel like I'm experiencing my own hundred years of solitude every time I get immersed in it.

HOWEVER. The squicky bits. Oh lordy, the squicky bits. Why, why, why do all the more graphic sexual descriptions have to include minors, some of them barely adolescent, some of them legitimate babies??? Whyyyy. I think I'd be less grossed out if ALL the descriptions were that graphic, but nope, most of the ones between consenting adults are just sort of glossed over.

And just. So much incest. So. Much. Incest. Ursula is so preoccupied with keeping the family together, but if I were her I think I'd be encouraging them all to move as far away from one another as possible if I didn't want someone ending up with a pig's tail.

All that being said though, I haven't DNF-ed the book. The writing is so brilliant and bizarre, and the characters are so weird and wonderful, that even with all my plot confusion and "eewwww" moments, I keep on wanting to know what will happen next.

I think once I finish it, I'm going to look for some good literary criticism on the book, and I bet my mind will be blown.

Yep, this did get long. And I probably would have even more thoughts if I had the book in front of me. Probably a good thing that I don't. 😅

[allthebest20]

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

8/10 - I liked this book a lot, although sometimes I found it difficult to read. A lot of characters share similar names, and their narratives weave in and out of chronological order. The book tells a whirlwind story that starts with a couple and their young sons and ends 5 generations later. While much of what happens in the book sounds roughly historically accurate, many aspects also contain an element of magic. Characters see ghosts and predict the future, mysterious plagues hit the town, and some events can only be explained through the supposively impossible.

We've only recently entered a reality where we expected most things to make sense, to be explainable by science. Yet, most of our ancestors lived in a far more fantastical reality, and Marquez does a beautiful job capturing this. As time passes in the novel, less magic seems to occur, so that by the end, they may have well been living in the banal reality of the late twentieth century. I don't know much about the history of northern South America -- although the book never specifies a global location, based on Marquez's background, I think it's safe to say that the fictional town of Macando is set in Columbia -- I felt like this book gave a glimpse into how life has changed in the last 150 years in the area.

The story starts with Jose Arcadio Sr. and his wife Ursula. Although it follows the Buendia name, if the story is about any one individual character, it would be Ursula, the strong matriarch who holds the family together. (Spoiler) It is after her death that the family really starts to fall apart and reach their ruin. It is Ursula who ties her husband to the tree when he goes mad, who raises the kids, grand-kids, great-grand-kids and beyond, who earns money for the family and keeps the house in good shape. She is the only one who can speak reason or spark fear in her unruly descendants, in turn giving her a great deal of power over how the town is governed. During her lifetime, the house and family are joyous because of her hard-work and spirit. J.A. Sr. (and Ursula) are the founders of Macondo, the town where all events of the book take place. After a fight that ends in the other man's death, Jose Arcadio and a group of men set out to establish a new town. After much wandering, they start Macondo, a very happy place where, under Jose Arcadio's leadership, everything is fair.

It seems as though both Jose and Ursula have some sort of family history in their old town, although they distinguish themselves from the Indians, so they are not fully indigenous. They speak Spanish, so they are likely descendants of colonizers who have been living in South America for at least a few generations. Their European heritage is never mentioned. Later in the novel, more colonists, this time English speakers, come to Macondo to set up banana plantations. There is also some mentions of dwindling, suffering, and resisting Indigenous populations, but they are mostly spoken about like second class citizens. There are two Indigenous characters that work as servants, maybe slaves, for the Buendia's, before they even become very wealthy. They arrive of their own free will, looking to escape their village which is over run with a horrible plague (historically accurate) that causes insomnia and eventually delirium (probably not historically accurate). One of these characters stays until their death, serving the family, utterly devoted, very one-dimensional. In another part of the book, an Indigenous military leader is killed because Aureliano I, Ursala's son, thinks he is too fearless, too savage, too much of a natural leader, who might divert power from himself. The Buendia's are both colonizers and colonized. They show no awareness of this -- no sympathy for or affinity with the Indigenous people. If they have indigenous roots, they do never acknowledge it.

When the banana company moves into town, there is very little concern about it at first. The banana company is an obvious colonizer: they set up their own village, separate from Macondo, with an imported design. They establish a stricter government and they over work their employees. However, none of the Buendia's work for the company, so the working conditions are not of big concern to the narrative. Ursula's great-great-grandchild, Meme, is friends with the daughters of the banana company executives, so she spends time over in their posh village. It isn't until Aureliano I, the retired revolutionary, starts talking a big game against the banana company, that the family is really pulled in. Of his 17 sons, born across the country to different women, all of whom were hoping to birth a military leader as great as Aureliano, all but one are killed by the government to prevent an uprising. Jose Arcadio Segundo (who is actually the third Jose Arcadio), Ursula's great-grandchild, also tries to stand up to the banana company by helping to organize strikes. The way the banana company saga ends, though, is interesting and a little puzzling to me. The banana company gathers all the strikers together in the town center, closes all the exists, and massacres every single one of the workers and their families. Segundo wakes up in a train full of dead bodies, the only survivor, and escapes, only to find that no one has heard of the massacre. Years later, the massacre becomes a wild myth, erased from all textbooks and the common memory. The banana company promises to resume production right after the rain finishes. However, the rain continues for years, and the banana company quickly abandons the site. The narrator claims that the banana company can control the weather, and purposefully causes the years of rain. This makes me think that the banana company murdered the strikers because their organized power was too much to handled, but they also couldn't risk news of a successful strike spreading. They had to abandon the town because the sudden lack of workers would have been suspicious, so the executive caused the rain to create an excuse to leave, to plunge the town into such soggy disparity that no one would question the absences of so many people. I don't know why Marquez would give the banana company power over the weather, since by this time, less and less magic is happening in Macondo. Perhaps it is just a metaphor for the overarching power that capitalist colonizer exercise over an area. Their plantations often have huge environmental effects, although typically these fall short of changing the rain.

The town never fully recovers from this colonization, although, years later, people blame the town's trouble on the banana company leaving, not it's arrival, the massacre, the changing government, or the rain. This, of course, is a classic way to misremember history. Only those of us with a bird's eye view can be certain of what happened and why, and even I remain unsure in this case.

If I was to read this book again, I would highlight every time Marquez uses the word solitude. At the end of the book, I am still wondering who spent a hundred years in solitude. It is hard to track time in this story, but it may be 100 years from when Melquíades writes the prophecy of the Buendia family and when Aureliano IV, Ursula's great-great-great grandchild, final deciphers it. Perhaps it is Aureliano I, the revolutionary war leader, the father who out lives his 18 sons, the introvert, late bloomer, alchemist and gold-fish maker, who lives in the most solitude. Or perhaps it's Ursula, cursed to watch her descendants repeat the same mistakes. Or maybe it's the first Jose Arcadio, who fluctuates between a responsible and fair leader and a self-important mad scientist, who goes mad and must be tied to a tree behind the house. There he ultimately dies, but his ghost lives on in the house. Many of his descendants are similar: flipping between greatness and obsession, responsibility and madness. Spending years serving the community and then years locked away. Still, it is Ursula who I feel the most for: she's the only steady one, always working for her family, always caring about others. Alone in her true sense of responsibility to the family.

The book also has a lot of weird incest things. From the gate, we learn that Ursula and Jose Arcadio are cousins. For months after their marriage, Ursula wears chastity underwear to prevent her husband raping her in fear that their child will have the tale of a pig. The book often puts women in this role of protecting themselves from the desires of the men in their life. No one is safe from lust. Twice, nephews fall in love with their aunts, who worry that the boys will rape them in the night. Amaranta, Ursula's daughter, practically raises Aureliano Jose, Aureliano I's illegitimate son, and he becomes obsessed with her. The narrator implies he develops these feelings because of Amaranta's carelessness: she is often naked in front of him as he gets older, and she lets him cuddle her, enjoying the way it feels to be touched by a warm body. Llittle Aureliano II develops deeply sexual feelings for Amaranta, who rejects them strictly and dies a virgin. Amaranta's lack of romantic companionship is a self-designed punishment for the suicide of a lover who she rejected harshly, despite leading him on and developing affection for him. This is one of many examples of women being punished for their relationship with sex, something I will come back to soon. Three generations later, the same thing happens between Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano IV. Amaranta II, a free-wheeling young women who loves having sex with her older, wealthy European husband, ultimately chooses to be with her cousin. Their passionate sex leads to the last Buendia: a little boy who is born with a pig-tail, just like Ursula worried about all those years ago. Amaranta II dies in child birth, and Aureliano IV, loses himself in grief. The new born is neglected and eaten by ants, just before Aureliano is killed in his ancestral home by a wind storm. This is how the book ends, as Aureliano IV translates Melquíades' prophecy: The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants. It is unclear, apparently, if Amaranta and Aureliano know they are related. Although Amaranta always grew up with little Aureliano around, his origins are unknown, because Amaranta's sister birthed him in a nunnery and her mother, Fernanda, kept his origins a secret because of the shame of his illegitimacy. However, he has the family name and the resemblance, so I don't believe they truly didn't know.

Now, to talk about the misogyny in the book. Ursula ultimately allows Jose Arcadio to have sex with her because she worries that with out that outlet, Jose Arcadio is prone to recklessness. She does not have sex because she desires him. Amaranta II at first rejects Aureliano IV, but one night he sneaks into her room, and at first she fights him off, but then she lets the fighting become sex. The scene is framed as consensual, because Amaranta's husband is the other room, so at any time, if she had made any noise of distress, he could have come to her rescue. We are left to assume that she secretly wants it. She is one of a few female characters in the book who enjoys sex, and she is ultimately punished for it: she loses her husbands, has a son with a pig tail in a dilapidated house, and then shortly thereafter dies. The other sex lovers include Pilar Ternera, the old prostitute who bears a child by both Aureliano I and Jose Arcadio II. While she lives a decent life, she works hard, never finds love, and neither Buendia boy knows her as their mother. Petra Cotes is another: she is refered to as Aureliano Segundo's -- truly Aurelieno III, Ursula's great-grandson, Amaranta II's father -- concubine. She is dark-skinned, perhaps why she does not become his wife, and the love of his life. Even after he marries Fernanda, Amaranta II's mother, he spends the majority of his time with Petra. Their passionate sex is a key part of their relationship, but Petra never bears a child. Later in life, when they have lost most of their wealth in the rains, Petra and Aureliano often go hungry to afford fine meals and objects for Fernanda and the children. After her lover dies, Petra continues to care for Fernanda until her death, because despite their mutual diastase for each other and Petra's poverty, Petra feels obligated to care for what Aureliano III loved. Perhaps the most depressing example, however, is of Meme, Amarana II's older sister and the mother of Aureliano IV. She falls in love with a man who works at the banana company, and they enjoy sex together. When her mother, Fernanda finds out, she locks Amaranta away in the house, but every day, her lover sneaks in and they have sex in the bathroom. When Fernanda finds out, she has a guard keep watch and they shot the man when he enters the property. Amaranta is send away to a nunnery, and she never says another word, lost so deep in grief that not even the birth of her son can make her speak.

Unfinished, but publishing anyways

[officialjimmybuffett]

happy international women’s day to ursula buendia only