100 Years of Solitude Chap 11-15 Part 3a: Fernanda vs. Ursula

->Fernanda closes the open doors of the Buendia households & halts Ursula’s candy shop production; Ursula’s matriarch power is being compromised because Fernanda takes advantage of every moment where Ursula shows her true age and fragility. Because Fernanda poses such a threat to the loving matriarch, it is instinctual to DISLIKE Fernanda and regards her as a force that counteracts the ultimate nature.

“As long as Ursula had full use of her faculties some of the old customs survived and the life of her family kept some quality of her impulsiveness, but when she lost her sight and the weight of her years relegated her to a corner, the circle of rigidity, begun by Fernanda from the moment she arrived finally closed completely and no one but she determined the destiny of the family,”(p. 211).

è In conclusion, I feel that the “circle of rigidity” being imposed by Fernanda could represent the industrialization and man-made ideologies of society that are imposed on nature. Nature is represented by the original “Eden” that was Macondo, until it was infiltrated by external forces and ideologies that tried to impose structure, futile causes like war, material goods, and technology upon the innocent, pure, natural Eden of Macondo.

è Furthermore, the “circle of rigidity” is an interesting image because, the Buendia family is incestuous and circularly shaped, as one family member pursues the other in a rigid circle. This introverted family is stuck, destined for ruin, unable to escape the rigid circle of nature & destiny. All of these images and ideals tie in with one another.

100 Years of Solitude Chap 11-15 Part 3: Ursula & Transformation in Macondo

TRANSFORMATION: Macondo is uprooted through the establishment of ORDER within society, which upsets the NATURAL CHAOS of Macondo.

Ursula is the ultimate matriarch, she is wise and focused on her family, and she is also concerned with the cultural upheaval Fernanda pursues through the introduction of organized religion and class structure.

Change in Macondo is signaled with the railroad tracks, and then reinforced by the new home technology in chapter 10. “All that remained at that time of Jose Arcadio Buendia’s ancient village were the dusty almond trees, destined to resist the most arduous of circumstances, and the river of clear water whose prehistoric stones had been pulverized by the frantic hammers of Jose Arcadio Segundo when he set about opening the channel in order to establish a boat line,”(p. 193). Depicts the fall of Eden and industrial impacts that society and people impose on nature.

Ursula eludes to the story of Jose Arcadio Segundo and his attempt to overpower nature: “Set about the awesome task of breaking stones, digging canals, clearing away rapids, and even harnessing waterfalls. ‘I know all of this by hear,’ Ursula would shout. ‘It’s as if time had turned around and we were back at the beginning,”(p. 193). Time is only evident in the destruction of nature as Macondo continues to develop as a society.

Ursula yearns to go back to the beginning of time in Macondo, without silly material things, back to the basics. “Dear Lord,’ she begged, ‘make us poor again the way we were when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in the other life,”(p. 192). She is wise enough to realize the futile value placed on material goods, which distract and disillusion her children’s abilities to see what is truly important in life.

Although Ursula wishes to go back in time, she is timeless herself. She has defied nature and time by living well and far beyond the lifetime nature usually allows. “Although she was already a hundred years old and on the point of going blind from cataracts, she still had her physical dynamism, her integrity of character, and her mental balance in tact. No one would be better able than she to shape the virtuous man who would restore the prestige of the family, a man who would never have heard talk of war, fighting cocks, bad women, or wild undertakings, four calamities that, according to what Ursula thought, had determined the downfall of their line. ‘This one will be a priest,’ she promised solemnly. ‘And if God gives me life he’ll be Pope someday,”(p. 188-189). She is central to the family and represents the traditional values that keep families in tact and cultures alive. She is wise beyond any man, and foresees the consequences of organized religion and hierarchal society on Macondo.

Ursula maintains her superstitious mentality, and is always worried for the sake of her children as a result of their foolish actions. “She’s got you so bewitched that one of these days I’m going to see you twisting around with colic and with a toad in your belly,” (p. 190).

Ursula is the ultimate matriarch; she relies on nature, instincts, and the value of family to maintain her critical role and promote harmony within the chaotic family. She understands her role in the universe as merely a part of nature, but she can only help those willing to heed her warning and wise insight.

100 Years of Solitude Chap 11-15 Part 1b. Petra represents NATURE vs. Fernanda represents SOCIETY & its shallow aritificiality

a. FERNANDA is an external force of change, hierarchy, and societal trends that smother the vitality and chaos of Macondo: PETRA REPRESENTS FERTILITY & NATURE; FERNANDA REPRESENTS FICTION & SOCIETAL HIERARCHY.

Nature/Fertility of Petra: * “…but an influence of Petra Cortes, his concubine, whose love had the virtue of exasperating nature,”(p. 189).

* “At first Aureliano Segundo did not notice the alarming proportions of the proliferations…it was a delirious prosperity that even made him laugh, and she could not help doing crazy things to release his good humor,”(p. 191)

* “She had made a man out of him. While he was still a child she had drawn him out of Melquiades’ room, his head full of fantastic ideas and lacking any contact with reality, and she had given him a place in the world. Nature had made him reserved and withdrawn, with tendencies toward solitary meditation, and she had molded an opposite character in him, one that was vital, expansive, open, and she had injected him with a joy for living and a pleasure in spending and celebrating until she had converted him, inside and out, into the man she had dreamed of for herself since adolescence,”(p. 203).

* “Don’t worry,’ she told them. ‘Queens run errands for me, the only candle that will make him come is always lighted,”(p. 204).

è Ultimately, Petra represents the untouchable force and fertility of MOTHER NATURE. She is unrelenting to class status or social structure enforced by Fernanda and the church, society is a mere manifestation of man, powerless and aritificial to the force of nature.

è Fernanda & Aureliano Segundo were both born with similar tendencies for solitude and shyness – the difference being that Aureliano was influenced by mother nature in the form of Petra, and destiny chose a path for Aureliano that led to fulfillment and happiness beyond what his demeanor foretold – Fernanda was trapped in disillusioned solitude, without the external forces of nature as an influence in her direction and happiness in life. Since she has no knowledge of what holds true value in life, she tries to compensate by pursuing the traditions of her family and religion – both of which are powerless to the ultimate force of nature, superior and benevolent.

100 Years of Solitude Chap 11-15 Part 1a. Fernanda as an Influence

1. FERNANDA

a. FERNANDA is frigid, lost, dark, sheltered and alone; she is secluded in a gloomy city where she never heard news about current events in the world except for through melancholy piano lessons.

b. FERNANDA grows up with her mother constantly reassuring her that she is very rich, powerful and will become Queen someday. Her mother is sickly and stays in bed all the time, weaving funeral wreaths and telling fantastic stories of the past. Fernanda was raised to believe in the delusions of her mother that are similar to those of Don Quixote and Sancho;

“We are immensely rich and powerful, ‘ she told her. ‘One day you will be a queen.’ She believed it, even though they were sitting at the long table with a linen tablecloth and silver service to have a cup of watered chocolate and a sweet bun. Until the day of her wedding she dreamed about a legendary kingdom, in spite of the fact that her father, Don Fernando, had to mortgage the house in order to buy her trousseau. It was not innocence or delusions of grandeur. That was how they had brought her up,”(page 206). Fernanda is immersed in a fantasy world of knights in shining armor and castles not by choice, but by birth. She was not allowed any exposure to the outside world and was extremely impressionable in this way. She was not exposed to reality until she was sent to Macondo. “In one single day, with a brutal slap, life threw on top of her the whole weight of reality that her parents had kept hidden from her for many years,”(page 207). This is the danger of living through fiction and basing your reality and existence within a world of fiction, however, Fernanda was not in control of this disillusioned existence that was manifested and perpetuated by her parents.

c. FERNANDA is a strong woman despite her ignorance and consequent despair; she stands up for her TRADITIONAL beliefs & honor. She is not exciting in bed, but she is not OK with Fernando sleeping with Petra, even when he pleads that it yields fertile animals she warns; “…he should not be surprised by death in his concubine’s bed,”(page 210).

d. FERNANDA imposes her traditions & religion on the Buendia household, which threaten Ursula’s position as matron of the home. *Imposed rules on when people could eat, and required food must be eaten in the dining room with a linen tablecloth, silver candlesticks and table service. *Reciting the rosary before dinner *Aloe branch & bread loaf over Buendia door are replaced by Sacred Heart Jesus *Built life-size saints with glass eyes in the children’s rooms *Jose Arcadio sent to seminary *No fun presents anymore, dead Don Fernandes sent in coffin instead

100 Years of Solitude Chap 11-15 Part 2: Col. Aureliano Buendia & Chaos

2. CHAOS of Col. Aureliano Buendia: He warns the Buendia family that they are becoming “people of quality, fighting to install a King” (p. 212) fervently rejects hierarchy established by Fernanda’s beliefs.

-> CONVERSELY, Fernanda feels threatened by the disorder of Col. Buendia, his coffee, crazy workshop and frayed blanket were not examples of the way she wanted things to be. But she did not dare go against the “loose piece in the family machinery,” because: “She was sure that the old colonel was an animal who had been tamed by the years and by disappointment and who, in a burst of senile rebellion, was quite capable of uprooting the foundations of the house,”(page 212).

->Chaos of Col. Buendia is emphasized when his seventeen sons arrive at the house and wreak havoc all over Macondo. “The three days that they stayed in the house, to the satisfaction of Ursula and the scandal of Fernanda, were like a state of war,”(page 215). Col. Aureliano Buendia lived most of his life in a state of war and chaos, he understands the futility of war at the end of his career and the value of his lost sons gnaw at his conscience. Col. Buendia is amused by the wildness of his sons, who transform a celebratory jubilee into a crazed, violent war.

-> “They smashed half of the dishes, they destroyed the rosebushes as they chased a bull they were trying to hog-tie, they killed the hens by shooting at them, they made Amaranta dance the sad waltzes of Pietro Crespi, they got Remedios the Beauty to put on a pair of men’s pants and climb a greased pole, and in the dining room they turned loose a pig daubed with lard, which prostrated Fernanda, but no one regretted the destruction because the house shook with a healthy earthquake,”(page 216). When the boys left, Aureliano gave each one of them a gold fish. Evidence of Col. Buendia’s transformation and newfound purpose in life.

-> Col. Buendia’s rowdy sons are “more amused than devout,”(p. 217) as Christians, were unable to scrub the ash crosses off of their foreheads. This mark distinguishes the boys from the rest of the family, and I feel represents the excitement and disorder at the root of Macondo. The boys are wild, untamed, passionate and violent, just like nature is. Their visit is treasured by all of the Buendia family, except for Fernanda, the evil external influence.

100 Years of Solitude Chap 6-10 Ques 2: Perception of Death According to Jose Arcadio

2. Perception of death.

Jose Arcadio reflects on his life as he awaits his fate with the firing squad. This moment of reflection gives Arcadio a crystallized perspective of what is truly important in life and what true value life holds in the face of death. Arcadio thought about his mother and her love for his father, his unnamed daughter, his unborn child and the woman he loved.

“In the shattered schoolhouse where for the first time he had felt the security of power, a few feet from the room where he had come to know the uncertainty of love, Arcadio found the formality of death ridiculous. Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia,”(Page 119).

In the past, Jose Arcadio had been tormented by a fear of dying, but in the face of death his fears melted and his desire for time to spend and a life to live with the people who matter the most made him ache with yearning. Despite his reflections, Arcadio is certain to tell his wife to name their child Ursula, after his mother. This reflected the “inward thinking” of the family which continues even as it brings the family to death. – Even as he faces the firing squad next to corpses, he is frustrated that he forgot to tell his wife to name a baby girl Remedios. “Then all accumulated in the rip of a claw, he felt again all the terror that had tormented him in his life,”(page 120).

Death is feared during life, then life is treasured more in the threat of death, but instinctual fear consumes the body when battling death in the final hours.

100 Years of Solitude Chap 6-10 Ques 1: Futility of War Evident in Dehumanization of Col. Aureliano Buendia

**My responses did not appear on the blog last week. So I have reposted them today.

1. War is futile, this is reflected by the dehumanization and ultimate demise of Col. Aureliano Buendia through his war efforts. Chapter 6 opens with an entire page listing all of Col. Buendia’s miraculous victories over death, war honors and responsibilities bestowed on Buendia as a Colonel, as well as how little recognition Buendia earned in his lifetime. “Colonel Aureliano Buendia organized thirty-two armed uprisings and he lost them all. He had seventeen male children…they were exterminated one after the other on a single night before the oldest one had reached the age of thirty-five,”(page 103). Despite the continued ramblings that describe foiled assassination attempts on his life, his reputable legacy and dignity that prevented him from accepting a lifetime pension in order to pursue his gold fishes – all the fighting and war was futile, he gained nothing from his experience except agony at the realization that his purpose in life was for a violent, futile cause. The only thing left to commemorate his achievements was a street named after him in Macondo, but no one would ever know all Col. Buendia endured in the name of war. Col Buendia sinks into succumbs to his despair and becomes engulfed by sadness and a feeling of futility that his life of war has brought.

“Little by little, however, and as the war became more intense and widespread, his image was fading away into a universe of unreality. The characteristics of his speech were more and more uncertain, and they came together and combined to form words that were gradually losing all meaning,”(page 161).

His fleeting war fever opened up sadness and a new purpose for war, “He was never a greater soldier than at that time. The certainty that he was finally fighting for his own liberation and not for abstract ideals, for slogans that politicians could twist left and right according the circumstances, filled him with an ardent enthusiasm,”(page 170).