1. Nearly five years of rain in Macondo wipes away the legacy of the Buendia family along with all the modern technology that become central to society.
a. The floods cause:
(1) Uprooting/complete elimination of the banana groves & memory of massacre
(2) Ursula is weakened on the verge of insanity after leeches suck the life our of her body,
(3) Sadness and madness result for characters like Aureliano Segundo, who has lost his lust for life and appetite for Petra’s fertility. Fernanda grieves her misfortune in life & lashes out in anger towards her husband, only wanting to die.
(4) The trains jump their tracks, cutting of communication with modern society & technology outside Macondo.
(5) Progress is halted, life and society in Macondo is stagnated, and everyone is waiting for the rain to stop so that they can die. “Something will be done when it clears,” –Aureliano Segundo
(6) Prosperity is destroyed when the bountiful livestock of Petra and Aureliano Segundo is drowned to death.
(7) Erases all memory of civilization, “was a bog of rotting roots,”(p. 331).
b. The floods in Macondo are similar to the flood that God imposed to rid the world of wicked people during the time of Noah. Similarly, Macondo is completely stripped of the people, technology, and legacy that defined society and the Buendia family. Perhaps the floods were caused because of the disillusionment that resulted from Macondo’s obsession with modern technology. Ursula is the root that maintains the memory and virtue of family for the Buendia family, but the destructive floods bring Macondo back to a time of primitive culture that lacks technology. Perhaps the technology that Macondo worshipped in the form of Mr. Brown’s banana company instigated the devastation in Macondo, because this obsession with modern technology replaced the core values that nature and family bring to society.
c. The floods humble Macondo, where people have forgotten the importance and power that nature wields above all things. Humans are a part of nature, time, age, and natural disasters are part of our reality in nature. The importance of time is discarded in 100 Years of Solitude, and characters like Aureliano Segundo who is obsessed with lust and fertility of Petra, suffer because of the futile things they idolize. Aureliano Segundo has a moment of realization during the floods as he looks at himself and Petra lying in bed, as reflected by mirrors on the ceiling. “Saw Petra Cortés’s spinal column like a row of spools strung together along a cluster of withered nerves, and he saw that she was right, not because of the times but because of themselves, who were no longer up to those things,” (p. 322). The power of nature is realized through the devastating floods, age is also a factor for the society of Macondo who is powerless (despite modern technology) under Mother Nature.
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