100 Years of Solitude Chap 16-20 Question 2: Ursula as a Doll, & the Color Red

1. Ursula the doll & the color red

a. Ursula’s ultimate demise begins with the floods that cause leeches to cover her back and suck the blood out of her body. I feel as though this represents the ultimate power of nature, even over people like Ursula who promote virtue and reason in society – humanity is a product of nature, and nature can bring an end to humanity. I feel that modern technology are the “life sucking leeches” that drain Ursula of her viability and bring the rains to wipe out civilization.

b. “Ursula was their most amusing plaything. They looked upon her as a big, broken-down doll that they carried back and forth from one corner to another wrapped in colored clothe with her face painted with soot and annatto,”(p. 327). The leeches and floods made Ursula regress to a doll/infant-like state. This is also a reflection of Macondo’s regression back to nature after the floods wipe out modern technology and memories of culture. I also think that Ursula’s doll form is a continuation of her vitality and “eternal youth,” she is depicted as the plaything of Amaranta Ursula and little Aureliano, the children who were jovial and carefree despite the rains. The rest of Macondo allowed the rain to bring detriment to their happiness and progress in life, Ursula and the children forged through the rain and made the most of what nature dealt them.

c. In her doll-like state, Ursula completely loses her sense of time and reality; her existence reaches the epitome of storytelling and memories of people and the Buendia legacy. In this way, her confusion is akin to the wild imagination of children that affords them freedom and happiness, regardless of external circumstances.

The color red in 100 Years of Solitude:

“…Her [Ursula’s] face wrapped in a red kerchief,”(p. 328).

“…The world lighted up with a crazy crimson sun harsh as brick dust,”(p. 330).

“…Animal skeletons covered with red lilies,”(p.331).

Typically in literature, red is a color that symbolizes bravery, happiness, good luck, energy, heat/fire and blood. This image also provokes pain, sacrifice, passion and anger. Ursula is depicted as wearing a red kerchief because she is the blood of Buendia family that tries to hold the family together. Ursula is also full of vitality and energy, as red symbolizes. Red sun and red lilies in the aftermath of the flood symbolize the sacrifice, pain, and anger that the floods have caused Macondo. Red is an important color in the aftermath of the flood and the end of Ursula’s life.