Reader Response #2

[Marla Westervelt]

In this section of the book Aureliano really experiences life from all
angles. He finds happiness and joy, and a break from solitude, with
his marriage to Remedios. Yet, he is not allowed this happiness for
long, and Remedios dies. Then we watch as this once nice young boy
becomes a colonel of war. It seems that he is fighting for something
and that he is motivated, but he comes home and we realize that he is
just as solitary as ever, and that war has made him even emptier. He
has no emotion or memories. He realizes this downfall; yet, he can do
nothing to right it.
I see Colonel Aureliano Buendía, as well as the rest of the Buendía
family, as a parable of solitude. No one in the family is happy
exactly. They all have thrown themselves in to different forms of
isolation. Aureliano finds a brief moment of happiness with his love,
and then it is gone, and he has no idea how to relate to the outside
world. He gives himself a 'purpose' and becomes a colonel, but when
all is said and done, it means absolutely nothing to him. Likewise,
Amaranta seems to spurn anything that could possibly make her happy.
The outside world must see her as incredibly fastidious; yet, it is
only her lack of knowledge on how to live a non-solitary life that
causes her to reject all men.
Jose Aracadio died after living many years tied to a tree. I was
slightly confused as to why they would tie him to a tree rather than
kill him. I guess, killing a realative would be slighty traumatic, but
leaving a man tied to a tree for years seems pretty awful as well.
Even though I would think that Jose was dishonored by this, it seemed
as if the heavens did not think this as a dishonor, and cried yellow
flowers. These tears from heaven are another example of the mystical,
magical quality that reality seems to undergo in this novel.
Again, the theme of the loss of memory is brought to the front in
chapter nine. Similarly to the loss of memory that the entire town
under went with their mysterious disease, Colonel Buendia also loses
all memories. It seems that his loss of memories is stemmed from is
lack of emotion, and new found passion for solitude. The war turned
him in to a shell of his former self.