Examples Of Solitude In Remedios

Furthermore, this state of immunity and insensitivity to the world is the purest form of solitude presented in the novel because for Remedios it runs uninterrupted from her youth until her ascension, which while making her a “diabolical trap” for young men, allows her to be happy, even though other characters are miserable around her. This happiness reaches its peak at her ascension to heaven is reminiscent of the Bible, where the most devout followers of God, such as Elijah, are good or pure enough to reach heaven without the technicality of death. This imagery establishes Remedios in her state of ignorance and isolation as the the purest character in the book, not in a religious sense but strictly in her solitude. It may be argued that Remedios
This is the event that triggers the end of the Buendia line. Although Jose Arcadio Buendia swore at the start of the book that his family line would last forever, Melquiades’ prediction was all too correct, as it is recorded in Melquiades’ own history of the family. Furthermore, the end of the family takes place because of the one thing Ursula feared above all else for her family: a child with the tale of a pig, the result of an incestous marriage (Garcia Marquez 412). By cutting themselves off and letting their obsession rule every aspect of their lives, Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula bring about the downfall of their community. During the height of their romance, they overlook the village of Macondo, which collapses just as much as the house does since the floods have forced the colonizers to leave, taking many of the largest opportunities for income with them, a grim reality in Latin America. This is not explicitly stated in the novel; in fact, because of the two lovers’ solitude and obsession, we barely get to view village of Macondo itself in the few pages before it is destroyed. However, as critic Allison E. Fagan notes, 100 Years of Solitude is “not a history of Latin America, it is a metaphor for Latin America...Macondo is Latin America in microcosm" (qtd. In Fagan 46). As cities in Latin America fell when colonizers were suddenly absent, so does Macondo fall, with those who should
This results in the opposite of solitude, solidarity, and it seems as if Macondo is finally going to join the larger world. This has devastating effects though. The Banana Company massacres take place and the Buendia family, particularly Jose Segundo, notice the negative effects of sharing their village with the colonizers, particularly the loss of its culture as the gypsies do not visit anymore. The full extent to which Macondo’s emergence from solitude has changed their village though is made apparent only after the colonizers leave. Then, it becomes clear that colonization has altered Macondo permanently, neglecting it and virtually erasing it from the world map (Isip 140). Now, facing isolation from the global community again, Macondo is able to return to the early Remedios-like solitude of wonder, gypsies, and novelties. With their landscape devastated by the flood, neglected by the ones who brought them out of isolation and connected them to a global community, the solitary village withers and is finally “wiped clean from the face of the earth,” along with its translators (Fagan 47). Unable to achieve the balance of community and solitude that characters like Colonel Buendia achieve, Macondo is destroyed by it, and so the condemnation of the Buendia family to a hundred years of solitude also appears