Germano 1 Micah Germano Sra. Deards Per.

3 2/11/13 Symbolism of One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude is a phenomenally complex work of contemporary literature, a piece that is loaded with historical and literary allusions. References of everything from the history of Latin America to the Bible abound in the century spanning epic, but one of the most interesting symbols that Marquez presents is in that of a pigs tail. The image of a human baby born with a curly pigs tail is conjured for the reader early in the story, and it remains a haunting reminder of what the characters had hoped to achieve, what still drives them, and what is still in store. The books most important symbol is that of a spiraling pigs tail because it represents the prime motivation of the Buenda family, the ultimate cause of their downfall, and the structure of the narrative itself. The pigs tail is an extremely important symbol because it resurfaces as a recurring motivator for various members of the Buenda family. The first instance of this is in Ursulas deeply ingrained fear of inbreeding, from which a child born with a pigs tail would result. In the beginning, the fear of incest keeps Ursula from consummating her marriage with Jos Arcadio Buenda. This leads to taunts from members of their home village, and leads to the chain of events that end in the founding of Macondo. The fear of the pigs tail has spurred the Buendas on to their early greatness, propelling them from the familiar into an idyllic land of promise and plenty. Ursulas iron resolve not to violate this rule resurfaces in her daughter, Aramanta. Time and time again, the younger Buenda woman rejects the advances of various men. The only occasions she reciprocates anything resembling romantic feelings, her spasms of love are directed towards her own nephew, Jos Aureliano. Her disgust with herself and her situation drives her to immediately sever ties with her nephew- arguably cutting off the possibility of a pigs tail- which drives the young man to join his father in the practice of war. This in turn leads to the boys demise, and begins the downward spiral that sends his father, the General Aureliano Buenda, into the quiet madness of solitude. The fear and defiance of the pigs tail motivated the actions of many individual characters as well as the founding of Macondo itself. The pigs tail also represents the cause of the Buenda familys ultimate downfall, a descent into debauchery that culminates in the clans final destruction. By the end of the book, the twisting coils come back to mock the family in two distinct ways. First there is the birth of the final Buenda, a baby that is literally born with a pigs tail. This deformi ty represents the victory of a century of failure over some small, new hope for the future. The childs mother was full of the blithe spirit, strong will, and entrepreneurship which characterized her ancestor,

Germano 2 Ursula. She had a very real chance of revitalizing Macondo with her actual husband- she could have chosen to throw the village headlong into the future by introducing the airplane, a means of escape from the perpetually dying husk that the town had become. The childs father, once again named Aureliano, was the keeper of Macondos past. He had both the will and ability to preserve the age old lessons, to decipher the texts of the wizard Melquades and avert the catastrophe to which he and his fathers were born. Instead, he decided to have a son with his aunt, which was almost immediately devoured by ants. Each of them could have chosen to stave off solitude, both for themselves, their home, and their child. Instead, they chose to turn in on themselves, indulge their inherited lusts, and allow the consequences of incest to triumph over their family. The spiral of the pigs tail also returns at the end of the novel as a hurricane or tornado of tremendous proportions, a cataclysm that effaces Macondo from the surface of the earth. Instead of the slow decay of morality that had plagued the Buenda family for years, the shape of the pigs tail recurs as a force of instant and unparalleled destruction. This solidifies it as a symbol of the final judgment, a personal apocalypse visited upon the world the Buenda family created as if by an act of God. This is where the symbol pigs tail ties into one of many biblical allusions. Thus, the pigs tail represents both the dramatic destruction and the slow fall of the Buenda family, a clan that was forced to endure one hundred years of solitude and did not receive another chance upon the earth. Most importantly, the pigs tail represents the chronological structure of One Hundred Years of Solitude itself. The story is told in a disjointed and dreamlike manner, wherein the future is mentioned before the past as events circle around each other in chronology. The timeline of the story is purposely presented as circular rather than linear; at first, this technique leaves the reader disoriented as to what is actually happening. This makes a certain amount of sense, as the reader has only visited the first loop. As the tale goes on, one finds that what is occurring is not as important as what is recurring, or has already been revealed to have happened in the future in the straight-faced manner that is characteristic of the work. Though the past, present, and future are visited and revisited constantly, the tale is always implacably marching forward. Much the way a pigs tail curls inward upon itself, the parallels and recurrences among events and people are deliberately demonstrated to the reader. The novel never loses its sense of direction because even when one can see both forward and backward in the loop, the flow of the story is inexorably directed inward. The novel also structures the spiral of the pigs tail around its main characters. Spirals are shapes that are defined by recursive loops, always coming to almost the same place without completely repeating what has been before or what will be in the future. With each generational iteration, circumstances and actions are repeated on a grander or more focused scale. For instance, the original Jos Arcadio Buendas personal war against his mortal enem y is mimicked by Aurelianos thirty two national uprisings, which is again refocused in the context of Jos Arcadio Segundos ill-fated rebellion against the foreign banana company that had taken over the town. Recurring themes circle those who bear the recurring names of the Buenda clan, hemming

Germano 3 characters in and forcing them to express their roles in Macondos history in their own distinct ways. Colonel Aureliano is a particularly noteworthy case in that he has a tremendous impact on events of the nation at large, which indirectly alter life in Macondo for the worse. Though he has so much influence over events in the story, he does little in his own town that is worthy of note after he becomes a national hero, and he allows his personality to completely atrophy. In this way, the man that the Colonel would become represents the center of the spiral, an eye in the storm, and the entirety of the Buenda family. Personally, he comes to nothing despite his achievements, and he is forgotten and dismissed as the world circles on without him. His death marks the halfway point of the story, for he literally expires in its center. Though each characters individual personality is thoroughly explored, they are also echoes of the choices made by their ancestors. The pigs tail ultimately represents solitude- a legacy of men and women turned in upon each other and themselves, damned to repeating the mistakes of their forbears and leaving those failures as their only legacy. The pigs tail represents a spiral, turned inward and focusing the positive and negative traits of the individual by mirroring the persons surroundings while simultaneously shutting them out. The pigs tail is solitude, and the way in which various characters react to that destiny determines what their fates will be. Ursula reacted to it with fear and determination- she was never corrupted by the vices of her descendants and outlived most of her family. Aramanta cut herself off from love, separating herself from the spiral just as she had reached its center. General Aureliano turned in on himself and was lost in isolated repetitions, forever doomed to make the same fishes and dream the same dreams as the deaths of his sons ate his memories away. Aureliano and Aramanta Ursula turned toward their own passions instead of actually supporting each other in what needed to be done to avert tragedy, and in so doing, sealed their fate. Time circles around Macondo and the Buendas, isolating them more as its effects are able to taint a village that once knew no death. At the center of it all is the haunting spiral of a pigs tail.