100 Years of Solitude
...acondo, things had to be named. “Things from the civilized world or past history have either been forgotten or are deemed so new that it becomes necessary to point, because things have not yet received a name. We may consider this observation a wry and perhaps fanciful one; but, upon reflection, we would have to concede that our lives are, in fact, full of encounters with things for which we lack identifying names--things, which to describe, it becomes necessary “to point” (Solitude 3). Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife traveled across mountains to reach Macondo to allow the spirit of Prudecio Aguilar to rest. In Macondo, Jose lead the people. The movement of Jose and Ursula to a another land is similar to when Abraham and Sarah, (who happened to be Abraham’s half sister which also parallels the incest theme that is evident throughout 100 Years,) left Ur to go to the land of Canaan where God told Abraham to go and settle and become the father of many nations. The exodus of Jose Arcadio Buendia can also be likened to Moses leaving Egypt after he killed the Egyptian on his way to Midian. Also, Jose and Ursula left in search of a better life just as the Israelites left Egypt on their way to the promised land. “The Israelites set out on foot from Rameses for Sukkoth. There were about 600,000 men, not counting women and children” (Exodus 12.37). Also in Genesis, God sent the rains. He said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to all mankind…I am going to send a flood on the earth to destroy every living being” (Gen 6.13). In 100 Years of Solitude, Mr. Brown “unleashed a torrential rain.” Although his intention was not to destroy mankind, the destruction of Macondo made life miserable for everyone. Ursula began living in the past and eventually died after a long life. Fernanda developed voodoo powers. Another Biblical comparison comes from the second book of Kings. Elijah and Elisha were prophets. Elisha was to be Elijah’s successor; however, Elisha wasn’t willing to give up his master, Elijah. After the two of them parted and crossed the Jordan river, Elijah ascended into heaven in a whirlwind, leaving his cloak behind for Elisha: They kept talking as they walked on; then suddenly a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire came between them, and Elijah was taken up to heaven by a whirlwind. Elisha saw it and cried out to Elijah, “My father, my father! Mighty defender of Israel! You are gone!” And he never saw Elijah again. In grief, Elisha tore his cloak in two. Then he picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. (II Kings 2.11-13) In 100 Years of Solitude, Amaranta, Fernanda, Ursula and Remedios the Beauty were in the garden folding brabant sheets when Amaranta noticed Remedios the Beauty beginning to look pale: Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace on her petticoats and she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant in which Remedios the Beauty waving goodbye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment of beetles and dahlias and passing through the air with her as four o’clock in the afternoon came to an end, and they were lost forever with her in the upper atmosphere where not even the highest-flying birds of memory could reach her. (Garcia Marquez 255) Despite Amaranta and Elisha wanting them to stay, both Remedios the Beauty and Elijah ascended to heaven. In Chapter 15, Fernanda said that they found Aureliano floating in a basket. She said “If they believe it in the Bible, I don’t see why they shouldn’t believe it from me” (Garcia Marquez 322). In the second book of Exodus a man from the tribe of Levi married a woman of his own tribe and they had a child, Moses. “When she saw what a fine baby he was, she hid him for three months. But when she could not hide him any longer, she took a basket made of reeds and covered it with tar to make it watertight. She put the baby in it and then placed it in the tall grass at the edge of the river” (Exodus 2.2-3). Both baby Moses and Aureliano had no control over the actions of there mothers, and they both went on to play important roles in the history of their people. There were also plagues in both the Bible and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book. Plagues appear in Exodus in the Bible. When the Egyptian king wouldn’t let God’s people go, God told Aaron to take his walking stick and go to the river. Aaron turned the water to blood so that all the fish would die and the Egyptians had no water to drink. When the king wouldn’t let the people go, God told him that he would cover his land with frogs. God followed with gnats, flies, the death of animals, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the first born child. The king remained stubborn, and eventually God lead the people out of Egypt. In 100 Years, people were plagued by insomnia. “Children and adults sucked with delight on the delicious little green roosters of insomnia, the exquisite pink fish of insomnia, and the tender yellow ponies of insomnia, so that dawn on Monday found the whole town awake” (Garcia Marquez 49). On the contrary, they were happy not sleeping because there was so much to do in Macondo in those days that there was barely enough time. “During the family’s plague of forgetfulness and insomnia, Pilar inverts her art, when she conceived the trick of reading the past in the cards as she had read the future before” (Roses 70). Jose Arcadio Buendia realized that the plague was taking over the town, so he gathered with other members of the town to come up with a way to prevent the spreading of the insomnia. “All strangers who passed through the streets of Macondo at that time had to ring their bells so that the sick people would know that they were healthy” (Garcia Marquez 51). The strangers were not allowed to eat or drink throughout their visit because they felt it was transmitted by mouth and didn’t want to spread the plague into other towns. War is another recurrent theme in both 100 Years of Solitude and in the Bible. In 100 Years t...