100 Years of Solitude (Chapters 6-10)

Choose two themes that relate to the novel as a whole.

One theme I noticed while reading is the theme of death. There is always a mention of someone dying and some deaths are unexplained, such as the death of Jose Arcadio. The most shocking thing to me, that occurs in Chapter 7 is the death of Jose Arcadio Buendia. After shouting in his ear and shaking him, they could not wake JAB up. That is when they realized that he was dead. After this, outside there were tons of yellow flowers falling from the sky. Marquez writes, "They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes" (140). The flowers also bring in the theme of magic because the scene that is portrayed is very unrealistic. This could be a representation that there are more deaths to come and that the town of Macondo is doomed. I looked up the meaning of yellow flowers and found that yellow flowers can mean "new beginnings and happiness" which kind of confuses me because I am not sure what to make of the meaning of then. It is confusing because they symbolize happiness but at the same time they smother animals while they sleep and cover the whole town, which I think means that death is invading the town. Perhaps this could mean that one character is going to find happiness and the others will be suffering.

Another theme that is present within these chapters is the them of incest, as we discussed in class. You mentioned in class that the family tries to keep their family going and well known in the town, but they go about it in the wrong way. They sleep with each other and have inbred children instead of creating outside of their family. Jose Arcadio tries to sleep with his own mother and she refuses, providing him with a young virgin girl named Pilar Ternera who she paid to sleep with Jose Arcadio. Marquez writes, "Pilar Ternera, his mother, who had made his blood boil in the darkroom, was as much an irresistable obsession for him as she had been first for jose Arcadio and then for Aureliano" (111). When she denies him saying that God is her witness and she can't do it, he calls her a whore. This also makes me think of another thing that we discussed - a girl being a virgin. This gives the man a lot of power over a woman because she is innocent and then corrupted by a man who is experienced. Jose Arcadio dies in battle and I believe that the theme of death comes to those who have done something wrong and deserved it in some way.