100 years III

The last part of the book revolves around Fernanda del Carpio and Jose Aracdio Segundo. Fernanda is
married to Aureliano Segundo and is very proud of the fact that she was raised like a queen. Her actions
however have terrible consequences. When Fernanda finds Meme and Mauricio Babilonia kissing at the
movies she basically puts Meme under house arrest even posting a guard outside because she figures
that Mauricio is sneaking into the house to have sex with Meme every night. The guard eventually
shoots Mauricio which paralyzes him. This event so effects Meme that she becomes mute. Fernanda
sends Meme to a convent and somehow seems taken aback when a nun shows up with Meme’s
illegitimate child. If Fernanda was right about Mauricio then why would she think that was an isolated
incident?

I found it interesting also that Jose Arcadio, who was supposedly silent, rallied the banana workers to
strike. I thought this might be Marquez commenting on the nature of revolution and that sometimes
the voiceless can become just as powerful as natural leaders when faced with oppression. The workers
meet with the leadership and are massacred by the army. Jose Arcadio somehow escapes, manages to
get back to Macondo where all memory of the incident has essentially been erased. Jose Arcadio lives in
Melquiades’ room and much like Jose Arcadio Beundia before him loses his sanity. I think Marquez was
trying to make it seem like Jose Arcadio was taking the place of Aureliano, but I think that it is far more
likely that he was simply standing up for those like him. Ursula makes the comment that history seems
to be repeating itself with regards to what has happened to Jose Arcadio Segundo.

The atrocities around the banana plantation are obviously a critique of the negative effects of capitalism
on an impoverished country. Marquez himself lived through a similar situation in Columbia and one
could trace similar episodes throughout Latin America with the United Fruit Company alone. I did draw
a parallel to American literature with Ursula in this section. I thought of her as a bit like a Rip Van
Winkle figure. I don’t know if Marquez would have been familiar with this story, but there are parallels.
Eventually, after a flood that seems to mimic the role of the flood in the Bible, Meme’s son Aureliano
takes over as the town’s chief historian when Jose Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo die at the
same instant. The end of this book is, at least in my mind, bogged down by the surplus characters that
Marquez has burdened us with. We know that it is the incestuous relationship between Aureliano and
Amaranta Ursula that is the last relationship that any Beundias will have and in many respects that is
fitting. The ending itself was kind of interesting with Aureliano reading about his demise as it happened
but I still found this to be a very strange and difficult book to read.