Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude details the foundation, development and ultimate destruction of the fictional Colombian town Macondo by seven generations of the eccentric Buendia family. Throughout the course of the novel, Macondo evolves from an isolated, mythical Eden into a modern, but tainted part of Latin American society. The peak of the town’s development – marked by its introduction to industry and technology – occurs roughly halfway through the novel and coincides with the lifetime of Remedios – the first member of the Buendia family’s fourth generation whose beauty becomes legendary. Remedios, or Remedios the Beauty, as she becomes known, presents a kind of extreme antithesis to the modernity to which Macondo is being exposed: while the town goes wild over numerous modern novelties, Remedios the Beauty is not only indifferent to them, but lives an almost disagreeably simple life.
Remedios the Beauty is almost entirely characterized by the contrast between the natures of her appearance and of her mannerisms. Word of her beauty reaches distant lands and indirectly causes the deaths of several captivated men; the effect her face has on others becomes so problematic that she is forced by her great-grandmother, Ursula, to cover it while in public. Still, Remedios remains almost completely detached from her surroundings; she is not malicious, but aloof, and demonstrates a number of behavioral peculiarities that cause some of Macondo’s people to suspect that she may be mentally impaired. For example, she insists on walking around nude, does nothing but bathe all day and, at one point, cuts her magnificent hair simply to avoid the hassle of combing it. Oddly enough, though, Remedios’ great uncle, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, insists that he sees in her great wisdom and lucidity, possibly as extensions of the simplistic purity her behavior seems to symbolize.
Meanwhile, Macondo’s development, led by Remedios’ twin brothers Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo, begins to overshadow the ethereal quality that was such a significant part of the town in earlier days and that Remedios the Beauty is the sole remnant of. The two brothers instigate the construction of a train station and a waterway through which a number of modern entities flow into Macondo. And although the town’s inhabitants are initially unreceptive to all of the new introductions, they eventually embrace them. As a result, Macondo sees the arrival of a movie theatre, prostitutes and even the establishment of a banana plantation by foreign capitalists, all of which enamor the town’s inhabitants – except Remedios the Beauty.
Macondo’s modernization and Remedios’ simple lifestyle directly clash with each other. At the same time the town is moving toward the future, Remedios alone insists on living as basically and purely as possible, which draws negative reactions from the rest of the town’s inhabitants. Interestingly, though, Remedios the Beauty and the influx of growth and technology have similarly disorienting effects on the townspeople. The potency of these effects – both of Remedios’ attractiveness and the forces behind Macondo’s development – are likened to the powers of divine beings. And with this in mind, Remedios’ actions, in blatant contradiction to her beauty, can be interpreted as a rebellion of purity against Macondo’s soon-to-be-revealed-as-sinister evolution – a rebellion that ends with her departure from the novel.
Remedios the Beauty’s ultimate fate recalls the magical occurrences of Macondo in days before its development: she simply floats into the sky while folding laundry one morning. Two ideas about her ascension are significant, though. First is the idea that her “rebellion” was ultimately unsuccessful – that while modernization competes with it, there is no place for purity of her variety in Macondo anymore. Second, is her ascension’s timing: a short while after she leaves, the banana plantation’s executives orchestrate a massacre that results in the assassination of all the plantation’s workers, except for Remedios’ brother. Remedios’ departure, then, is a means of avoiding the massacre’s repercussions.
Thus, the conflict between Remedios the Beauty and Macondo was not one of great emotional strain or struggle on her part. It was instead a conflict between the natural purity that she represented and the unchecked change that the town was caught up in, and it resulted in the unfortunate victory of the latter.
So I went like ten minutes over the given 40, but I changed my character from the one I wrote about in class (went from one batshit crazy chick to another), so I don't even know if the time thing still applies.
Anyway, so far I've commented on Carol's, Caitlan's, Lauren's and Lindsey's blogs. I read Kammie's, but I can't comment on it =/
