#canithrowthisagainstthewallnow

OHYoS: Post #5

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You guys I’m having a crisis right now. 

Five of the main characters just died in rapid progression, and I swear, this book is seriously getting more and more depressing; all the characters - and I mean pretty much ALL of them, except for a couple here and there - that were so full of life before are now locking themselves in various rooms of the house until they die all alone. From generation to generation in this family, it’s the same thing happening over and over and over again.

And, yes, I know I’ve already talked about the whole “history repeats itself” thing and “distortion of time” thing before, but this particular section of the book had some quotes that I thought perfectly embodied the 360 pages that I’ve read so far:

“It’s as if the world were repeating itself.” (298)

“She shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing...but that it was turning in a circle.” (335; this sentence came after Ursula, who’s 120 years old at this point, just had the exact word-for-word same conversation with her great-grandson that she did all those years ago with her son)

“She mixed up the past with the present in such a way that no one knew for certain whether she was speaking about what she felt or what she remembered.” (341)

“The voracity of oblivion was little by little undermining memories in a pitiless way.” (344)

It’s like these quotes were foreshadowing what was going to happen soon in Macondo; there was this one incident where this massacre happened, killing thousands of people with one lone survivor (from those who were at the place where it happened), and somehow every single person in the village completely wiped the massacre from their memories as if it had never happened. They truly, honestly, believed it didn’t even happen. And thought the one survivor who insisted it did - so much so that his very last words were to his grandson, saying to “not forget that 3000 people died and they were thrown into the sea” - was absolutely crazy.

And then, after 360 pages of such crazy fast-paced events, and the stories of character after character after character, all of a sudden the events that were taking place in the book were exactly the same as the ones I had read about in the very first chapter. The first thing that happened in the book was that gypsies came to present their inventions to the people of Macondo, and now once more the gypsies have returned with the exact same inventions they presented hundreds of years ago, the same magnets and ice and whatever, which these ignorant people who forgot the history of their own town now think of as super magical just like the characters at the very beginning did. It’s the SAME. It’s as if the book is starting over again, except with a new set of characters who aren’t even that different from the old ones, both in name and behavior. It’s like those 360 pages I just read didn’t even matter at all.

Which is really scary, honestly. At one point the book talks about how the massacre was described in history textbooks as “a calm, peaceful situation where everyone present went home safely”, and I can’t help but see the direct connection to what we do in reality. We often feel like it’s a good idea to simply not talk about the bad stuff that happened, in history textbooks and in conversation, but that is the EXACT THING that can cause the bad stuff to happen again. We NEVER LEARN.

This is so frustrating. I’m sitting here right now staring blankly at my book and just blinking over and over again, because if things are starting right back over again then what about all the stuff I just read about?? Oh my god SO MUCH has happened and I formed connections with every one of the characters and sympathized with them and felt terrible for them through everything that happened and totally watched the entire progression of everyone slowly spiraling downwards and you can’t just pretend all of that - ALL OF THAT - didn’t even exist at all.