Examples Of Repetition In One Hundred Years Of Solitude
786 Words4 Pages
Repetition in Macondo
Throughout the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, there is a strange amnesia that seems to affect every member of the Buendía clan. This is portrayed through many generations of recurring mistakes. The members of the Buendía family are unable to progress due to their inability to learn from the mistakes of past generations. Jose Arcadio Segundo is an excellent example of this. After witnessing the massacre of the banana plantation, he isolates himself in Melquiades’s workshop, determined to prove the occurrence of the horrific event. The banana plantation massacre is used to further emphasize the theme of forgetfulness and repetition in Macondo, especially within the Buendía family. Working…show more content… The main request is that he and his associates aren’t required to work on Sundays. The workers also request that they be paid in real money and not in scrip, and that medical care is provided. This raises tension between the workers and the plantation, causing the military to be called in. The soldiers begin to work the plantation and the workers sabotage the work done by the soldiers. Finally, a “meeting” for all the workers is announced, and they gather at the railway, awaiting the arrival of the leader. However, the crowd of workers is disappointed when it is rumoured that the train won’t be arriving until the next day. A military captain then announced that the workers had five minutes to leave, or else they would be killed. After the five minutes were up, no one had moved, and the soldiers opened fire upon the crowd. “They were penned in, swirling about in a gigantic whirlwind that little by little was being reduced to its epicenter as the edges were systematically being cut off around like an onion being peeled by the insatiable and methodical shears of the machine guns” (Márquez 306). Márquez uses literary devices such as similes to describe the massacre. He compares the crowd to an onion and the machine guns to