Outside Reading - Week 4, Post B

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

After reading for four weeks, I have noticed that there is a common theme of absent-minded-selfishness in a majority of the main characters, starting with Jose Arcadio Buendia. Firstly, he is always in his laboratory. Secondly, he does not care about his wife's feelings, because he is too busy doing alchemy. He doesn't realize that she is upset about him ruining her fortune, he doesn't notice that she is sad some days in general, he doesn't care that his wife is worried about their son who is running around with gypsies, or about his other son when his wife asks him to talk to him about growing up, and lastly he does not realize that his wife has left until two weeks later his neglected baby starts crying. Next, there is Jose Arcadio, who is selfish in his own ways. First, he wakes up his little brother every night to go meet his lover Pilar. Then, when Pilar gets pregnant, Jose Arcadio abandons her and their unborn child to go live with the gypsies, also hurting his mother. Next is Aureliano, who is absent-minded. He takes after his father and goes in to the laboratory and doesn't come out for days, doesn't eat and because of the sickness spreading through the village, doesn't sleep either. Next is their mother, Ursula. She runs off to go find her son, paying no care to her baby daughter she is leaving, or the household she is leaving.