3. Aureliano's deciphering of the parchment - Why does Melquiadez want this parchment to be deciphered and read?
I thought the last few pages of the book were extremely intense, and I was literally on the edge of my seat reading them. I knew how the novel was supposed to end, that we were supposed to find out Melquiades wrote the book and that we were reading his observations of the Buendia family and Macondo. However, I felt like in the last few pages I forgot that we were supposed to know the ending, and I was very curious to see how the story ended.
Throughout the whole book I couldn't convince myself that Melquiades was dead. There was just something about the way he would reappear to the people in the room that made him very un-dead. "Melquiades revealed to him that his opportunities to return to the room were limited. But he would go in peace to the meadows of the ultimate death..." (356). I think it has to do with the issue of memory. Melquiades mentions 'ultimate death', which I took to mean him actually dying. The sort of death he was under now was just a state of memory. Those who were interested in his alchemy and his manuscripts never forgot that he existed, while those who could care less forgot about him. "As had happened to Ursula with Aureliano Segundo when the latter was studying in the room, Santa Sofia de la Piedad thought that Aureliano was talking to himself. Actually, he was talking to Melquiades" (356). Sofia thinks he is dead, so she cannot see him in the room. But Aureliano, who is translating the manuscripts, can see him because he has not forgotten about him. The last time Aureliano sees Melquiades, after he has learned almost as much as he can, Melquiades tells him "'I died of fever on the sands of Singapore'" (356). This is how everyone else believed he died, so when they heard this news, he became dead to them. Only when Aureliano is almost finished translating does Melquiades tell him this, so that he can forget him too. If Ursula and Rebeca and Pilar can live over one hundred years, I saw no reason Melquiades should have to die.
I wasn't entirely sure of the reason Melquiades wanted this manuscript to be read. I thought that maybe he wanted it to serve as a lesson to the future generations who read it, but it can't be a warning for Aureliano because he is the last of the line in a dead town. However, I also think Melquiades meant to use this as a false sort of memory. Everyone seems to forget things so quickly that maybe he wanted everything to be preserved. When Aureliano reads it, he learns about the memories of his family and of his own lineage. If this parchment memory wasn't there, he would have never found out Amaranta Ursula was not his mother or his sister but instead his aunt.
The last line of the novel really brought the idea of circular time and memory to a nice end. "...everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth" (417). Ursula always seemed to think that everything was going in a circle, that everything was repeating. But just because everyone shared the same name did not mean they went through the same experiences. Also, after reading this line, I finally understood the meaning of the 'one hundred years of solitude'. It wasn't that someone spent 100 years by themselves, like I originally thought. It was that the family inbred into itself for 100 years, and did not reach out into the external world (and gene pool).
8. The symbolism behind the sexual union of Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano and the resulting pig-tail child
By this point in the story, I was very confused as to who was who, and how they were all related to each other. I couldn't remember the ages of certain characters because of the repetition of the names and because everyone either seemed older or younger than they really were, based on what they did. The final Aureliano (not the last child who was born) seemed ages older than Amaranta Ursula, but she was actually slightly older than he was.
Their union was like the union of Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia. They were the first of the cousins to be married in the novel, and they were worried about having a child with a pig tail. The other incestuous unions do not result in children with an animal tail, until only two members of the family are left. Unlike Ursula, who wore the chastity panties to avoid having sex, Amaranta Ursula only put up a small fight, and very willingly gave in to her cousin's desires.
I thought it was only fitting that the last surviving members of the Buendia family would produce a child with a pig tale. I also thought it was weird that there was almost a role reversal here. When Ursula's cousin was born with the pig tale, a butcher cut it off and he ended up bleeding to death. However, when Amaranta Ursula has the child, she is the one who ends up bleeding to death.
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