Progress and Innocence in Cien Anos de Soledad
16Jun00
Roger F. Williams
Spring 2000 UC Santa Cruz
Instructor: Jeff Bersett
It can be considered an axiom that a great work of literature defies analysis. This novel by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez projects itself among the most famous and ambitious works in the history of letters. Epic in scope, modeling the structure of, and at times directly making reference to the works of his literary mentors, Marquez weaves autobiography, allegory and historical allusion to create a surprisingly coherent story line about his forebears, his descendants and ours.
It has been said that there are only about 18 or so themes that describe the human condition. This quote was made in reference to Shakespeare, and posited that all of the books and movies that we digest and assimilate can be shown to have their roots in these canonical themes. In Cien Anos, Marquez addresses several of these themes in the subtle and interlocking ways that they deserve. This paper will concentrate on two interrelated themes: progress and innocence. In its exploration of these concerns, this novel provides no less than a rendering of the trajectory of human evolution.
Loss of innocence is a time-worn theme in the literature of every culture. It traditionally takes the form of some type of epiphany visited upon an unsophisticated character as she grows up and encounters the larger world. The focus of this theme is normally personal, in the point of view of an individual, or the omnipotent third person account of the reaction of an individual. While this aspect can be found in the novel, it additionally explores the loss of innocence of a family, people or race, called estirpe in the original edition.
In the Western sensibility, the march of progress is normally deemed positive and inevitable. In recent Western history, from the Middle Ages forward, successive improvements in the spread of knowledge, dissemination of culture, and the average life span are examples that we all think of as the overriding effect of progress. In non-Western cultures, the progress that we embrace has been questioned for centuries. Even from our own cultural perspective of the last half of the 20th Century, we have cast a different light on some artifacts of our progress such as the long-term effect of the imposition of the United Fruit Company in the region described in the book or the encounter between Francisco Pizarro and the Inca emperor Athualpa in the Andean highlands.
Cien Anos capped the ascendance of Latin American literature known as the "Boom". And for a generation of readers—and authors, magical realism in Latin American literature, pioneered by Borges, was drawn most accurately by Marquez. The first sentence of the book, which describes the Colonel's memory about discovering ice, is the most obvious and often cited trope for magical realism. The extended life span of several characters, the ascent of Remedios the Beauty and the wondrous objects brought by the gypsies are less often cited as vivid magical realism examples.
The magic, however, does undergo some transformation over the course of the novel. It is in this metamorphosis that the juxtaposition of the march of progress and the loss of innocence is drawn. Specifically, as the magic becomes more and more watered down, the progress that is described as advancing. As we progress and our knowledge is increased, phenomena previously thought of as magical, becomes rational and commonplace. This is coincident with the increasing knowledge that counteracts innocence, which can be described as simply as "there is no Santa Claus." And when the contrast is portrayed in this way, disillusionment is the emotion that is evident most often.
At the beginning of the book, Macondo is described as a virgin Eden-like territory. When the original Jose Acardio leads the expedition to the land "they had not been promised", it had not been discovered. In his benevolent wisdom, he effected an egalitarian urban plan, where no one was closer to the sea than anyone else and there was no identified need for a municipal government until Don Apolinar Moscote presents himself as the magistrate. For a long time, no one had died in the town, so there was no need for a cemetery. This is an archetype of an innocent people.
Also at this time, the only progress in evidence was that imported by the gypsies. The magnets, refracted glass and theories of astronomy were the magic that the inhabitants of this small kingdom could marvel over. The original Jose Acardio again showed his leadership by endeavoring on a quest for knowledge to understand and exploit this progress. At this point, he wants to reduce the innocence of the people and his culture.
The innocence of the central character of the story, the Colonel Aureliano, is highlighted. He is clueless to why politics evokes such strong emotions in people about something that cannot be seen or touched. He has his hobby as a silversmith and he plays dominoes with his father-in-law, but in large measure he lacks comprehension of his surroundings. Even during the defining moment in his adult life, when he goes to see the doctor to join the Liberal cause, he "did not even understand the meaning of the subterfuge".
The metamorphosis described above, however, really begins when the second band of gypsies comes to Macondo. They are characterized as "purveyors of amusement" rather than "heralds of progress". The flying carpet is not a "fundamental contribution to transport". The original gypsies had lost their lives since they had "gone beyond the limits of human knowledge". This newer magic had made the older tricks seem commonplace and not as exciting as when they were first introduced. At this point, progress is being painted in a pejorative light. Certainly, to the residents of Macondo, the jaded view is more widespread, and the punishment for exceeding the limits was clear to everyone.
Although the matriarch, Ursula, could probably be considered among the least innocent of all of the characters, she is the guardian against the great fear of the grotesque child born from the fruit of blood relatives. She holds strongly to this fear throughout her life, never being subjected to the knowledge of the final member of the blood line having his fate realized as described in the parchments. So her original innocence remains closest to intact, in comparison to the changes wrought upon the other characters.
The gradual decipherment of the parchments themselves can be viewed as a process in which innocence—and ignorance—are reduced by each successive generation. Their contents and meaning are literally "greek" to the first generation of the Buendia family. Aureliano Segundo does learn to categorize the alphabet in the Sanskrit characters, but its meaning continues to elude him, as we find out later it must. Aureliano Babilonia is the least innocent, since in the end he even reads about his own act of reading, and he has benefited from the most progress that time and his academic study have afforded him.
The counting of the red and blue ballots, is the beginning of the loss of innocence for the Colonel. He journeys out from Macondo to fight in 32 wars and to sire 17 illegitimate children. His innocence was previously maintained by limited contact with people outside of his family and no contact with anyone outside of Macondo. Both of these change when he goes off to fight the Conservatives in the civil war. He becomes a great war hero, but he still never finds his own human soul.
Despair is not his emotion when his wife Remedios dies, it is a "dull feeling of rage" and "a passive frustration". When he returns from the war, he is a willing party to the brutality of the war. His sentencing of his friend to death by firing squad is completely emotionless. He agrees with his friend that politics and war, followed by a death at the firing squad are normal evolutionary events in what progress has brought to their previously innocent lives.
Finally, he succumbs to the futility of the struggle, and he recedes completely to making small gold fishes in the alchemist's workshop that he used as a child. The removal of his innocence is complete at this stage. It is probably not accurate to characterize him as understanding the changes that he has been through. His feelings of disillusionment are fittingly portrayed by his eventual move to melt and form the same metal into the gold fishes. This type of fruitless production for its own sake, can be viewed as a criticism of what progress has made him into. There is no description of performing these actions for the beauty of the fishes produced.
There are many ghosts described in this story. The original and most touching example, given its reference in the parchments, is that of the patriarch Jose Acardio tied to the tree. Another prominent figure in this state is the gypsy Melquiades, who wrote the parchment. Jose Acardio Segundo, while not described as having died, is effectively a ghost since he was present at the mass killing at the train station, not seen or acknowledged by the people in the town.
Another type of loss of innocence is going off to war. This is described above as having happened to Colonel Aureliano. After someone has been through this experience, they are "blinded" to the existence of ghosts. There are multiple cases in the story where this is demonstrated.
The most poignant is at the death of Colonel Aureliano in which he is relieving himself onto a tree on top of the ghost of his father who died tied to the tree. To die in this way, showing complete disrespect for his father points to the despair of his wartime experience and the feeling that must be shed when placed in—or voluteering for—that war environment. Another interesting case is when the soldiers come to look for Jose Acardio Segundo. He is "holed up" in the house. When the soldiers look in the room where he is just sitting on the bed, they cannot see him. This is the same symptom exhibited by the Colonel, and is an artifact of the human psyche for someone who has had to close his eyes to the ghosts on the battlefield.
The retreat of innocence and the advance of progress for the family is illustrated by the fortunes of Fernanda's daughter Renata. She makes social contact with some Americans segregated in the other section of Macondo. She also attends school and learns a valuable skill, to play a musical instrument. This generation, with Amaranta Ursula, is the first modern generation. The movie theatre where she is caught meeting her mechanic boyfriend represents the positive part of the progress that she enjoys. This clashes with the innocence of her mother, who is from the conservative highlands, and results in the death of her lover and her own banishment to a convent, never to utter another word.
A final example of this is Aureliano Babilonia's debauchery and sexual tryst with his aunt Amaranta Ursula, after Gaston leaves Macondo. While the concept of their union is probably repulsive to most audiences, the description of their escapades seems the most "liberated" to our western ears. Their pursuit of pleasure seems truly joyful, completely lacking in inhibition and innocence. They seem the least encumbered by the past. The result of the extremes of the most progress and the least innocence is the key to the knowledge of their fate and the end of the blood line.
Garcia-Marquez has spoken of a desire to describe a "socialist utopia", and most of this book reads like a journalist's chronicle. A component of the greatness of this story, however, is the author's reluctance to paint one side or the other with broad strokes or strident colors. It would certainly be easier—and a lot less interesting—to portray the advance of progress as bad, and to bemoan the loss of innocence.
The famous short story writer Bharati Mukherjee was asked recently about the difference in motivation and method between writing a novel and writing a polemical essay. She said that the main difference is that with a novel, the writer must be more concerned about the distribution of sympathy. In Cien Anos, the sympathy is subtly distributed, and to very powerful effect.
References:
Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Connor, 1957
Modes of Reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Regina Janes, 1991
Modern Critical Views: Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Harold Bloom (editor), 1989
Berkeley Writers at Work, Bharati Mukherjee, 13Mar00, seminar at UC Berkeley