Tick Tock
Time puts limits on all aspects of life. The past holds us back, the future adds unnecessary worries or overexcites, and simply living in the moment is a skill that is often hard to master. The function of time plays an important role on the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude as they realize time is not infinite. With the boundaries of time lingering over their head their lives are ruled by nostalgia and amnesia. Regretting their past and fearing for their future, time passes and disaster reigns. The concept of time was introduced at the beginning of the novel through the future tense. The future stretched out limitlessly—people lived without fear. As the book moves on, however, time begun to pass quickly, it became hard too keep up with, and past, present, and future were all read the same.
When Melquíades looked into the future, all the events blended together without any clear distinction. The future seemed as easy to read as the past. Amnesia and nostalgia threatened the coherence of society and relationships. After many battles and his near-death experience, Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s inability to experience emotion other than sadness and resignation caused him to lose all previous memories of his past. The cruel necessities of war tore him of any sensitivity and the tenderness associated with nostalgic longings for his past. In an attempt to eliminate his solitary sadness, he tried to commit suicide. When he returned home after battle he is unmoved by the sight of his family and the way time passes. He would go along with his day paying no attention to the world around him. When one asked him how he was he responded “Waiting for my funeral procession to pass” (One Hundred Years of Solitude, p. 199). The fear of change and presence of mundane emotions were augmented by the fear of memory loss, and Aureliano was overcome by amensia. Contrary to Aureliano’s inability to remember the past, Rebeca relied solely on her past to make it through the present. After the death of Arcadio, she lived the life of a hermit. She “closed the doors of her house and buried herself alive, covered with a thick crust of disdain that no earthly temptation was ever able to break…the town forgot about her” (One Hundred Years of Solitude, p. 133). She was accompanied only by memories that brought her a peace that no human could match. Emotion lodges itself in nostalgia and ties of affection spring from memories of the past. The middle ground between amnesia and nostalgia is never found. Life goes on, tragedy continues, time does not wait for anyone. Time ticked away while lives were controlled by the past or captured by hopes of the future, and a continuous cycle of disaster began. Not only as individuals, but as a family, too, the Buendías caused their own misfortune—Ursula warned her husband “Children inherit their parents’ madness”(One Hundred Years of Solitude, p. 40), but inevitably the gene was passed down. From the beginning of the novel, incest was bubbling beneath the surface: José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán were cousins, and Arcadio wanted to sleep with Pilar Ternera, his mother. The craving for incest continued as Aureliano José lusted after his lonely aunt, Amaranta, who was tempted but refused to sleep with him, horrified by the taboo. This recurring apetite, which reappeared again and again among the Buendías, is symptomatic: the sin of incest becomes a cycle that cannot be broken. It remained until the end of the book when Amaranta gave birth to a child with a pig’s tale, a fear Ursula had from the beginning of