ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE POST 3

"Jose Arcadio Buendia in a short time set up a system of order and work which allowed for only one bit of license: the freeing of the birds, which, singht etime of the founding, and made time merry with their flutes, and installing their place muscial clocks in every house. They were wonderous clocks made of carved wood, which the Arabs had traded for macaws and which Jose Arcadio Buendia had synchonized with such prcisiont hat ever half hour the town grew merry with the progressive chords of the same song until it reached the climax of a noontime that was as exact and unamimous as a complete waltz."

Marquez is trying to convey that the town is becoming, or has already become completely planned out and artificial like the big city that Jose Arcadio Buendia desires so badly. Even little natural enjoyments like the chirping of birds can no longer be enjoyed spontaneously; they are replaced by coocoo-clocks, going of at a set time on a precise scale. The installment of these wooden birds and their artificial melodies, replacing free spirited innocence of real chirping birds, shows the industrialized, selfish path which Macondo had headed down. There is no more free spirit or raw, natural environment-- everything is scheduled, artificial, and lacking the unadulterated feel the town once possessed.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE POST 2

"Seduced by the simplicity of the formulas to double the quantity of gold, Jose Arcadio Buendia paid court to Ursula for several weeks to that she would let him dig up her colonial coins and increast ehm by as many times as it was possible to subdivide mercury. Ursula gave in, as always, to her husband's unyielding obstinacy. Then Jose ARcadio Buendia threw three doubloons into a pan and fused them with copper fillings, orpiment, brimstone, and lead. He put it all to boil in a pot of castor oil until he got a thick and pestilential syrup which was more like common caramel than valuaable gold. In risky and desperate processes of distillation, melted with the seven planetary metals, mixed with hermetic mercury and vitriol of Cyprus, and put back to cook in hog fat for lack of any radish oil, Ursula's precious inheritance was reduced to a large piece of burnt hog cracklings that was firmly stuck to the bottom of the pot."

This quote emphasizes the greed that the incorportation of technology into the society has introduced into Jose Arcadio Buendia's life. He hears about a way to "cut" persay, quanities of gold to make them larger, and begins to take selfish risks; he asks his wife to donate precious doubloons from her inheritance for him to employ a dicey experiment on. During this desperate attempt to satisfy his new-found desires for money and "things", he carelessly (much to his chagrin) obliterates the doubloons into a melted and burnt monstrosity of precious metal and more common substances. He has began to take advantage of his resources: his giving and submissive wife, and her fortune. This transition from being a hard-working founder of a small town to a greedy man destroying gold coins could be compared to a society that begins knocking down forrests with endangered wildlife to continue building homes to accomodate a larger population--technology is opening new doors to options that may be tempting, but morally deprecating.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE- POST 1

"Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked name, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tentes near the village, and with a gret upreoar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions."

Through this passage the author is trying to convey the youth and innocence of the town. The river is clear, the homes are emaculate and white-- everything is new, untouched and pure. It is compared to a prehistoric egg, an ultimate example of new life being born into an undeveloped society with raw and undestroyed resources. The yearly appearance of the gypsies causes and uproar because the technology they bring is foreign concept that will ultimately conjour a route to evil, as it has since the beginning of time.