Incest Essay, Research Paper

The innate tendency to commit incest is one of the main ongoing themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude. There seems to be no way of avoiding it from generation to generation of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran flee their native town and found the Utopian town of Macondo in hopes of escaping from their incestuous destiny and the karma of having murdered someone. Like the Greek myth of Oedipus Rex, their actions to prevent a tragedy are actually the means that aid in the tragedy to take place. The novel continues in a linear yet cyclical evolution creating a spiral-like timeline. With Marquez’ symbolic repetition of the names in the novel again history repeats itself. Human nature is repetitive. One person repeats the mistakes of another.Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia are in fact not the first to engage in incest in the Buendia or Iguaran family. Yet they were destined to continue the vicious cycle: ” they were joined till death by a bond that was more solid than love They were cousins Although their marriage was predicted from the time they came into the world, when they expressed their desire to be married their relatives tried to stop it. They were afraid that those healthy products of two races that interbred over the centuries would suffer the same of breeding iguanas An aunt of Ursula’s, married to an Uncle of Jose Arcadio Buendia, had a son with a cartilaginous tale in the shape of a cork screw” (p22, Harper Collins, 1998). Due to Ursula’s fear of giving birth to iguanas, armadillos or piglets she followed the recommendations of her mother and tried not to consummate the marriage by every means possible, even resorting to wearing a “chastity belt” to bed. She would rather for the child to die in her womb than to have a child with the dreaded tail of a pig. Like Oedipus she turned to repression as a defense mechanism to avoid the inevitable. Jose Arcadio on the other hand was more concerned with his male identity than with the future of his offspring and therefore “rapes” Ursula, after having killed Prudencio Aguilar for having belittled him. Jose Arcadio tries to alleviate Ursula’s worries by telling her that he doesn’t care if they beget “piglets as long as they can walk”, and that if they “bear iguanas” they will “raise iguanas” (p.22-23). But his words have little effect on her. She spends her entire life until death concerned about her family members marrying someone from their bloodline for fear that they may bring a monster into the world. They leave in search of a perfect society but they are imperfect themselves. They found Macondo in hopes of escaping the past, but they cannot run away from their sins. It was predestined for the Buendias to live a certain life and die a certain way. Macondo becomes a shut-in town unaware of what is going on outside, and is centered around communal living where everything is shared. This leads to inbreeding or an endogamous society because people tend to like to stick to their own kind. But the incest taboo that their families have forces upon them leads them to feel morally guilty. The town is fine until the government and the church try to impose rules and regulations, but it is impossible to pass a law regulating morality. These artificial codes lead them to behave hypocritically but repressed desires ultimately explode. Pillar Ternera and Petra Cotes become surrogate mothers or maternal substitutes for the Buendia men. Colonel Aureliano Buendia and Jose Arcadio both have sex and sons with Pillar. Then, as if history were repeating itself, Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo both have sex with Petra Cotes. Jose Arcadio fantasizes about his mother, Ursula, while having sex with Pillar Ternera, ” he tried to remember her face and found before him the face of Ursula, confusedly aware that he was doing something that for a very long time he had wanted to do but that he had imagined could really never be done” (p30). Ursula is unconsciously jealous of the relationship between her son and Pillar. He was the only other man she had seen naked since her marriage to Jose Arcadio Buendia. Jose Arcadio seeks his mother even in death. Arcadio lusts after his mother unaware that’s she’s his mother. “Pillar Ternera, his mother, was as much an irresistable obesession for him as she had been for Jose Arcadio and then for Aureliano he felt the world disappear with the contact of her skin” (p219). On another occasion both Jose Arcadio and Rebecca give in to their inbreeding tendencies although they are not blood related. “She tried to get near him under any pretext. On a certain occasion Jose Arcadio looked at her body with shameless attention Rebecca lost control of herself she could no longer resist and went to his bedroom She was so impressed by his enormous motley nakedness that she felt an impulse to retreat Jose Arcadio stroked her ankles ” But he does not care that she is his “sister” and that it goes against moral code. When her fianc Pietro Crespi criticizes him he rebuts him by saying, “Fuck nature two times over” (p101).Aureliano Jose, like his male predecessors, is also attracted to the maternal figures in his life. He and Amaranta, his aunt, finally succumb to their lusty desires and try to ignore the repercussions of committing incest. As he lay in bed ” he felt a strange trembling at the sight of her splendid breasts he felt his skin tingle He felt Amaranta’s fingers searching across his stomach like warm and anxious little caterpillars. Pretending to sleep, he changed his position to make it easier Although they seemed to ignore what they both knew from that night on they were yoked in an inviolable complicity” (p156). Later, when Amaranta temporarily ends their affair he tries to console himself by visualizing her when he is with other women, much like Jose Arcadio did. Amaranta tries to deter him when he begins to inquire about marriage between an aunt and a nephew by reminding him about the possibility of having piglet’s but Aureliano Jose, like his father, does not care if they are born as armadillos (p163).We can even see subtle incestuous desires when Petra Cotes mentions that she had molded Aureliano Segundo into the type of man she wanted for herself but that all sons get married eventually (p219). Aureliano Segundo decorated Meme’s room identical to Petra Cotes’s room. It was rare when he did not take Meme to the cinema and he even wanted to be the first to know about her first sexual encounter. But Petra was not going to allow Meme to “deprive her of a love she considered assured until death.” She declared war against Meme in order to regain Aureliano Segundo. (p294).Aureliano like Aureliano Jose cannot supress his attraction to Amaranta Ursula. They are not aware that they are closely related. When “Amaranta Ursula returned to Macondo and gave him a sisterly embrace that left him breathless he felt the same spongy release in his bones the more he avoided her, the more the anxiety with which he waited ” (p.414). Amaranta Ursula no longer sees him as a toy to relieve her boredom. She and Aureliano become lovers taking advantage of the absence of her husband, Gaston. Although it is destructive for them to become involved, their urges seem to over-power them. It seems that there may be true happiness, in the Buendia family, with the birth of their child, but instead they give birth to the dreaded yet long awaited mythological creature with the cork screw pig’s tail which is predicted will bring an end to the Buendia lineage.Ursula tried by all means to deter her family from succumbing to their innate desires for fear that they would be devoured by animals, but it was futile. She felt that they were all “crazy from birth” because with the birth of every new generation it seemed as though history were repeating itself. Pillar saw in the cards that ” the history of the Buendia family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions” (p425). The Buendias limited themselves by not allowing themselves to find happiness outside of their family. You would think that sooner or later someone in the family would get some sense, but unfortunately narrow mindedness also seemed to be an inherent quality. Not only were they into following in the footsteps of their forefathers but they also seemed to have a liking for “chewing the chewed” or recycling someone else’s leftovers. The cycle needed to come to an end.

The innate tendency to commit incest is one of the main ongoing themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude. There seems to be no way of avoiding it from generation to generation of the Buendia family. Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran flee their native town and found the Utopian town of Macondo in hopes of escaping from their incestuous destiny and the karma of having murdered someone. Like the Greek myth of Oedipus Rex, their actions to prevent a tragedy are actually the means that aid in the tragedy to take place. The novel continues in a linear yet cyclical evolution creating a spiral-like timeline. With Marquez’ symbolic repetition of the names in the novel again history repeats itself. Human nature is repetitive. One person repeats the mistakes of another.Ursula and Jose Arcadio Buendia are in fact not the first to engage in incest in the Buendia or Iguaran family. Yet they were destined to continue the vicious cycle: ” they were joined till death by a bond that was more solid than love They were cousins Although their marriage was predicted from the time they came into the world, when they expressed their desire to be married their relatives tried to stop it. They were afraid that those healthy products of two races that interbred over the centuries would suffer the same of breeding iguanas An aunt of Ursula’s, married to an Uncle of Jose Arcadio Buendia, had a son with a cartilaginous tale in the shape of a cork screw” (p22, Harper Collins, 1998). Due to Ursula’s fear of giving birth to iguanas, armadillos or piglets she followed the recommendations of her mother and tried not to consummate the marriage by every means possible, even resorting to wearing a “chastity belt” to bed. She would rather for the child to die in her womb than to have a child with the dreaded tail of a pig. Like Oedipus she turned to repression as a defense mechanism to avoid the inevitable. Jose Arcadio on the other hand was more concerned with his male identity than with the future of his offspring and therefore “rapes” Ursula, after having killed Prudencio Aguilar for having belittled him. Jose Arcadio tries to alleviate Ursula’s worries by telling her that he doesn’t care if they beget “piglets as long as they can walk”, and that if they “bear iguanas” they will “raise iguanas” (p.22-23). But his words have little effect on her. She spends her entire life until death concerned about her family members marrying someone from their bloodline for fear that they may bring a monster into the world. They leave in search of a perfect society but they are imperfect themselves. They found Macondo in hopes of escaping the past, but they cannot run away from their sins. It was predestined for the Buendias to live a certain life and die a certain way. Macondo becomes a shut-in town unaware of what is going on outside, and is centered around communal living where everything is shared. This leads to inbreeding or an endogamous society because people tend to like to stick to their own kind. But the incest taboo that their families have forces upon them leads them to feel morally guilty. The town is fine until the government and the church try to impose rules and regulations, but it is impossible to pass a law regulating morality. These artificial codes lead them to behave hypocritically but repressed desires ultimately explode. Pillar Ternera and Petra Cotes become surrogate mothers or maternal substitutes for the Buendia men. Colonel Aureliano Buendia and Jose Arcadio both have sex and sons with Pillar. Then, as if history were repeating itself, Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo both have sex with Petra Cotes. Jose Arcadio fantasizes about his mother, Ursula, while having sex with Pillar Ternera, ” he tried to remember her face and found before him the face of Ursula, confusedly aware that he was doing something that for a very long time he had wanted to do but that he had imagined could really never be done” (p30). Ursula is unconsciously jealous of the relationship between her son and Pillar. He was the only other man she had seen naked since her marriage to Jose Arcadio Buendia. Jose Arcadio seeks his mother even in death. Arcadio lusts after his mother unaware that’s she’s his mother. “Pillar Ternera, his mother, was as much an irresistable obesession for him as she had been for Jose Arcadio and then for Aureliano he felt the world disappear with the contact of her skin” (p219). On another occasion both Jose Arcadio and Rebecca give in to their inbreeding tendencies although they are not blood related. “She tried to get near him under any pretext. On a certain occasion Jose Arcadio looked at her body with shameless attention Rebecca lost control of herself she could no longer resist and went to his bedroom She was so impressed by his enormous motley nakedness that she felt an impulse to retreat Jose Arcadio stroked her ankles ” But he does not care that she is his “sister” and that it goes against moral code. When her fianc Pietro Crespi criticizes him he rebuts him by saying, “Fuck nature two times over” (p101).Aureliano Jose, like his male predecessors, is also attracted to the maternal figures in his life. He and Amaranta, his aunt, finally succumb to their lusty desires and try to ignore the repercussions of committing incest. As he lay in bed ” he felt a strange trembling at the sight of her splendid breasts he felt his skin tingle He felt Amaranta’s fingers searching across his stomach like warm and anxious little caterpillars. Pretending to sleep, he changed his position to make it easier Although they seemed to ignore what they both knew from that night on they were yoked in an inviolable complicity” (p156). Later, when Amaranta temporarily ends their affair he tries to console himself by visualizing her when he is with other women, much like Jose Arcadio did. Amaranta tries to deter him when he begins to inquire about marriage between an aunt and a nephew by reminding him about the possibility of having piglet’s but Aureliano Jose, like his father, does not care if they are born as armadillos (p163).We can even see subtle incestuous desires when Petra Cotes mentions that she had molded Aureliano Segundo into the type of man she wanted for herself but that all sons get married eventually (p219). Aureliano Segundo decorated Meme’s room identical to Petra Cotes’s room. It was rare when he did not take Meme to the cinema and he even wanted to be the first to know about her first sexual encounter. But Petra was not going to allow Meme to “deprive her of a love she considered assured until death.” She declared war against Meme in order to regain Aureliano Segundo. (p294).Aureliano like Aureliano Jose cannot supress his attraction to Amaranta Ursula. They are not aware that they are closely related. When “Amaranta Ursula returned to Macondo and gave him a sisterly embrace that left him breathless he felt the same spongy release in his bones the more he avoided her, the more the anxiety with which he waited ” (p.414). Amaranta Ursula no longer sees him as a toy to relieve her boredom. She and Aureliano become lovers taking advantage of the absence of her husband, Gaston. Although it is destructive for them to become involved, their urges seem to over-power them. It seems that there may be true happiness, in the Buendia family, with the birth of their child, but instead they give birth to the dreaded yet long awaited mythological creature with the cork screw pig’s tail which is predicted will bring an end to the Buendia lineage.Ursula tried by all means to deter her family from succumbing to their innate desires for fear that they would be devoured by animals, but it was futile. She felt that they were all “crazy from birth” because with the birth of every new generation it seemed as though history were repeating itself. Pillar saw in the cards that ” the history of the Buendia family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions” (p425). The Buendias limited themselves by not allowing themselves to find happiness outside of their family. You would think that sooner or later someone in the family would get some sense, but unfortunately narrow mindedness also seemed to be an inherent quality. Not only were they into following in the footsteps of their forefathers but they also seemed to have a liking for “chewing the chewed” or recycling someone else’s leftovers. The cycle needed to come to an end.