The Ogre Day II

I think Tournier accurately depicts how soldiers or anyone involved in war must find a way to detach themselves from it in order not to go crazy. They find little hobbies that often turn into obsessions because they serve as an escape from the horrors of war. For the Colonel Puyjalon, it was gardening and his "worst fear was having to change sector before he could pick his young carrots and peas." It is somewhat humors that a colonel's worst fear should be concerning his garden and not the lives of his squadron. For Bertold, and by extension Tiffauges, the pigeons are their escape and comrades during the war. Tiffauge detaches himself to the extent where it seems he's hardly aware or conscious of the war raging around him. "This war, the "phony war" as it was called at the time into which they'd all been hurled pell-mell and in which they stared at each other in jovial or peevish bewilderment as the case might be, was his thing, his personal affair, even though it frightened him and was infinitely beyond him." (140) After re-reading that quote I would say I'm probably wrong about his being "unconscious" of the war, but he certainly does his best to separate himself from it as all soldiers do.

I was nothing short of horrified when I read that they had cooked three of Tiffauges's pigeons. It was incredibly sad and I was surprised that Tiffauges didn't react in any way other than to sit in a corner and brood. I was even more surprised to find him feeling that he should be the one to eat them. Were they my pets, not only would I not be able to even imagine eating them myself, I would prevent others from eating them too, even if they were already cooked.
I was going to say that his indifference is surprising but I don't think it is necessarily indifference because he does care and is upset at the death of his birds. But he has a certain detachment from the situation. Or else he has become so introverted because of being treated with disdain by others for his whole life (with the exception of Nestor) that even in times of sever emotional distress he does not act out or draw attention to himself. This part was really upsetting but also I suppose to be expected because it is a war and when food is scarce animals, even pets have to be sacrificed but it still was unnerving.

The Ogre Day I

2. Why is part one written as a diary? Why does he call these his "sinister writings"? What might this imply?
Abel says that he writes in his diary because he is "at a crossroads". "To a certain extent I'm counting on this diary to help me escape from the garage and the paltry preoccupations that keep me here. And, in a sense, from myself." A diary is a way to get one's thoughts out, espcially those thoughts which we fear may not be accepted by others/society. He calls them his "sinister writings" because, as he believes himself to be monsterous, perhaps he believes his writings to be equally monsterous. Though he defines a monster as "...something that is shown, pointed at, exhibited at fairs, and so on..."and in theory a diary should be the opposite of that, something that no one sees. But then we the readers are seeing his diary and pointing at it and disecting it so maybe it is a monster.

3. On page 5 Abel writes "All is sign." What do you think he means by this based on what you have thus read?

Abel seems to be very supersticious. He feels that all things have meaning, even if we don't necessarily notice them. The quote at the beginning of the novel by Flaubert describes this well: "To find something interesting, you merely have to look at it long enough." Abel makes a very interesting comment about how people worry about death or rather what happens after death but not what happens before birth. Most people would say that there is nothing that effects you before you are born but as Abel puts it, "The heretofore is just as important as the hereafter, especially as it probably holds the key to it."
I think the fact that he writes well and differently with his left hand indicates two things; on a more literal level that he may have been left handed and when he went to St. Christopher's they forced him to learn with his left and on a more figurative level that maybe the person he is on the outside does not reflect who he truly is on the inside. He works in a garage and is called a monster, but is he really? Just my speculations...

100 Hundred Years Of Solitude XVI-XX

The flood called on by Mr. Brown during the time of the banana massacre contributed to the theme of memory loss in the novel. During all the rain, all of Macondo forgot about the victims of the massacre or even that it had ever happened. Like the flood in the Bible, which was meant to erase the majority of the human race for having become corrupted, the flood in Macondo worked to erase the people's memories, to continue the cyclical rotation of time. The rain causes Ursula to loose track of the time and she begins to travel through her memory reliving distant times.

Pilar Ternera survives through out the novel because she and her cards serve as a reminder of the past (and future). She does not seem to suffer from the same amnesia that the rest of the town, even Ursula lapse into every so often. Her role really only resurfaces when people go to her for guidance, because the cards serve as the last resort for those who are frantically trying to survive in the doomed town. Though she is portrayed as a mystic, her cards are generally correct to a certain extent and add to the magic-realism of the story.

100 Years of Solitude XI-XV

Fernanda is significant to the story because she is one of the "outsiders" who enters the family, though she is not truly part of the family to Ursula's dismay because she has such rigid religious rules that she tries to force the family to abide by. She is preferable over Petra because of the integrity that Ursula is trying to preserve in the family. This is part of the introspection that all the children seem to have resulting in incest etc. Though she is very different from the rest of the family, at least she is respectable and honorable and therefore can be expected to maintain the families "good" name. Before Aureliano Segundo finds out how up tight she is, he chased after her. "With the fierce temerity with which Jose Arcadio Buendia had crossed the moutnains to found Macondo, with the blind pride with which Colonel Aureliano Buendia had undertaken his fruitless wars, with the mad tenacity with which Ursula watched over the survival of the line, Aureliano Segundo looked for Fernanda, without a single moment of respite."

I think the rediscovery of Rebeca and her refusal to return to the family means that she will be the one who maintains the 100 years of solitude and will be able to read Melquiades' manuscripts. The Aurelianos who do not understand the complicated history of the family try to coax her out and renovate the outside of her house but she would still not be moved. "Aureliano Segundo decided that they would have to bring her to the house and take care of her, but his good intentions were frustrated by the firm intransigence of Rebeca, who had needed many years of suffering and misery in order to attain the privileges of solitude and who was not disposed to renounce them in exchange for an old age disturbed by the false attractions of charity."

One Hundred Years of Solitude: VI-X

It is interesting and sad how all of Ursula's sons ultimately become corrupted and loose their integrity. Ursula notices this herself when Colonel Aureliano Buendia becomes a recluse and comes home "only to change his clothes". "They're all alike...at first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they to ruin." (156) Though this transformation is seen in all her sons I think the greatest loss is that of Jose Aureliano because he always seemed to me to be the son with the most sense and reserve. But war changes him into a man who is unrecognizable to those he used to love. Ursula feels that her son is an "impostor" and notes sadly that "he looks like a man capable of anything." (160) He indeed proves that he is capable of anything, even ordering his best friend to be shot because he dared disagree with him. Though he does not follow through with the murder, Colonel Gerineldo Marquez warns him, "watch out for your heart, Aureliano...You're rotting alive." I think this accurately describes what is happening to Aureliano. He has lost his soul. He has "ended up as bad as they are"(163) they being the enemy Conservatives. Ursula grows angry when she hears that he plans to kill Marquez, "It's the same as if you'd been born with the tail of a pig" she says. He has been reduced to something less than human.

I feel that the cause of this theme of corruption occurs when the characters reach puberty and become led more by their emotions and hormones than by logic or reason . After the death of his love Remedios, Aureliano does not fall in love again like so many other characters, but turns to only the physical pleasure of women, siring 17 sons all by different women but never settling down or loving again. "The countless women he had known on thee desert of love and who had spread his seed all along the coast had left no trace in his feelings. Most of them had come into his room in the dark and had left before dawn, and on the following day they were nothing but a touch of fatigue in his bodily memory." (178) Even his memory of Remedios begins to fade into a "hazy image of someone who might have been his daughter." (178)
This change with puberty may be why there are so many instances of characters "falling in love with" others who are so much younger and more "pure" than themselves.