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.
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