Active Reading Chapter 12

Magical Elements:

The town of Macondo changing overnight. A town can not change that fast.


Characters:

Macondo – the town is transforming into a city like overnight – there are more gringos coming – people from all over the world are coming to Macondo – they have wooden houses with zinc roofs


Summary:

The town, or probably now the city, of Macondo is changing with the times. They now got trains and phonographs, that the people think are just new tricks of the gypsies. And some new guy is there, Mr. Herbert, who examined the banana like he had never seen one before. Then he went hunting for butterflies. Then some more guys came, including a Mr. Jack Brown. More gringos started arriving, bringing their culture and their families. The gringos are rearranging the city, moving the river to behind the cemetery, bringing Babylonian whores, and other strange things. The town changed overnight that the own inhabitants could not recognize it. Aureliano 2nd was ecstatic over the foreigners. Ursula arranges for food to be made when the trains come in. two more sons of Colonel Aureliano came. Only Remedios the Beauty was not affected by what was going on with the gringos, who were planting banana trees. Remedios tried to get away from that, and cut off all her hair. (A Britney Spears lapse?) But despite this, she grew more beautiful, and caused more men to want her more than ever. Remedios has this kind of aura that the foreigners notice, she has a scent that follows her around, and makes the guys crazy for her. But she does not seem to care about that, and goes on like nothing bothers her. She had a routine of taking a bath to pass the time and one day, a foreigner climbed onto the tiled roof and removed a tile to watch her bathe. She told him to be careful, that the tiles were rotten, but he kept removing tiles, until he fell and cracked his skull and was immediately killed. Another incident occurred where Remedios and some friends were chased and one guy scratched Remedios across the stomach, and after gloating about it, got killed by a horse. This helped lead to the legend of Remedios the Beauty, whose beauty was fatal. Then one day, while helping Fernanda, Remedios rises into the air and goes to heaven I think. Everyone is shocked it seems.
Two more sons, Aureliano Serrador and Aureliano Arcaya, stayed in Macondo. Their dad did not want them to stay, but they did anyway. Things continued to change, and the factory was instilled. Policemen were replaced by assassins, and this caused Colonel Aureliano regretting not continuing the war. Colonel Aureliano was getting upset at the brutal policemen. He was preparing his boys to go against them when they were all killed, shot straight in the forehead where their ash crosses were, like little bulls eyes. The “invisible enemy” only targeted the brothers with the crosses, and it turned out that only the oldest was still alive. His name was Aureliano Amador, a carpenter. He had been shot at, but they had missed, and he escaped through the mountains.
Colonel was pissed that his sons were all mostly dead, so he started to get people to go to war again. He stopped working on his fishes, and started to go around trying to get a lot of money, but no one would give it to him. He reached out to one last friend, but was turned down in his feeble attempt to start another revolution.

Quotes:

“‘Look at the mess we’ve got ourselves into,’ Colonel Aureliano Buendia said… ’Just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas.’”
This stood out because it was funny. But it was still true; everything that occurred, the transformation of the town, was due to Mr. Herbert.

“‘One of these days,’ [Colonel Aureliano] shouted, ‘I’m going to arm my boys so we can get rid of these shitty gringos!’”
This stood out to me because this was the statement that led all but one of the seventeen sons to be killed. Their deaths could have been prevented, if their father had been a little more secretive.

Themes:

Solitude – Aureliano buries himself in his work, but then his sons get killed, and he becomes enraged.
Time – The town of Macondo has become a city, and it happened almost overnight.