Active Reading Chapter 3

Magical Elements:

• The whole town getting insomnia is a magical element.

Characters:

Ø Arcadio – the new son of Pilar and Jose Arcadio (who abandoned him)
Ø Rebeca – the newcomer to Macondo – a distant relative to both Ursula and JAB – likes to eat the whitewash from the wall and the dirt from the yard – suffered from insomnia – only eleven years old

Summary:

Ø Pilar has a boy. Ursula took him only because of JAB. They named the new baby Jose Arcadio, but just shortened it to Arcadio. An Indian lady came to take care of the kids; her name was Visitación.
Ø Ursula started her own candy business, since Macondo had changed into a bustling town with stores and workshops, and an actual commercial route. JAB went back to being an enterprising man, making important decisions for the town. He had a lot of authority.
Ø The gypsies came back, but without Jose Arcadio. They were not allowed to settle in the town.
Ø Musical clocks were installed in every home. Aureliano went back to the laboratory. Then he told his mom that someone was coming; indeed, someone came, Rebeca.
Ø No one really knew who she was. She came with a letter explaining her appearance, and a bag full of her parents’ bones, whom she had wanted to bury properly. She would not talk, and was only fascinated with the sounding of the musical clock. She would only eat dirt and the whitewash from the wall. Ursula did everything to cure her from her habitat. They had to tie her up, force-feed her, and whip her. But slowly, she began to eat like a normal person.
Ø She thought Amaranta and Arcadio as her siblings, Aureliano as an uncle, and JAB as a grandpa. That’s when she became Rebeca Buendia.
Ø But something was still wrong with Rebeca. She had insomnia. Soon, everyone had the insomnia plague. It turned out to be better that way, since the villagers did not have enough time to do everything. Now they could get everything done. They would dream on their feet, and their dreams could be seen by everyone.
Ø But certain measures had to be taken to prevent the spreading of the insomnia plague. The heads decided to not let any visitors eat or drink anything while in Macondo, and they had to wear bells so that the people knew that they were healthy.

§ With the insomnia, not only is everyone not able to sleep, but also they are beginning to forget things. Aureliano comes up with the idea of labeling everything. This helps, but JAB thought that they might also forget the purposes of everything too, so he labeled the purposes of everything along with their names.
§ JAB also started working on making a dictionary. He was working on it when a visitor came to Macondo, but no one recognized him. It was not until the stranger went to JAB and gave him some kind of drink, which gave JAB his memory back, that he was recognized. It was Melquiades, the gypsy that JAB had taken a liking to a while back. Apparently Melquiades had died, but came back because he was too lonely. Melquiades had bought a camera with him, and it amazed everyone that there would be a image of them for all eternity.
§ Aureliano is older now, and he is noted as an expert silversmith, yet he has never been with a woman. When some old visitor came back to town with some old fat lady and a young girl, Aureliano was going to sleep with the chick. But she was sore and tired from having already been with sixty-some men that night. The men paid her grandma to sleep with the girl, so that the money would pay the grandma back for the amount of money the girl had wasted by allowing the house to burn down. The girl had to sleep with seventy men a night for ten years to equal the cost of the house. Aureliano felt sorry for her, did not sleep with her, but decided to marry her to end her misery, but by the next day, they had already left. He went back to burying himself in his work.
§ Rebeca and Amaranta are growing, and Rebeca is the prettiest one. Ursula had never noticed that they were already older. Arcadio is working with his uncle Aureliano. Ursula does not want her kids to leave so she pays for the house to be enlarged. The house is ordered to be painted blue by the magistrate, but JAB disregards it. He goes to see the magistrate, and argues with him. The magistrate brings some soldiers and his family. The villagers want to kick the magistrate out with violence, but JAB tries to solve it in peaceful terms.
§ JAB goes with Aureliano to the magistrate, Don Apolinar Moscote, to give him the two conditions: to allow everyone to paint their house whatever color they wanted and for the soldiers to leave. They also met Don Apolinar’s two daughters, which the youngest, who was only nine, got Aureliano’s attention.



Quotes:
§ “’If we don’t ever sleep again, so much the better,’ JAB said in good humor. ‘That way we can get more out of life.’” The fact that everyone has insomnia does not bother anyone is funny to me. Wouldn’t people want to sleep? I need sleep so I could not imagine these people not sleeping. That’s why it stood out to me.
§ “’I’m doing this,’ he said, ‘because I would rather carry you around alive and not have to keep carrying you around dead for the rest of my life.’” JAB tells this to the magistrate, which makes me think of the incident with Prudencio. JAB had to move his family away from the his past, and I think that JAB did not want to do the same thing with the magistrate. He did not want to be haunted with his mistakes/regrets.

Themes:

• Solitude: Aureliano is burying himself in his work all the time to hide his unhappiness.