Masculinity In Jose Arcadio's 100 Years Of Solitude

Over a span of 100 years, the Buendía family recycled and reused the names of the original family members, José Arcadio, Aureliano, Amaranta, and Úrsula, and send the following generations of the family to drown under waves and waves of predetermined doom. The lives of the new name-bearers carry strains of the originals, as if their names are made up of the talents, characteristics, abilities, tragedies, and traits of their predecessors that manifest themselves in their new host. The characters of 100 Years of Solitude find themselves walking, gliding, stumbling, and falling in the roads paved by their predecessors, but once they slide into such journeys, is it possible for them to alter the view they’ll be offered at the end of the road? Or …show more content…
His son, Arcadio, “revealed the physical drive of his father,” while he was a young child and grew up to be known as the most brutal leader to ever rule Macondo, “imposing obligatory military service for men over eighteen” and murdering those who “disrespected the authorities” (59) (115). José Arcadio Segundo, though not brutal or aggressive, was brave, a characteristic associated with masculinity. He stood against the banana company, who set Macondo into turmoil and exploited its workers. As a union leader, he was jailed for revealing the scrip system that works as a mean of finance for the company’s fruit ships and was the only survivor of the massacre, devoting his life to revealing the truth to anyone who would listen. The final bearer of the name, José Arcadio III was a dictatorial man, who relished the work of children who “busied themselves with [his] personal appearance” and splurged excessively, in velvet curtains and hot towel massages (399). All those who followed José Arcadio shared the elements of masculinity that defined their name and... a vicious death. Their present lives were determined in their childhood when they were named and they allowed their