Fernanda

Wow, i realize this isn't the most profound comment but i just totally hate Fernanda. I hate her and everything she stands for.she came over with the government, which was totally against the buendias the whole time and she ruined everything. Meme was rthe only one with any hope of getting away from solitude and Fernanda paralyzed her boyfriend and sent her to the nunnery where she never talked again. Like really? who does that. And then what she did to the kid. Sorry this isn't so much a literary analysis as much just a rant but i figured its alright. The intellectual part would be that Fernanda represents the government and the only way the government was able to destroy the buendia family was to infiltrate it. those bastards. This is basically a representation of them all being suppressed just like Fernanda suppressed the family with order and strictness. I really hate her.

the naming of things?

Ok really really quick thought that came to me.
I'm sure we all thought of this so i am not claiming anyhting brilliant, but about the names. It is an interesting concept that certain people with certain traits had names of people with similar traits. But i thought about it and people didn't just have these names... that would be a coincidence and i just don't believe it. I believe that the names that these characters were given actually gave them the traits we see.
We see this with a whole bunch of characters. Marquez kind of alludes to this with arcadio segundo and aureliano segundo.
But what really got me and is got me to write this is is remedios the beauty. It would be so totally bizarre if it was a coincidence that they named her "the beauty" and she just happened to be the most beautiful girl in the entire world. i feel like the fact that Ursula named her remedios the beauty she made her to be the totally most beautiful and stuff.
and then she totally blew away

Yeah i got more to say, whatever
So this post is about time...again. anyway, To me in this novel time is totally not conventional. what i mean is rather than passing at a uniform speed for everybody like time in the real world. it seems to pass at different speeds for different characters. This is hinted at originally with the way two generations happened to span like 300 years. The other thing i see is that characters seem to age at different speeds. Ursula has got to be well over 100 now and she is still the head of the household. Jose Arcadio Buendia never seemed to age too much except in those years he seemed to age incredibly rapidly.
Melquiades ages differently than everybody by growing old then young again, then dying, then coming back again, then aging really rapidly in the end.
My personal favorite is Colonel Aureliano Buendia. He was born an adult already. Then time went by. Then he joined the war and it talked about how much he aged and became detached and how it was really fast. So he was already old, then he got much older faster. Basically i feel time was accelerated for him.

I don’t know if you have read this far, we probably haven’t gotten here yet but I will blog about it regardless and you respond in a couple days. My thought is about cards. Cards come up in the book a lot. First we see them with Pilar Ternera. She uses cards to see the futures of characters. The cards hold the future of the characters so to speak. They cannot deny the cards or go against them. When Aureliano Segundo and Arcadio Segundo were born they were interchangeable. Ursula was convinced that they got mixed up in their childhood like a deck of cards being shuffled. The traits of these characters were decided by a deck of cards. The entire concept makes it seem like lives are all predestined according to how the deck is dealt. Hmmmm….. Interesting.

the timeless swamp

My long due post is about the timelessness of the swamp in which macondo lies. What it seems to me is that the swamp that is in between riohacha does not only get people lost in space but also in time. I thought of this because of the clearly mixed up timeline presented. a not so simple explanation would be that the passage way to macondo has a land barrier as long as a time barrier. so that crossing through the really dense and confusing forest actually shot people forward in time. Or backwards... it is kind of confusing but one thing i am certain of is that macondo definitately does not seem to be on the same page as the rest of the world. perhaps the swamp just changes the time arbitrarily. The fact that they are so far behind the rest of the world in terms of inventions.
i don't know... just a thought

i want to be a man

wow, totally caught me off guard, i missed the part that julia de burgos wrote all of these poems and i totally thought it was a guy. wow. but anyway that makes it more interesting. Ummmm so basically julia de burgos was an avid supporter and fighter for women's rights. when i learned that i thought is was weird because i felt that she was treating women like objects in her poems and pentachrome is about wanting to be a man. This is all very interesting though because now looking back it seems that she is commenting and criticizing the fact that in history women aren't even considered and only men were important. Even in this class that shines through because we only read men for a while.
burgos would have been so strong and able to do anyhting she wanted and respected if she were a man. Nothing would have stood in her way like Don Quijote the great hero. However because she was a woman and everyhting was against her it made her even stronger and more impressive. Go julia, good job

Borges

so the last couple nights i've been reading short stories by borges. They are so insane. I first read the lottery of babylon. This was interesting after reading the poem "the election". In the poem it talks about the babylonian system. In the short story although its from a different time it is about the same thing. Both are about randomness.
In the poem it is interesting because it trakes something like an election that should be the opposite of random but rather based on evidence and choice and says it was completely random.
The short story is about how the Babylonians started with a normal lottery but then it progressed to become even less out of the control of people. With each new drawing there was a chain of new drawing to make sure that every possible outcome was available. In a sense it was possible to just keep drawing for ever. This goes beyond just a simple drawing.
When this is applied to the poem, to me, it is saying that the winner of the election was not only drawn, but it was a complicated series of fates that led him to be drawn.
This is hard to write down and i realize my point doesn't seem that profound but i guess what i am trying to say is there is only one way things work out and there is a series of random events and decisions that lead up to them. Therefore the same man would be elected no matter what if you think about it in terms of fate.

This reminds me also of that vallejo poem " a black stone lying on a white stone"
The idea that he knows he is going to die and he has already seen it to me reflects a theme of fate. There is no option that he will die in paris but according to borges there would be a series of drawings deciding the date the time the method and etc. I'm not sure where i am going with this really, i suppose i am just posing ideas and questions... regardless it's interesting to me

poetics and elevations

It seems to me that Mozart could be an angel because of his artistic skill. The Poem we read portrays this nicely. He would be the youngest angel, because while all other angels have been around since the creation of the heavens, they would have no choice but to accept mozart due to his prowess. Mozart could do what no other man could do and because of that he rose above man and became heavenly.
This goes very nicely with Marti's opposite of ornate and rhetoric poem saying that expressing yourself through an artistic avenue is the only way to achieve success, everyone else falls to the earth and is destroyed as a mortal.

In light of this i have written a haiku

if angels are harmony
and sing all day long
hendrix must be in heaven

the mustache or the man?

So, first and foremost! Jose marti might possibly have the greatest mustache ever.
that being said... i can proceed with my post.

i have a few thoughts on his works.
Marti talks about some salvation gained through poetry and artistic displays. At first this seems all nice, like what artist hasn't condoned and talked about the arts? But thinking more deeply about it, the salvation he talks about in "the opposite of ornate and rhetorical poetry" could represent so much more than it seems. It is impossible to deny that Marti brings a political element into every work, therefore i feel it is acceptable to view this salvation from a political angle.
Second i look at his life. Marti is considered a national hero of Cuba, He certainly did not attain the title by fighting in a war. Marti is down in history as one of the most influential and important people because of his artistic discharge we are lucky enough to read now. Marti gained his influence through his literary works. To me this si the salvation he is talking about. If the fighting and the pre-independence days are represented by the crocadiles and flames coming from the earth then the noble life or liberty and peace is ushered in with the pen.
As a soldier Marti was mortal, he died in battle against spanish troops when he was 42 (i think...that could be wrong). but as an artist and writer Marti became immortal, figuratively taking on the burden of his land. He becomes one of the "sons of A land enslaced [that] live for it Silently, and die." (simple verses). Marti becomes the father of modernism and the hero of cuba, ushering in a new age a soldier would never be able to do.

Weeeelllll, since i last unloaded my thoughts and opinions on the conference we haven't read too much. However, we have discussed much about Sab and read Sab ces't moi, pero no me gusta el nombre porque hablo espanol. We have also had the honor of talking to Nina Scott.
Now i think the most interesting thing said on our skype conversatoin was the information about theresa. At first it seemed to me that theresa was being really nice to Sab and was helping him out. But then Dr. Scott said something that struck me, that i knew to be true but still hit me. The fact that teresa and sab were equals. They were both outcasts. Teresa had a specific beauty about her "a beauty which comes from the soul". if i were to characterize the appearence or apeal of Sab i feel it would be pretty much the same. He can't be defined by race or class, he isn't a classic prince charming, just like theresa isn't a classic female protagonist. however something about the two of them is the most beautiful thing in the novel.
Sab goes on to say "this world has not understood you, but i who know you should worship and bless you". He knews her for what she truly is "an angel".
i feel like the word misunderstood is a cop-out and does not encapture the true characteristics of these two. They are the sub characters in a sense that hold all of the meaning and importance. The fact that the two of them seem to be considered sub-human gives them more humanity than anything else.
Al first glance/read, teresa lacks the compassion and personality that carlota does, however in the end we realize that it is acutally teresa that contains the substance as previously mentioned.
Sab too, at first he cannot be characterized, he is simply Sab. He is an orphan and slave, without a true race or distinguishable features. because his outer shell and first apearance hold so much sub-human feelings. its is all the greater that he turns out to be the one with the most inside of him.

i suppose that the most interesting thing that came through after reading the specified texts would be the personality of el libertador. colloquially speaking he is the man. more formally, he presents a confident, educated, and powerful persona giving the unified and abused Americas someone to follow into victory. during the time of the Jamaica letter, Bolivar was in exile. this was a time of thought for him. He spent a lot of his time thinking about the current political state of the world. With great forsight and thought, Bolivar knew two things, that all of the americas needed to unify or else the failure of venezuela would reoccur. Secondly, he knew that they needed the help of either brittain or another outside nation. This is interesting because to me it shows that he knew when he needed help although he was such a significant figure alone. "My delirium" is the text that gace me the impression of his singular power. Early on he wrote "Nothing could stop me. I reached the
glacial heights, and the atmosphere took my breath away. No human foot
had ever blemished the diamond crown placed by Eternity's hands on
the sublime temples of this lofty Andean peak."
el libertador elevates himself the though of mere mortals and becomes something devine. He does not become god but he becomes something much more than man.
He then wrote "All men have I surpassed in good fortune, for I have raised myself above all. The earth lies at my feet; I touch Eternity; beneath me I feel the throbbing of Hell; beside me I contemplate radiant planets, suns of infinite dimensions. I gaze upon the realms of space which enclose matter; I decipher, on your brow, the history of the past and the thoughts of Destiny."

anyone who writes that clearly has the confidence and power to unite and lead the Americas. I don't want to come off like i am calling him an offensive powerhouse. If anything i feel like the power all came from his brain. Just like Senor said, he was very well educated was very familiar with enlightenment thinkers. If anything enlightenment thinkers inspired revolt in order to create something better. Also, while benjamin Franklin never led an entire unified army against opressers however i see many parallels in thinking and decisions. He writes "However, such unity will not come to us though divine miracle buit through sensible action and well-organized effort."
to me, this screms Ben. This is impressive with is insight alone. Bolivar was in fact the perfect person to unite and fight for the Americas. He is easily one of the top mind of history, educated and ready for politcal fights. He had the ambition to unite and lead. and finally, he was not an outsider, he understood the pain of the americas despite his wealth.
viva el libertador