Jose Arcadio's Fear of Repetition

“It was useless torture because even at the time he already had a terror of everything he met in life: women on the street, who would ruin his blood; the women in the house, who bore children with the tail of a pig; fighting cocks, who brought on the death of men and remorse for the rest of one’s life; firearms, which with a mere touch would bring down twenty years of war; uncertain ventures, which led only to disillusionment and madness- everything, in short, everything that God had created in His infinite goodness and that the devil had perverted.” – page 368

Being the last of the Jose Arcadios in the Buendia family, a pressure is placed on Jose Arcadio to change the course of his family tradition. In this passage Jose Arcadio is frightened and tormented by “everything around him” and anticipates the mistakes and horrors he could make in his future. His future, Arcadio describes, represents all the mistakes of his deceased family and the catastrophes he fears he will repeat. Jose Arcadio refers to the marriage of Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula and how, since they were partially related, it would result in “children with the tail of a pig.” He also fears the start of “twenty years of war,” which Colonel Aureliano Buendia participated in. The insomnia, which grips Jose Arcadio, represents the fear and dread of repeating the horrible past of his family. The “tattletale saints” Jose Arcadio hides from do not worry him as much as the chance of replicating former mistakes. Jose Arcadio says that “everything” tortures him, even the “infinite goodness” which has been “perverted” by evil. This “goodness” symbolizes the happiness and success of Macondo, which eventually turned corrupt and twisted.