"It rained for four years, eleven months, and two days. There were periods of drizzle during which everyone put on his full dress and a convalescent look to celebrate the clearing...he would invent names and legends to satisfy the children's insatiable curiosity." (Page 315-318)
The beginning of this passage is about the floods and how they were started by Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown seems to be replacing God and unleashing the flood onto the world to almost clear away the sins, like God did with Moses. Unlike Moses' flood in which almost all the humans were wiped out, all of Aureliano Segundo's animals were killed except for his "honkey." Aureliano Segundo procrastinates doing things that he does not want to do and are generally the right thing to do because they aren't what he wants to do. He almost uses the rain as an excuse to not do anything but fix little things around the house, and always commits himself to do something after the rain stops. Something that I found to be slightly humorous was the fact that Aureliano Segundo didn't realize that he was old until he didn't quiver when thinking about his mistress Petra Cotes. Aureliano Segundo reminisces about his wild youth with Petra Cotes and does not feel bitterness or repentance for having ignored his family. In this passage Aureliano Segundo keeps on reminiscing foreshadowing what Ursula does later in the chapter.
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2 comments:
In this passage we also get an image of Macondo returning to it's old-fashioned, origional state without technology or machines. in the quote "the driest of machines would have floweres popping out among thier gears," we see how the communtity is no longer able to depend on machines and matertial things like the "clothing that would break out in a rash of saffron-colored moss."
I agree with shane when he says that the rain is cleansing and clearing away sins. I feel that the act of purification is not necessarily easy, and it is a hard recovery.
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