“She spoke so much about the family that the children learned to make up imaginary visits with beings who had not only been dead for a long time, but who had existed at different times. Sitting on the bed, her hair covered with ashes and her face wrapped in a red kerchief, Ursula was happy in the midst of the unreal relatives whom the children described in all detail, as if they had really known them.” (328)
In this passage, Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses imagery and the motif of solitude to show the poor conditions and loss of respect to Ursula. The ashes on her head and in her hair symbolize the condition Ursula is in as she lays dying in bed. She is weak and fragile as if she is turning to ash. As she grows older, the younger generation represents the loss of respect shown toward Ursula. The children neglect the idea that Ursula has feelings of her own causing them to treat her as if she was a toy. As Ursula continues to lose her mind, she begins to enter a new world of her own. Ursula has fallen into solitude because she is no longer able to be the primary care taker of the Buendia family. When the children make family members from earlier periods come back to life, she becomes happy because it reminds her of the past when she was the care taker and leader of the family.
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i agree that the children playing with Ursula's mind does show the lack of respect for the younger generations. i also agree that Ursula has entered into a new state of mind that only allows her to see the past. i think that the reason that the characters from the past make her so happy is because they were around when Macondo had not yet been corrupted by outsiders. i believe that Ursula misses the old Macondo and that she is happy to be able to go back to visit it even if it is through the immature children of the new generation.
I feel that your explication does a nice job describing Ursula's newer less dominant role in the household. Again we see the ever familiar pattern of poor mental health before an assumed death. I also noticed that there is a recurrent physical as well as mental weakness in Ursula similar to her past husband, Jose Arcadio Buendia. All of this embellishes one of the novels most integral themes, "if one does not learn from the mistakes of the past, one is certainly prone to repeat them".
I like how you use the ashes as a recurrent symbol throughout the book to show how Ursula is nearing the end of her life. I agree with the fact that Ursula is falling into solitude and into her own world as she nears the end of her own life. She has fallen into insanity in which she believes she is reliving parts of her life that have long passed. Her actions are very similar to that of Jose Arcadio Buendia as she nears the end of her life and the foreshadowed event of the fall of Macondo.
This passage makes me feel bad for Ursula because all of the kids are playing with her mind. Since she doesnt remember peoples names or what time period her relatives came from, the kids use that to their advantage. They pretend people came to visit that really didnt, and they tell her news of events that happened in different time periods and combine them together. This to me represents a lack of respect and shows that the younger generation is much different that the older, more respectful generation of Macondo.
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