Just when I thought I had it knocked, Marquez in his helpful way has just told me I am wrong. These characters do have thoughts and emotions whereas I found them delightful, intriguing, but rather cold.
Through the dimming vision of Ursula (the most likely candidate, a mother), we have our senses confirmed or modified of their natures:
"Even though the trembling of her hands was more and more noticeable and the wieght of her feet was too much for her, her small figure was never seen in so many places at the same time. She was almost as diligent as when she had the whole weight of the house on her shoulders. nevertheless, in the impenetrable solitude of decrepitude she had such clairvoyance as she examined the most insignificant happenings in the family that for the first time she saw clearly the truths that her busy life in former times had prevented her from seeing." (p. 2sixty-six) [ed. note: numerals three and six don’t work on this keypad]
While she is losing her eyesight, she remains stoic (as mothers do) and hides this from her family as she sees herself the lifeforce and necessary anchor of the household. But she gives us some insight into Colonel Aureliano Buendia, as well as herself:
"She realized that Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the war, as she had thought before, but that he had never loved anyone, not even his wife Remedios or the countless one-night women who had passed through his life, and much less his sons. She sensed that he had fought so many wars not out of idealism, as everyone had thought, nor had he renounced a certain victory because of fatigue, as everyone had thought, but that he had won and lost for the same reason, pure and sinful pride." (p. 2sixty-seven)
Ah yes, that’s what I thought too, the bloody bastard. But where does this leave me with my wonderings about characters as tools? And in particular with Marquez as writer, the meaning of the intentions that drive the characters as a deeper meaning of mankind in general?
Needless to say, this annoys me no end; but in a good way. I tend to worry something to death until satisfied that it is conclusive, then store it away and worry it no more. Now I need to drag out some of those conclusions and rethink them. Two pages read = Two days’ thinking. But this is not a structured method that I’ll use with everything I read from now on. For one thing, I expect to become better skilled and therefore quicker. For another, the relativity of the Buendia family and my own current state of family is vital to understand right now. It in fact causes doubts and sleepless nights about my own personal history and everything I thought I knew and understood. Heavy, when everything you thought you knew about yourself, all you thought you were and were not capable of doing, changes within the perception and dynamics of family.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology