4. Jose Arcadio

Oldest son of Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaron

"Jose Arcadio, the older of the children was fourteen. He had a square head, thick hair, and his father's character. Although he had the same impulse for growth and physical strength, it was early evident that he lacked imagination. He had been conceived and born during the difficult crossing of the mountains, before the founding of Macondo, and his parents gave thanks to heaven when they saw he had no animal features" (14).

"Little Jose Arcadio refused to touch it [the block of ice brought by the gypsies]" (17).

{this sexual tryst is with Pilar Ternera}

"She thought that his disproportionate size was something as unnatural as her cousin's tail of a pig. The woman let out an expansive laugh that resounded through the house like a spray of broke glass. 'Just the opposite,' she said. 'He'll be very lucky.' ... and locked herself up with Jose Arcadio in a granary off the kitchen. ... Jose Arcadio felt his bones filling up with foam, a languid fear, and a terrible desire to weep. The woman made no insinuations. But Jose Arcadio kept looking for her all night long, for the smell of smoke that she had under her armpits and that had got caught under his skin. He wanted to be with her all the time. ... he desire her with a brutal anxiety" (25-26).

"... he could no longer resist the glacial rumbling of his kidneys and air of his intestines, and fear, and the bewildered anxiety to flee and at the same time stay forever in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude" (27).

"{sex} had permitted him to understand why men are afraid of death" (28).

"His father gave him a blow with the back of his hand that brought out blood and tears. That night Pilar Ternera put arnica compresses on the swellling, feeling about for the bottle and cotton in the dark, and she did everything she wanted with him as long as it did not bother him, making an effort to love him without hurting him. They reached such a state of intimacy that later, without realizing it, they were whispering to each other" (29).

"... he told everything to his brother {Aureliano}" (29)

"'It's like an earthquake'" (30).

{Pilar to Jose Arcadio} "'You're going to be a father'" (31) {Their son is called Arcadio.}

"A huge man had arrived. His square shoulders barely fitted through the doorways. He was wearing a medal of Our Lady of Help around his bison neck, his arms and chest were completely covered with cryptic tattooing, and on his right wrist was the tight copper bracelet of the ninos-en-cruz amulet. His skin was tanned by the salt of the open air, his hair was short and straight like the mane of a mule, his jaws were of iron, and he wore a sad smile. ... It was Jose Arcadio. He was returning as poor as when he had left, to such an extreme that Ursula had to give him two pesos to pay for the rental of his horse. ... He would Indian-wrestle with five men at the same time. ... Jose Arcadio pulled it [the counter] out of its place, lifted it over his head, and put it in the street. It took eleven men to put it back" (88-90).

"The women who went to bed with him that night in Catarino's store brought him naked into the dance salon so that people could see that there was not a square inch of his body that was not tattooed, front and back, and from neck to his toes" (90).

"Jose Arcadio had forgotten about it [affair with Pilar and sharing knowledge with Arcadio], because life at sea had saturated his memory with too many things to remember" (91).

"Jose Arcadio looked at her body with shameless attention and said to her: 'You're a woman, little sister'" (91).

''She managed to thank God for having been born before she lost herself in the inconceivable pleasure of that unbearable pain, splashing in the steaming marsh of the hammock which absorbed the explosion of blood like a blotter. Three days later they were married during the five-o'clock mass" (92).

"'It's against nature,' he [Pietro Crespi] explained, 'and besides, it's against the law.' ... 'Fuck nature two times over,' he [Jose Arcadio] said. 'And I've come to tell you not to bother going to ask Rebeca anything'" (92).

"Father Nicanor revealed in his Sunday sermon that Jose Arcadio and Rebeca were not brother and sister. Ursula never forgave what she considered an inconceivable lack of respect and when they came back from church she forbade the newlyweds to set foot in the house again" (93).

"... they [the neighbors] prayed that such wild passion would not disturb the peace of the dead" (93).

"Jose Arcadio recovered his sense of reality and began to work the no-man's-land that bordered the courtyard of the house" (93).

"In the afternoon he [Pietro Crespi] would go have coffee with Jose Arcadio and Rebeca, who had begun to put their house in order" (99).

"'Jose Arcadio came back a big man, taller than you, and all covered in needlework, but he only brought shame to our house'" (106).

"The only relatives who knew about it were about Jose Arcadio and Rebeca, with whom Arcadio maintained close relations at that time, based not so much on kinship as on complicity. Jose Arcadio had put his neck in the marital yoke" (113). {This was the affair between Arcadio and Santa Sofia de la Piedad.}

"... he [Jose Arcadio] had begun by plowing his own yard and had gone straight ahead into neighboring lands, knocking down fences and buildings with his oxen until he took forcible possession of the best plots of land around. ... he levied a contribution which he collected every Saturday with his hunting dogs and his double-barreled shotgun" (114).

"He [Arcadio] simply offered to set up a registry office so that Jose Arcadio could legalize his title to the usurped land, under the condition that he delegate to the local government the right to collect the contributions. ... also collected fees from people for the right to bury their dead in Jose Arcadio's land" (114).

"'They won't shoot him here,' Jose Arcadio told her [Rebeca]. 'They'll shoot him at midnight in the barracks so that no one will know who made up the squad, and they'll bury him right there.' ... 'They won't bring him through the streets ... with six scared soldiers and knowing that the people are ready for anything'" (128).

"... Jose Arcadio crossing the street with his fearsome shotgun ready to go off. 'Don't shoot,' the captain said to Jose Arcadio. 'You were sent by Divine Providence'" (129).

"A year after the flight of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Jose Arcadio and Rebeca went to live in the house Arcadio had built. No on knew about his intervention to halt the execution. ... Jose Arcadio continued to profit from the usurped lands, the title to which was recognized by the Conservative government" (131).

"That was perhaps the only mystery that was never cleared up in Macondo. As soon as Jose Arcadio closed the bedroom door the sound of a pistol shot echoed through the house" (131).

{Pages 131-133 deal with finding Jose Arcadio's body and preparing it for burial. The blood then spread all the way to Ursula in her home which she followed to his body. Despite several attempts to remove the smell of gunpowder, his grave continued to smell like it until engineers came from the banana company to cover it with concrete. Rebeca "buried herself alive" in her home with her servant, Argenida, afterwards (133).}