The Seven Deadly Sins in "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

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Recommended: The biblical in one hundred years of solitude

When reading forum after forum, you can’t help but give in to the fact that biblical allusions do, in fact, exists in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. According to Diane Andrews Henningfeld, an associate professor at Adrian College who has studied this novel and its ties to history and myths, some of the biblical allusions include the Garden of Eden, the story of Noah’s Ark, and certain characters being portrayed as archetypes. As I was going through different biblical aspects, one very interesting thought occurred to me. Why would an author include seven different generations of characters in a book? Representation. I believe that Marquez used certain characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude to represent the seven deadly sin of the bible. Not only did they symbolize these sins, but in return, they each received a form of punishment for their wrong-doing. Lust is uncontrolled or illicit, intense sexual desire. We have seen many displays of lust throughout this text, including lust between blood relatives. The most prominent example of lust would have to be the seventeen love children of Colonel Aureliano Buendia. Supposedly, even though he was married to the fresh, now pubescent Remedios, it is tradition for women to sleep with soldiers; therefore it makes sense for him to have those kids since he was at war against the conservatives thirty-two times. The punishment in this case for the excess amount of sex is death brought upon the seventeen children, a form of revenge for the conservatives. There was a chance for one son to survive, but thanks to his relatives who had never met him before, he was assassinated on the doorsteps of his father’s home. “Two policemen who had been chasing Aureliano Amador... ... middle of paper ... ...ew about her husband, who killed a man that insulted him over the belt. The man’s ghost continuously visited them, and in order to get rid of it, they got rid of the chastity belt. In conclusion, every deadly sin, sloth, gluttony, greed, envy, pride, wrath, and lust, were represented in this book through different characters. Marquez did include many biblical allusions in One Hundred Years of Solitude, but the seven deadly sins is one aspect that has been rarely discussed, which is why I felt the need to bring this up and prove to you that it does, in fact, exist in this novel. Also, since these were sins, they came with consequences. Some were outrageous while others weren’t as harmful, but all in all, Macondo faced punishments of all kind. Works Cited www.wikipedia.com/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude, http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/solitude/characters.html

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