Colonel Aureliano Buend example essay topic
In the beginning of Aureliano's career, he is an idealistic leader who is respected by his peers. He leads an uprising of? twenty-one men under the age of thirty, armed with table knives and sharpened tools? against the Conservatives occupying Macondo. He adamantly disagrees with their form of government and begins the reform movement led by the anticlerical and democratic bourgeoisie. After the Liberal victory, Aurelio becomes?
Colonel Aureliano Buend? a.? Aureliano's leadership parallels his father's leadership of these young men's fathers who helped him found the village of Macondo. Similarly, Aureliano commands respect from his subordinates and has enormous power over other men as well. After being captured by the enemy, Aureliano is not executed because the Conservative firing squad is only too happy to switch sides and follow him into the Liberal army. Colonel Aureliano appears to be immortal and ubiquitous, returning triumphant, surviving numerous assassination attempts, and continuing to hold the loyalty of his friends. When his comrade in-arms and oldest friend, Colonel Gerineldo M? rquez, proposes marriage to Aureliano's sister, Amaranth boldly rejects him because?
[Gerineldo] loves Aureliano so much [he] wants to marry [her] because [he] can? t marry [Aureliano].? The Colonel has great allegiance and affection from those below him. However, as Aureliano's attitudes change, he loses their love and respect. After fighting many battles, Aureliano becomes increasingly cynical and corrupt. He comes to understand his own thoughts by writing out his experiences in verse. In this way, he comes to the terrible realization that? [he] is fighting for pride.?
As for what Gerineldo calls the? Great Liberal party, ? Aureliano declares that it? doesn? t mean anything to anybody? because the only difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives is the different hours that each party attends mass. Worse, he determines that his heroic struggle has simply been another Latin American power play.
Likewise, Aureliano is a sell-out. He is easily persuaded to give up everything that he has gained for the Liberal cause: land reform, anticlericalism, and the? aspiration for equality of rights between natural and legitimate children? for money from the Conservatives. The warfare is futile and has caused him to? rot alive.? Power has gripped the Colonel, distorting his idealism and his values from his earlier days, when he thought it important to redistribute lands and protect civilian lives.
In the same way, he orders Gerineldo M? rquez executed because of a trivial matter. He then spends the night trying to break? the hard shell of his solitude? in order to recover some compassion for others. What results, though, is not love, but a new burst of pride and power. He decides to end the civil war by force rather than negotiation. Aureliano's cynicism and debauched view of the world lead to the final tragic stage of his life. In the latter part of his life, the once glorious Colonel Aureliano Buend? a isolates himself from the world around him.
He does not have the capacity to love, and the fact that he has had sex with countless women, without ever learning their names or even waiting for daylight to see their faces, shows his inability to experience true love. He has fathered seventeen? children of all ages, all colors, but all males and all with a look of solitude that left no doubt as to the relationship.? His indifference to his surroundings and circumstances lead to his loneliness. Like his father before him, the Colonel begins to lose contact with the world.
He reaches the extreme of self-isolation when he orders a chalk circle drawn around him and refuses to let anyone, even his mother, come closer than two meters. The futility and desperation of his solitude is shown by his frustrated suicide attempt. After the Conservative victory, he tries to kill himself by aiming the gun to his chest. But the bullet misses all his vital organs. For the remaining years of his life, Aureliano? busies himself destroying all trace of his passage through the world and the trunk of poetry? that he has written. In addition, he repeatedly makes, melts down, and then remakes little fishes out of gold, just to keep himself from thinking about his condition.
He dies, finally, in solitude, leaning against the same chestnut tree where his mad father passed away. Throughout Aureliano's life, he undergoes a transformation from a lively leader to a corrupt cynic, and ultimately dies a dispassionate loner. The civil war causes him to continually alter his attitude on life. The views which he once had, slowly disappeared, just as the hands of time turn into fading memories. As the present becomes the past, his once idealistic approach to his existence withers into withdrawal from society.
While the spokes of Aureliano's wheel are becoming loose going downhill on the road of life, the wheel of change never ceases to stop rolling..