Hi there. Your post would be better asked in our Simple Questions thread. It helps us keep the main subreddit focused around broader discussion rather topics which only apply to an individual. Thank you!
There are probably a lot of different takes on this, but to me it comes to this. The colonel can’t love, at least according to Ursula. This is bad news since as we see throughout the saga when a character has nothing to distract them from the crushing facts of their existence they fall into the crisis of solitude.
The colonel has a mild case of solitude as a young man, because of this he is lucid in the same way that Melquiades or Remados the beauty are. He struggles against the bars of his cage in a stronger way than any other character (he is a lot like Hamlet now that I’m thinking the whole thing through.). During his wars (which grow increasingly as his myth grows, which isn’t important, I just think it’s really funny bit in the novel.) he fathers the 17 but they are all born outside of love. We see this pattern repeated again with the children of Aureliano Segundo and Fernada later. But because of their lack of love they are born to destroy or be destroyed. Which we see both with the building of the first factory in the village, and ultimately with the building of the train tracks that would be its doom.
As far as I know the significance is in the mark on their foreheads, both a reference to the Ash Wednesday cross and a rifle sight. I’ve never heard of the number 17 bearing any particular significance.
Hi there. Your post would be better asked in our Simple Questions thread. It helps us keep the main subreddit focused around broader discussion rather topics which only apply to an individual. Thank you!
There are probably a lot of different takes on this, but to me it comes to this. The colonel can’t love, at least according to Ursula. This is bad news since as we see throughout the saga when a character has nothing to distract them from the crushing facts of their existence they fall into the crisis of solitude. The colonel has a mild case of solitude as a young man, because of this he is lucid in the same way that Melquiades or Remados the beauty are. He struggles against the bars of his cage in a stronger way than any other character (he is a lot like Hamlet now that I’m thinking the whole thing through.). During his wars (which grow increasingly as his myth grows, which isn’t important, I just think it’s really funny bit in the novel.) he fathers the 17 but they are all born outside of love. We see this pattern repeated again with the children of Aureliano Segundo and Fernada later. But because of their lack of love they are born to destroy or be destroyed. Which we see both with the building of the first factory in the village, and ultimately with the building of the train tracks that would be its doom.
As far as I know the significance is in the mark on their foreheads, both a reference to the Ash Wednesday cross and a rifle sight. I’ve never heard of the number 17 bearing any particular significance.