Amaranta and the Death of Remedios

During our discussion during class, Mrs. Quinet brought up the possibility that Amaranta accidentally poisoned Remedios and caused her death. I was a little confused in class because this is what I remembered happening, but during the discussion I could not figure out why as the quote we were looking at in class indicated that Amaranta didn't actually do anything to directly cause Remedios' death other than praying something bad would happen. In searching for why I thought Amaranta had actually poisoned Remedios, and I think I found the quote that made me remember this. On page 88, the narrator says, "[Amaranta] adopted him as a son who would share her solitude and relieve her from the involuntary laudanum that her mad beseeching had thrown into Remedios' coffee."

Reading over this, I don't think this is meant to be taken literally as in Amaranta poisoned Remedios' coffee; the phrase "her mad beseeching" implies rather that she feels her prayers for a tragedy had caused her to die. I think Marquez does this as a way to reinforce the tremendous guilt that Amaranta feels for Remedios' death, to the point that she adopts the language of having actually caused the death when thinking about it. Later on Amaranta takes her guilt to extreme measures, with the black cloth she wraps around her hands for example. Marquez explores this extreme survivor's guilt that dominates Amaranta's character for much of the novel. I think it's interesting and likely not unintentional that Marquez throws in this ambiguous language to emphasize how deeply guilty Amaranta feels, to the point that she hardly seems to separate her praying for Remedios' death and her causing it (I might just be trying to justify a lack of careful reading tho). This also sort of plays into the way memory and the changing of memory works throughout the book as well.