stmhumanities

Sharon James is quoted on page 6 of Autumn of the Patriarch, Forgetting to Live saying something like this: Rome was founded on swift destructive violence and its settlement was a long process. Aaron Bady continues to comment that the founding of Macondo is nothing like the founding of Rome. I care to differ. I believe the quote regarding Rome could simply be substituted with the words Macondo, Prudencio Aguilar, and Marquez. It would then read, "these two acts are so different — the one a slow, constructive struggle to settle down and build a civilization, the other a swift, destructive act of enraged killing — that by placing them in such prominent symmetry and using the same word of them, Marquez calls attention to the relationship between them…In linking the slow founding of Macondo to the swift stabbing of Prudencio Aguilar, Marquez suggests that the former rests on the latter. Thus he shows the violence and fury beneath the founding of Macondo." I believe that the founding of Rome and the founding of Macondo are essentially one in the same. They both were created upon violence, albeit Jose Arcadio Buendia is fleeing violence, and both Macondo and Rome took a while to establish and settle down and become a civilization. I think that Bady is wrong in his assertion that, "The most important thing to say about Gabo's epic might be that it thinks non of these things." So I ask that you all think about this point and consider is validity because I see nothing wrong with my reasoning and cannot figure out why Bady would make such a point. Does anyone know how to explain this to me?