It's A Baby!

Is it just me, or are there a multitude of instances in One Hundred Years of Solitude in which adults are either acting like/treated like babies, or in which children are treated like adults?

The first instance I thought of was between Colonel Aureliano Buendía and Úrsula.  (See page 158.)  Aureliano wants to shoot General Moncada (I won't go into all the background because I'm sure you all remember it), and Úrsula, along with several other "old women who had been founders of the town," decide to protest the decision.  Úrsula says to the members of the court, "You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty.  But don't forget that as long as God gives us life we will still be mothers and no matter how revolutionary you may be, we have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect."

Úrsula manages to boil down the complexities of war and the resulting choices to the fact that pretty much everyone in the town likes General Moncada because he's a pretty cool guy, and killing him would be wrong, especially if it's just because the Colonel wants to "win the war at any price" (158).  She strips away the years of war and experience from the Colonel, leaving him with the threat a mother might make to a misbehaving child.

(There's also this whole deal going on in The Unbearable Lightness of Being with Tomas viewing Tereza as a baby, but that discussion might make this post a little too long.)

The second instance I thought of, which is actually this whole thing working in reverse: Remedios Moscote.  She's an actual child, and the Colonel—many, many, many years her senior—still insists upon marrying her.  I mean, come on.  She still wets the bed.  His obsession with her is pretty creepy. But, especially once married, she's treated like she's an adult.  She is graceful and gracious, she calmly settles family disputes, she is beloved by everyone, and people are even happy when she announces her pregnancy.  No!  No one should be happy when a 12-year-old (or whatever her exact age is) is about to have a baby.  Yes, I know those were "different times," but even the townspeople of Macondo seem shocked and rather hesitant about the arrangement.  As we later see, many complications arise from the pregnancy, not the least of which is Remedios' death (unless she was poisoned; however, I'd like to point out that even if she hadn't been poisoned, there's a good chance she would have been left with many other negative physical results).

And finally, disturbingly: the events surrounding José Arcadio's death.  The children he'd earlier "expelled from the house" return to assassinate the man and steal the gold: "Then they took out the three sacks of gold from the hiding place which was known only to them and their victim.  It was such a rapid, methodical, and brutal action that it was like a military operation" (374-375).  These children murder José Arcadio as if they are trained killers, and if they have any guilt or remorse about their actions, the novel certainly does not expound upon them.

I think this whole concept of adults acting like children and children acting like adults is intentionally a conflation of time on Márquez's part.  He certainly likes to deal with time, and this is just another element of its role in the book.  By "confusing" or "mixing up" adults and children (and the years, old vs. new, each represents), Márquez continues to comment upon the cyclical and linear nature of time in One Hundred Years of Solitude.