Blog #7

"Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters" (Márquez 27).

This line is extremely interesting because it dives into the idea of memory loss, which this village is experiencing due to the insomnia plague.  To try and fend off this loss of memory, José Arcadio Buendía labels everything in his house, such as the tables, chairs, and even animals.  Although this might serve its purpose and work for a temporary amount of time, it is acknowledged that soon, one will forget how to read and write, and thus these labels would be worthless.  This forces the reader to think about the commonalities of life that are sometimes taken for granted and the effect that their diminishment would have.  For example, the ability to recall the names of common objects.  As the town experiences more and more extreme memory loss, the ability to recover becomes less and less likely.  This is reflected in the Márquez's diction when describing the people as "living in a reality that was slipping away."