Blog #7

"Jose Arcadio Buendia, without understanding , stretched out his hand toward the cake... and put his hand on the ice and held it there for several minutes as his heart filled with fear and jubilation at the contact with mystery... Intoxicated by the evidence of the miracle, he forgot at that moment about the frustrations of his delirious undertakings and Melquiades' body, abandoned to the appetite of the squids." (pg. 17 and 18)

The passage where the Buedia family learns about the existence of ice stuck out to me for a few different reasons. Firstly, the concept of not knowing about ice seems so foreign to us as we come into contact with it almost everyday. It's just a part of our life. Yet, when you step back and think about it, primitive communities at the time, like Macondo, wouldn't have access to it, whether it be from the changing of the seasons or by actually creating it. It's hard to describe the feeling that I got while reading this: it is somewhere between showing someone my favorite movie and they love it, and explaining to a child for the first time that ice is made of water. Secondly, keeping Brecht's ideas in mind and knowing what direction Macondo is heading in, this episode has another pretty big significance beyond people learning about ice. This episode buys into the notion that too much knowledge is dangerous. Jose (one of them anyway) had an unhealthy lust for knowledge. For the most part in the beginning, it was really only harmful to himself in that he basically shut himself out in favor of pursuing discovery. It isn't until later on in Macondo's history that we learn that knowledge was arguably the most destructive force. Before Macondo started coming into contact with other communities, it was peaceful with no death or destruction. When it started to open itself up, it only led to more death and destruction. I can't help but draw the parallel to Life of Galileo where the pursuit of knowledge seemed to do more harm than good. The way this novel portrays the effects of knowledge and isolation makes it seem like knowledge is bad, isolation is good, and ignorance is bliss. In the case of Macondo, ignorance was bliss until discovery came and ruined everything. Jose's pursuit of knowledge was relatively harmless up until this point. The peak had been reached and it was only downhill for Macondo from here. It seems like Marquez was  pinning knowledge as a negative thing because of the above reasons and his description of how the discovery made Jose feel. He forgot about his hardships completely for the moment and was totally entranced. This makes me wonder, is Marquez making the argument that isolation is good and ignorance is bliss? Does he choose to portray interaction between communities in this way as a cautionary tale, as it only led to death and despair? If not, why does he do this?