"After his shout something happened that did not bring on fright but kind of hallucination. The captain gave the. order to fire and fourteen machine guns answered at once. But it all seemed like a farce." (Márquez 305).
This excerpt really shocked me. At first I assumed this was something that was real to José Arcadeo Segundo but not to others, as if the massacre really hadn't happened. For example, in the beginning of the novel Úrsula continued to see Prucendio Aguilar after her husband, José Arcadio Buendía had thrown a spear through his throat for making fun at him. Also, this novel is filled with just things that seem out of the normal being normal so expecting this to not have actually happened is somewhat of a normal reaction. Also, the soldiers shot to kill, as if it really wasn't meant to disperse the protesters but to actually kill them instead, "They were penned in, swirling about in a giant whirlwind that little by little was being reduced to its epicenter as the edges were systematically being cut off all around like an onion being peeled by the insatiable and methodical shears of the machine guns." (Márquez 306). Something that this makes me think of is the killing of protesters at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard. Like the workers, the Kent students were unarmed and protesting the bombing of Cambodia. Instead of getting the students to disperse, the armed Ohio National Guard opened fire on the protesters, killing four.
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