Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s Suicide Attempt

Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s Suicide Attempt

            Colonel Gerineldo Marques captured the emptiness that leads to Colonel Aureliano Buendía attempt in his statement “You’re rotting alive” (165). 

            The Colonel was always slightly detached from others, yet his love for Remedios and his early passion for the war showed that he did have a certain capacity for emotion. Yet the passion that is invested in the war is wasted away as he realizes the hopelessness of it all, and that it is pride that keeps the war raging.           

           The two central parts in his life, love and war, served as vessels for emotion and they both failed him. Such losses paved the way for his act of shooting himself in the chest. Unlike the two before him the Colonel’s shot was placed “perfectly”, and he is not allowed to end his life. This miracle does not change his mind on the value of life for he believes that surviving made him look like a fool.

            While Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s attempt does not end in his death it does begin the end of his emotions, and soon his memories, and he withdraws from his family even more. Just as the family as a whole turns in on itself with more and more incestuous occurrences (José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, Arcadio and Pilar Ternera etc.) on the smaller scope the individuals turn into themselves as well, and the Colonel locks himself away in his workshop. When the president of the Republic tries to award the Colonel with the Order of Merit he rejects its. He states that he “was not a hero of the nation as they said but an artisan without memories whose only dream was to die of fatigue in the oblivion and misery of his little gold fishes” (214). Once again the idea of losing one’s memories is revived, yet instead of it being a terrifying idea it is welcomed by the Colonel.

            As the Colonel shuts himself away from the world, the village is pried open, both actions are acts that turn away from the past, and both are destructive. The act of attempting suicide can be seen as a loss of innocence, the turning away from life, just as Colonel gave up, and lost himself, the town was torn open and its original Eden-like state was shattered.

Both the village and the man become mere shells of what they used to be:

“So many changes took place in such a short time that eight months after Mr. Herbert’s visit the old inhabitants had a hard time recognizing their own town” (228).  

“He locked himself up inside himself and the family finally thought of him as dead” (263).

            Colonel Aureliano Buendía finally dies without any memories, the same fate for the village, by a chestnut tree, surrounded by "his miserable solitude", ready to be picked apart by vultures (267).