So God Created the Earth

I won't debate it. The story of Genesis seems like it set up a framework for millions of stories to come (well, obviously it did). But this is what I mean: It begins with a too-good-to-be-true Utopia. God made everything perfect and good and yay. But quickly man comes and screws everything up for himself. You know that as soon as you have a utopia and a rule, then the rule will be broken and the Utopia will quickly disintegrate.

Marquez says screw it. He completely abandons this framework in his creation myth. In fact, the book begins "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad...". That doesn't sound like Genesis to me.

Like Genesis, we quickly see the addition of "life" to Macondo (though in this case the life is more like science/knowledge). And Man(Jose Arcadio) wants more than what he has, and screws everything up with a few big magnets. The common theme is that ambition = bad. But throughout this first chapter (and a few more afterwards), Marquez engages in a little discussion about whether or not science is good or bad. WAIT. What I am trying to say in this paragraph is that both stories contain the Universal theme of the quest for knowledge and its ramifications.

Genesis comes abruptly to the first murder in Chapter 4. 100 years of solitude has impending death mentioned every few lines with the firing squad. We won't forget that no matter what happens, practically anything good is just remembered when facing death (the firing squad). Ironically, Aureliano's firing squad seems pretty unimportant (up to the part where I am now, anyway). When we finally find out he surivved the firing squad, it doesn't even get it's own sentence, clause, or even phrase. Arcadio's firing squad is kinda more serious, but that, I guess, is a different story.

The first death in Genesis is a murder. The first "death" in 100 years of solitude is when Rebeca brings her dead parents. Then the next death is Melquiades. But neither of them are actually true Macondans. I could be wrong, but I believe the first death in 100 YOS is also man killing man (or is it Remedios?).

The isolation of 100 YOS also parallels the book of Genesis. I believe that the insane amount of incest in this book may also kinda parallel the Bible. So this was an attempt at discussing the life cycles in 1YOS and Genesis. (Complete aside...I love how I've been gradually shortening the title of the book.)