So, this week has been one of family bonding for me. After my mom was admitted into the ICU, my sister and I were able to spend some quality time together...for better or worse - this week. Though we are only 12 months apart (the term "Irish Twins" was employed at one time...), we are different women. My sister feels more of an obligation toward domestic things. I have no such desire at the moment. My sister is drawn to and good at working with the natural sciences. The last time I was in a labratory, I burned my finger on the match, before the experimenting even began. When we were younger, Beth was the "tomboy" of the bunch. However, now I claim the title of Comfort Queen.
When reading Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years, I couldn't help but compare the relationship of Jose Arcadio and Aureliano Buendia to that of the one my sister and I share. While we aren't at the point of death quite yet, I see the adolescent period, the experiences and reinforcement that children get as crucial to building the people the they will become. My sister and I are just leaving that period of "main identity formation" and moving into the period of adulthood, so I will work on comparing the adolescent experiences that Jose Arcadio and Aureliano had and what impact that had on the people they became.
Many psychologists focus on (with good reason...) focus on identity formation as essential to adolescents. Erik Erikson called this the "identity crisis". Freud focused (as he did with every other category of growth) on sexual development, calling adolescents the "psychosexual developmental stage". Piaget called adolescence the entrance into the "formal operations stage" in which all aspects of identity could be approached. In Garcia Marquez's novel, sexual identity is developed early and very differently in Jose Arcadio and Aureliano. This development of sexual identity played a large part on the men that these boys developed into.
Jose Arcadio's development started early, and other people had a large development on his perception of self. Jose Arcadio's mother walked in on him while he was dressing and thought him "so well-equipped for life that he seemed abnormal" (p. 25). His mother sought the advice of the woman who would be Jose Arcadio's first lover, Pilar Ternera. Pilar first groped Jose Arcadio and then began having regular sex with him, which only ended when Pilar told him "Now you really are a man" (p. 31) because he was going to be a father. Jose Arcadio ran away, did not recognize his son, and became a giglio of sorts. "Five pesos from each one...and I'll share myself with both" (p. 90). What a man.
Aureliano's journey was different. From the beginning, he felt out of place and awkward because he was not as well endowed as his brother. As a result, people didn't give him the same expectation as they gave his brother and Aureliano grew up to be a quiet, withdrawn man. "Everyone thought it was strange that he was now a full-grown man and had not known a woman. It was true that he had never had one" (p. 50). He ended up having sex with the same woman as his brother did (because he watched his brother go through that same process) and had her child, who he recognized as his own. When he did get married, it was to a child, Remedios. After her death, Aureliano went wild - being a revolutionary who laid his seed everywhere. "He had seventeen male children by seventeen different women" (p. 103). None of these women were committed relationships.
It is just as much outside expectation as genes and enviornment that help adolescents develop their identities. And it should be a balance between emotional development, physical development, mental development, and social development. Jose Arcadio's physical development was differnet from his brother's and people subscribed different roles to them. My sister and I were pushed toward different topics while growing up and have come to embrace them as our own. The impact of both expectation and comparison between sibling shouldn't go underestimated in the importance to their development.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Interesting work. We need to gender your discussion and talk about machismo in class next week.
Post a Comment